Land More Interviews By De-Risking Yourself

Hiring Managers aren’t just looking for the best available candidate.

They’re looking for the best available candidate with the least amount of risk.

They sound the same, sometimes they are the same candidate, but often times they’re not.

Most people don’t realize how much a bad hire really costs a company.

It’s been estimated a bad hire costs about 30% of the new hire’s salary 🤯

From the money actually paid via salary & benefits, to recruiting time, to ramp up time, to how much resources are spent covering this open role, you can’t blame hiring managers when they’re being picky.

Just imagine if they have two bad hires in a row, now their superiors are going to start to think “does he/she have what it takes to be a leader in this org?”.

So, how do exactly do we “de-risk” ourselves? Let’s dive in 👇

1: Provide More Data Points

The importance of this can be 10x’d the more junior the role/candidate.

The more data points you provide to the recruiter & hiring manager, the more boxes they check off, and the more confident they can feel selecting your profile.

Let’s pretend we have two candidates to chose from. One candidate just has their resume. The other candidate has a resume, linkedin, github, portfilio, recommendations/endorsements/etc.

It’s pretty easy to pick which one.

2: What types of Data Points?

Well-crafted resume that includes:

• LinkedIn URL, which will include everything fully optimized and filled in (headline, about me, work experience, certs, etc) along with endorsements at the bottom.

• GitHub (fully updated, make sure the link actually works)

• Portfolio (no, your GitHub is NOT your Portfolio. This is for the end-result of your work)

• Recommendations/Endorsements on a separate document

3: Sharpen Up Those Comm Skills

If you’re consistently getting interviews, but not advancing to the next round or landing offers, chances are it’s what you’re saying.

At this very moment, we’re in an employer’s market, and companies believe they have the right to be pickier since there are more *qualified* candidates in their que than ever before.

But the good thing is this: if you’re being selected for interviews, that’s a good thing! Your resume/linkedin are on point. People are interested in your background.

Now it’s time to tighten up your responses, prepare harder for interviews, and respond with more confidence.

4: Prepare Harder For Interviews

Related to the point above, they selected you to interview. They’re interested and want to talk to you. Now it’s up to you to execute.

It’s never been easy to get a job in tech, but it’s never been harder than it is today.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you’re actually are at your job. Interviewing is a completely different skill than doing the job. It’s a broken process, but one we’re going to have to live with.

So you’re going to have to put in more practice.

Use Chat GPT to help come up with questions to practice your answers.

Practice with a friend or in front of a mirror and record yourself. Go back, watch the tape, and then see what you can improve.

For technical rounds, go on leet code or similar tools to prepare for those coding challenges.

5: Networking, Leveraging Intros & Referrals

In my opinion, nothing beats a referral.

It’s a cheat code to your job search. Someone is willing to put their reputation on the line to go to their manager, or another manager at their company to say “I think you should hire this person”.

Talk about immediately slapping some credibility on your application?

So go through your network, your previous colleagues and managers, and ask them if they can refer you to a job at their company. