🔗 An Engineering Leader’s Job Search Algorithm

💼 An Engineering Leader’s Job Search Algorithm

If you do nothing else from this guide, please:

1. Use employee referrals to get your application noticed.
2. Participate in practice interviews to level up your interviewing skills.
3. Always negotiate your offer.
4. Remember that job searching is hard, but your new team is excited to have you join–they just don’t know it yet!

Communicating Impact

For each job on your resume, you’ll want one or more bullet points that outline what action you took, what you achieved, the impact it had, and perhaps the tech that was used. The generic format is:

• {action verb} {deliverable/achievement} {impact (quantifiable if possible}} {tech used (if applicable)}

Key Elements for Job Search Microsite

• Have a professional profile picture
• Get a clear headline of what you are looking for
• Have a clear link to both your resume and LinkedIn
• Tell a story about your strengths and leadership philosophy
• Highlight the elements that matter most to you and that potential employers will value (your unique value proposition)
• Pull in recommendations from LinkedIn
• Showcase multimedia (talks, demos, screenshots, etc.) that would be buried in a resume or LinkedIn

Behavioral Interviews

If you are applying for an engineering leadership position, I recommend using a modified version of the popular STAR format¹ which I call STAR-F or F-STAR. The added F stands for the “Framework” that you use to solve the general situation. You’ll help uplevel yourself by showing that you have a framework that you can consistently apply based on your years of experience.