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Job hunting is hard!

I have over 10 years experience in software engineering. I do mostly full stack, so I can say I'm a jack of all trades and a language agnostic. I'd say I'm a good software engineer and will be able to tackle any task I've been assigned to. Having said that, my confidence in finding a new role is at an all time low.

I've been job hunting for 3-4 months now and so far I've only had 1 interview and it was unsuccessful. Now have been invited to a first round interview for another company (first of many rounds). It's going to involve many technical challenges like coding, algorithms and data structure and system designs.

In general I've had hardly any interviews (about 6-7 in total in my whole career). Due to my lack of interview experience, I've been getting anxiety especially now that the job market is tougher than it has ever been.

Firstly, how do you guys prepare, if at all? I feel like many of these interviews require you to be good at interviews, almost like an exam. If these questions were presented to me when I first came out of college, I would've had a better chance.

Secondly, how do you take rejections? I didn't know how painful it was to get rejected, regardless of how much I wanted the role.

I've been fortunate enough to still have my current job, but because of that I don't really have much time, nor the mental energy to study for interviews.

Apologies I'm advanced for poor grammar, I'm writing this on the train.

Comments
  • 2
    Hang in there. It will come.
  • 2
    I always make sure to practice those "standard" Interview questions, like: "Tell me about yourself?", "What are your strengths/weakness?", " What projects you worked on"...

    Also make sure to dress nicely/appropriate.
  • 1
    A large portion of jobs are given via nepotism. You may want to work on networking as well. Reach out to old colleagues, and go to meet ups
  • 1
    You can prepare standard question answers that have been asked in interviews for your job designation. ChatGPT can also help you find the good questions for the interview.

    About rejections, don't take it seriously. Consider it as part of learning and you can even ask them at which area you should improve.
    Sometimes they just don't have the budget to hire you or they may hire another person with your skill set but with a lower budget.
    So, there are many reasons for the rejections. Don't let it overwhelm you.
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