Soft Skills: Job Hunt Stress

This post targets currently employed developers who want to switch jobs.  

 Job hunts are stressful, and my goal for my job hunts is getting the job I want without getting too stressed.  My job hunting stresses come from: lack of confidence, being rushed, not having options, disappointing others and the pressure from my current job responsibilities. By expecting and mitigating each of these stressors I greatly reduce the stress during my job hunt.

Below are my stressors and mitigations:

• Lack of confidence
○ Study for technical interviews - Study Cracking the Coding Interview and system design questions. Expect to spend 4-8 hours a week for 4 to 8 weeks.  The longer it's been since you've interviewed last, the longer this will take.
○ Prepare for behavioral questions - Think through your previous projects for situations that demonstrate leadership, confidence, team building and be prepared to discuss them.
○ Do mock interviews - ask your friends and colleagues to interview you.  You should fail the first few mock interviews it's normal.
• Being rushed
○ Know your "must be done by" date -  don't get stressed over  your own fake deadlines.
• Lack of options for next jobs
○ Figure out what you want to accomplish - I use the Business model You approach to figuring it out.
○ Look around for who is hiring
○ Start and maintain a list of candidate jobs
○ Have a worst case scenario job
• Disappointing others
○ Be honest with yourself about what you can control and share.
○ Think about what you can do to reduce the impact to your  customers, partners,  subordinates and bosses
• Pressure from current job
○ Negotiate with your current boss for time to work on job hunt.
○ Recall your highest priority is the next job, but you have existing commitments.

Even when you know about the common stressors a job hunt is still an emotional roller coaster. Expect to have "ups" and "downs". Have a support network with whom you can vent, share disappointments and gloat.

Good luck on your next adventure and checkout HBR's Setting the record strait on switching jobs.

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