Looking for your 2nd job experience

[PawelKrzesinski]

Hi!
So I have just recently been hit by redundancy and I am on the job market again. Not sure if it matters but I am UK based. I’ve worked for a SaaS company, improving their software for 2 years (this was my first job), and managed to get promoted to mid-level only 12 months after I started. Stack was mainly Angular/Ionic/PrimeNG/NestJS + AWS and some other things.

I have been looking for a job for about 3 weeks and applied for 100+ jobs (Most on LinkedIn). The response is terrible. Had only 2 interviews and the other responses were very scarce, usually just an automated email informing me that the employer decided to not go further with the application. I am applying both for remote and hybrid jobs, angular and non-angular jobs (Angular seems to be not very popular atm - at least from what I could see in the job postings). The response from the recruiters was good though, got in touch with around 10 and they were very eager to help me and seemed to like me and agreed with what I was looking for. I have also made a very good-looking, modern and readable CV (I’ve asked a few people and they all liked it)

So my question is, is that normal? What were your experiences with looking for your second job? Is this market this competitive? Or am I just unlucky?

[ArielLeslie]

Anecdotally, when I or my friends/colleagues have been job hunting I would say that the application process tends to take more in the range of 3-6 months.

[DanCouper]

I’ll quote what I wrote in another thread:

@DanCouper

What does seem to be happening right now is a worldwide economic downturn (not technically a recession in most places afaik, but sure feels like it when combined with cost of living increases). Which has seemed to make companies a lot more picky when hiring (and quick to carve chunks out of the workforce in some cases). So, anecdotal, but the jobs market does seem to have significantly shrunk in the past year, but this seems tightly tied to economic confidence (and is probably temporary). Companies want experience that they can trust if they are going to spend lots of money and effort at a point in time that confidence is low.

I’m in the UK, and though I need to stress that the above is anecdotal, it basically matches the experience of most other developers I know that I’ve talked to about it recently.

Angular is fine, it’s much of a muchness. If you have experience in one framework you can pick up another, no problem. That’s shouldn’t be an issue. What you’ve written is just “junior developer with good experience across a very useful range of areas”, which sounds great.

Rewind 12 months with the experience you have now I think you would have got a job quickly (as in, matter of weeks) without too much hassle, but it’s a wee bit difficult at the minute. The cost of living increases are crazy. And stuff like [for example] energy price rises seem to have hammered any businesses. It’s not great; these things tend to be cyclical, but when things will pick back up . It’s just going to take longer - companies still want developers just as much, they’re just much more tentative about hiring at this moment in time.

[PawelKrzesinski]

@ArielLeslie

Anecdotally, when I or my friends/colleagues have been job hunting I would say that the application process tends to take more in the range of 3-6 months.

That’s a long time In my previous career I’ve been hired in most cases within like 2-3 weeks…

@DanCouper

I’m in the UK, and though I need to stress that the above is anecdotal, it basically matches the experience of most other developers I know that I’ve talked to about it recently.

Ok, so kind of relief - I thought I am doing something wrong!

@DanCouper

Angular is fine, it’s much of a muchness. If you have experience in one framework you can pick up another, no problem. That’s shouldn’t be an issue. What you’ve written is just “junior developer with good experience across a very useful range of areas”, which sounds great.

Hmm, why “junior developer” though? I’ve been promoted to mid-level (in my last company which would be “junior developer” to “developer” ). I know my experience was short, but hopefully, that promotion meant something? I thought of that as a big career achievement for someone who just got into the field… or do recruiters only look for numbers (as in years of experience)?

@DanCouper

Rewind 12 months with the experience you have now I think you would have got a job quickly (as in, matter of weeks) without too much hassle, but it’s a wee bit difficult at the minute. The cost of living increases are crazy. And stuff like [for example] energy price rises seem to have hammered any businesses. It’s not great; these things tend to be cyclical, but when things will pick back up . It’s just going to take longer - companies still want developers just as much, they’re just much more tentative about hiring at this moment in time.

