Joining Grand Rounds has been an educational experience in so many ways. In the 16 months that I’ve been here, I’ve interviewed more than 200 candidates across all levels of user experience, product management, and engineering. In doing so, I’ve learned a lot about the hiring process that I want to share to help folks who are looking for a job.

As a result of all of these interviews and conversations with my colleagues about these interviews, I’m sharing my top lessons learned about looking for a new job.

1. Looking for a new job is frustrating, time-consuming, and difficult. Find or create a support system as you look for your new role. You need folks who can hear your frustrations, give you feedback, and help you keep your morale up as you’re trying to find the right next role for you.
2. Don’t treat the job description as a list of absolute requirements. Under the best of circumstances, it’s written to describe the most ideal candidate. There is no real human being who actually matches that entire list.  If you meet ~50% of the requirements and you think you might be interested in the company, apply for it. 
3. Get feedback on your resume and LinkedIn profile. If you’re in design or product management where portfolios are common, get feedback on those too. There are a lot of different resources for resume feedback, such as professional groups and mentoring circles. Many of the professional Slacks that I’m on have channels for resume and portfolio feedback. If you’re still in college (or boot camp) or a recent graduate, your college might offer resume and portfolio reviews through their career center or alumni association.
4. Have appropriate expectations for each part of the job searching process.  Cold applications to a job through LinkedIn or their careers website have the lowest rate of responses, whereas an internal referral often gets more attention.
5. If you can find find someone in your network who works for a company you’re interested in, check in with them to tell you more about the company and the culture. They might be able to give you an internal referral, too.
6. Practice your opener: what’s your short (~60 second) response to “so tell me about yourself”? Say it out loud. Preferably say it to an audience and get feedback about it, but at least say it out loud to yourself often enough that you feel comfortable saying it.  I usually start by writing it down so that I remember all the points I want to hit, then reading it out loud a few times. I edit it as I practice it. Then I give it to someone and get feedback. As I say it more, I learn how to riff on certain parts of it, depending on the context where I’m giving my opener.
7. Take some time after an interview to reflect on your performance.  What went well?  What didn’t go well?  If you feel like you answered a question particularly well, jot down some notes about it so that you can reproduce that great answer in the future.  If you feel like you didn’t answer a question very well, come up with a better answer for it, and then practice saying it out loud. 
8. … but keep yourself from spiralling into shame or frustration or worry or any of the other negative emotions associated with job hunting.  Don’t beat yourself up if you flub a question, or even flub a whole interview.  Interviewing is a skill.  You get better at skills through practice. Flubbing a single question in an interview doesn’t necessarily remove you from the running.  Flubbing a whole interview, as painful as it is, is probably a learning opportunity for you to determine what went awry and how you can prevent that from going awry in the future.
9. The job interview is a two-way street. You are evaluating the company and the team to see if you want to work there. Make sure that you gather information to help you determine whether you want to work at that company, with that team, and for that manager.
10. Finding a job is difficult in a normal situation. Finding a job during a worldwide recession is even harder because there is a much larger candidate pool. You have to find a way to keep your morale and self-esteem up through this process. Job hunting can test your resilience, so know some ways to help recharge yourself as you find the next great role for you.

Now that I’ve dusted off this blog, perhaps I can make some writing momentum and share more here!