Same

I was coming from a tech leadership role for a handful of years before sort of burning out and deciding to jump at a startup. Same industry that I know, cool new hook and angle, a "Head of Product" title and good investors. This company demanded 10-12 hours daily and would rush projects out and I'm just completely allergic to this way of "working". Because they're in pacific time and I'm in central, I was working past dinner time and not eating or spending time with my family. So, after 4 months of being here, something I've never done, I decided to look for something better already. I've always been "good" at getting new offers if I wanted them, via by networking or other means. I was sort of slapped to reality and humbled when I saw how awful this market actually is. The pain at work, coupled with two early phone screen rejections made me realize I had to change how I was doing this. The tech job market from 2017-2022 was long gone. Here are the tips that ultimately worked for me: 1. Reached out to my network and let them know my situation. I received 4 referrals and a handful of informational interviews with folks. I did this via group chats, messaging connections on LinkedIn, college alumni groups I'm a part of. 2. I used LinkedIn Premium. Why use this overpriced service? As soon as I have it and I mark myself as actively looking (oh and hide the damn Premium icon from your profile or your employer will find it odd that you have it) - I start getting tons of recruiters hitting me up. 2 of these led to an initial screen. 3. Adjusted my title appropriately. I de-leveled my title for certain Senior Product Manager roles. One question I kept getting was why go from leadership/management to a role like this. The real reason was because my current environment is toxic, my title is inflated there, and the money isn't great, and these "lower title" roles were paying on par or sometimes higher for significantly less responsibility. A buddy of mine who was a VP had to practice a similar thing in de-leveling his title when he was laid off. You can play around with your title a bit, but I DO NOT recommend leveling up your title when that isn't factual. It'll come out. 4. Apply daily to the latest openings, I'll show you how to best do this below. 5. Had a single thread with ChatGPT where it knew my resume, my work history, my specific projects, my answers to previous interview and job application questions. This made answering bespoke custom questions on ATSs very quick. 6. A benefit/luxury/advantage - I do have a variety of experience as a software engineer, product manager, tech leadership etc. I'm aware that this greatly expedited this whole process and if I was more junior I likely would have struggled significantly more. Best Places to Apply. I would open up my computer and had a browser with the following tabs open: 1. LinkedIn job search (filtered by last 1-3 days) 2. Indeed job search (filtered by last 1-3 days) 3. Hiring.Cafe AND "remote" This will list ALL job postings that match the description of those job titles I was looking for (and remote!) directly against the ATS without having to rely on crappy job aggregators. Now open up a tab and do the same thing but replace site:jobs.smartrecruiters.com with the following ATSs I could find: - site:jobs.lever.co - site:boards.greenhouse.io - site:ashbyhq.com Then on the google results, go to Tools and select last 24 hours. This means I would have 10'ish tabs open each day and do the search at 9am and later around 2-3pm and then apply right away. This search almost always takes you to a new posting, rather than those annoying ghost openings or jobs that get reposted for months. This also takes you directly to the employer's site. High-level stats: - Total Applications - 350+ - Referrals made on my behalf - 4 (only one led to a phone screen lol) - Duration - \~2 months - Companies scheduling phone screen - 9 (2 ghosted, 2 wanted very niche experience) - Companies moving to hiring manager round - 5 - Companies moving to second/third+ round - 5 - Offer - 1, I cancelled the remaining 4 live opportunities upon accepting offer The offer came from the place I least expected (Wellfound). An application for a hybrid role in NYC (I'm not in NYC, or close to it) led to the CEO directly reaching out to me. I took his call not thinking much of the opportunity since the description didn't have much to go off of. We both had a ton of fun talking and getting a feel for each other. The rest of the interviewing process with that team felt like talking to friends, it was an easy offer to accept. I could go way more in detail about how I prep for interviews, not sure how helpful that would be for people. I just wanted to share my process of applying, hoping it's of any use to anyone!