Alright so it is just bad timing, that sucks, but at least it is not really that I am doing something wrong. Will keep my head up and keep applying. Thanks!

[ArielLeslie]

@PawelKrzesinski

Hmm, why “junior developer” though?

Specific titles are fairly arbitrary and don’t always transfer well (within some industries they tend toward more standardization, it’s all very iffy). I would guess that the roles you will be considered for will initially be based on years of experience and how the hiring company defines that. If you have specific role experience that differentiates you from other junior candidates (such as having led projects or mentored others) then I encourage you to highlight those in both your resume and your interviews. Every company does its job classification differently, so I encourage you to consider both “Junior” and “Mid-level” positions.

[DanCouper]

@PawelKrzesinski

Hmm, why “junior developer” though? I’ve been promoted to mid-level (in my last company which would be “junior developer” to “developer” ). I know my experience was short, but hopefully, that promotion meant something? I thought of that as a big career achievement for someone who just got into the field… or do recruiters only look for numbers (as in years of experience)?

Yeah, it’s arbitrary – what @ArielLeslie says, it’s context-sensitive and job titles are a bit . I don’t mean to knock your experience at all! Just two years is a short period of time.

Like, for example, where I work we don’t have named levels like junior/mid/etc, just developers + domain leads. But there are expectations which map to that I guess, so mid-level is classed as, amongst other things: being a point of reference for the team for specific areas, mentoring other team members, strong knowledge of at least three languages & ability to easily context shift between them, deep knowledge of web stack, ability to structure Dbs, infra/DevOps skills, ability to identify & fix security issues, extremely strong domain knowledge (ie can take information from business side & translate to dev & vice versa, and evaluate business impact), ability to work almost completely autonomously, ability to take technical parts of interviews, yadda yadda.

As I say, very much context sensitive

Edit:

@PawelKrzesinski

Alright so it is just bad timing, that sucks, but at least it is not really that I am doing something wrong. Will keep my head up and keep applying. Thanks!

It may be fine! As I said in first post, it’s anecdotal. But there just seem to be a. fewer jobs at startups/smaller companies, and b. larger companies being very much more discerning when hiring (looking for experience, holding off hiring if they don’t find who they want rather than just mass hiring for a load of positions). This time last year, as came out of Covid, recruitment seemed to go right up for a little while, and then it seems to have gone right down now

[Hideaki]

I want to say firstly that you’re doing the right thing by looking for a new job while on your current job. Like others mentioned, the job hunt does take months in my experience, not weeks. It seems to me that you are JS heavy in your work, so it might be a good time to learn some new things if you don’t see any progress with the current approach. I also started with front end stack with React, but learning lower level languages has really helped broaden my view of the entire field. It also helps if you can add that to your resume so you can apply to non front-end roles. I find that front-end roles tend to be ultra specific (ex. must know post-css, graphql, webpack, and vue) but fullstack roles allow a more general approach. It’s more to learn, but it’s not framework specific so you are able to apply to a larger pool of jobs if you know your data structures and can work both ends of the stack. good luck!

[PawelKrzesinski]

@Hideaki

I want to say firstly that you’re doing the right thing by looking for a new job while on your current job.

Yeah, I wish that was the case - I’ve been made redundant and am currently unemployed, unfortunately.

@Hideaki

It seems to me that you are JS heavy in your work, so it might be a good time to learn some new things if you don’t see any progress with the current approach. I also started with front end stack with React, but learning lower level languages has really helped broaden my view of the entire field. It also helps if you can add that to your resume so you can apply to non front-end roles.

It might have not come through from my post but, I wasn’t in the front-end role. I was doing both the back and front end. Wrote many APIs and microservices, I’ve been in a bit of AWS and Java. The main stacks were Ionic + Angular + Java(although I barely touched Java, I did understand most of it though) for the first project and Angular + PrimeNG + NestJS for the second project.

So I’ve got some decent experience under my belt I think, even if it wasn’t that long time Getting some things lined up at the moment so I might be able to secure something soon!