Career advice for an actual job search

Target fewer roles, properly

The instinct when a search stalls is to apply to more things. It usually makes the problem worse: more applications means less time on each, which means more generic resumes, which means a lower response rate, which prompts more applications. It is a treadmill and it is exhausting.

Ten well-aimed applications a week will typically outperform fifty scattered ones. Well-aimed means you read the posting properly, you meet most of the core requirements, and your resume was reordered to lead with the relevant evidence. That takes twenty minutes per application, not two hours — see tailoring without rewriting.

Start by writing down what you are actually looking for: the kind of role, the level, the locations or remote arrangement you will accept, and your realistic salary range. Vagueness here is what produces scattergun applications. It also makes it much harder to answer "what are you looking for?" convincingly, which is usually the first interview question.

Where applications actually come from

Job boards are the visible route and the most competitive one. They are worth using, but a search that consists only of job-board applications is working with the smallest share of available roles and the largest applicant pool.

• Company career pages. If there are ten employers you would like to work for, check their pages directly. Fewer applicants reach a role this way.
• People you already know. Not networking events — former colleagues, classmates, people from previous teams. A message saying what you are looking for is enough. Most will not have anything; the ones who do will tell you before it is advertised.
• Recruiters in your field. Useful for some industries, less so for others. Worth one conversation to find out which applies to you.
• Communities where your field talks. Professional groups, niche job boards, open-source projects, local meetups. Lower volume, much better signal.

Keep a simple record — company, role, date applied, outcome. A spreadsheet is enough. Without it you will re-apply to the same company twice and be unable to remember which version of your resume went where.

When nothing comes back

Most applications receive no response at all, and it is worth naming that plainly: it is normal, it is not usually about you personally, and companies are frequently poor at closing the loop. That does not make it feel better, but it does mean silence is bad data.

After twenty or thirty applications with no interviews, stop and diagnose rather than continuing. The problem is almost always one of three things, and they need different fixes:

1. Targeting. Are you applying to roles you are a plausible candidate for? If every application is a stretch, the response rate will be near zero regardless of your resume.
2. The resume. Does the top third make your relevance obvious in seven seconds? Does it parse cleanly? Run the copy-paste test in the ATS guide — a parsing failure produces exactly this symptom and is invisible otherwise.
3. Volume in the wrong channel. If everything is going through one competitive job board, add direct applications and people you know.

If you are getting interviews but no offers, the diagnosis is different — that is an interview problem, and the resume is working.

Interview preparation

Preparation is not memorising answers. Scripted answers sound scripted, and interviewers ask follow-up questions that scripts cannot survive. What works is having your material ready so you are not assembling it under pressure.

Prepare stories, not answers

Write down six to eight things you have actually done, in reasonable detail: the situation, what you did, and how it turned out. Include at least one that went badly — "tell me about a failure" is common and an unprepared answer to it is conspicuous.

Six stories will cover most behavioural questions, because the questions are variations on a small set of themes: a difficult problem, a conflict, a deadline, a mistake, leading something, learning something quickly. You are not matching stories to questions in advance — you are making sure you have the raw material.

Know your own resume

Every claim on your resume is a question you have invited. If a bullet says you improved something by 30%, be ready to explain the baseline, the period and your specific contribution. This is the main practical reason not to inflate numbers: the inflation surfaces here, in the room, and it is unrecoverable.

Research with a purpose

Twenty minutes is enough: what the company sells, who its customers are, what the team you would join does, and anything they have published recently. You are not preparing for a quiz — you are looking for the two or three specifics that let you ask a real question and explain why you applied.

Practise out loud

Saying an answer aloud once is worth more than reading it five times. It exposes the point where you run out of structure. If you can, have someone ask you the questions; if not, record yourself and listen back once, however uncomfortable that is.

Questions worth asking them

"Do you have any questions for us?" is not a formality. It is often the part of the interview where candidates differentiate themselves, and asking nothing reads as disinterest.

Ask about the work itself and how the team operates. These are genuinely informative for you:

• What would the first three months in this role involve?
• What does the team find hardest right now?
• How is work prioritised — who decides what gets built next?
• Why is this role open? Is it growth or a replacement?
• How would you know, in six months, that this hire had gone well?
• What happened to the last person in this role?

Save compensation, leave and working arrangements for when an offer is in play or the recruiter raises them. Asking about salary in a first technical interview is not fatal, but it is not the strongest use of the slot.

Changing field

Career changes are common and they are slower than people expect. The main obstacle is not capability — it is that your resume presents evidence for a different job than the one you are asking for. Three things help.

Build a bridge before you jump. The strongest career change stories involve doing the new work before formally moving into it: taking on the analysis part of your current role, running a project outside your job description, freelancing, or completing something substantial in your own time. It converts "I want to move into X" into "I have been doing X".

Reframe your history rather than hiding it. A combination-format resume with a skills summary at the top does this well — the top of the page speaks to the new field, and the reader still gets a normal timeline. See choosing a format.

Expect a step sideways, or occasionally back. Moving field sometimes means a lower title or salary for a period. That is a legitimate trade to weigh, not a failure, and it is worth deciding in advance how much of a step you can afford.

The cover letter guide covers how to explain the change in writing, which is the piece the resume cannot do on its own.

Handling an offer

Get the offer in writing before you resign from anything. A verbal offer is not an offer, and roles do get withdrawn between the conversation and the paperwork.

Read for the things people discover later:

• Base salary, and what portion of total compensation is variable or bonus-dependent
• Notice period on both sides, and any probation terms
• Leave entitlement, and whether it includes public holidays
• Any bond, training clause or repayment condition — these are worth reading carefully
• Non-compete or restrictive terms, if your field uses them
• What is actually written about location and remote working, rather than what was said

On negotiation: asking is normal and rarely costs you an offer that was genuine. Ask once, with a researched range and a reason, and be prepared for "no, this is the budget" — which is a real answer, not an opening move. Base your number on comparable roles at your level in your city, not on your current salary, which is the anchor working against you.

If the answer on salary is firm, other things are sometimes movable: start date, leave, equipment, a review at six months. And if an employer reacts badly to a single polite negotiation, that is useful information about how they will handle disagreement later.

Keeping the search sustainable

A job search can run for months, and the failure mode is rarely a lack of effort — it is burning out in week three and then applying erratically for the rest of it.

• Set hours and stop. Two focused hours a day beats eight scattered ones, and leaves the rest of your life intact.
• Measure what you control. Applications sent and conversations had are within your control; responses are not. Judge your week on the former.
• Separate the tasks. Writing applications, researching companies, and preparing for interviews use different kinds of attention. Batching them is less draining than switching constantly.
• Do not read rejection as a verdict on you. Most rejections carry no information — the role was filled internally, the budget moved, someone had a closer match. Very few are about your worth.
• Tell someone how it is going. Searching in isolation makes every rejection larger than it is.

And keep your resume current while you are employed, not only when you need it. Achievements are far easier to describe accurately while you still remember the numbers — the vague filler on most resumes is written by people reconstructing three years from memory under deadline.

Where to go next

For the document itself, start with the resume writing guide and check it against the ATS resume guide. For line-level improvements, see resume tips. For applications that ask for a letter, the cover letter guide covers structure and openings. If you are applying to study rather than work, Statement of Purpose guidance covers that document.

Frequently asked questions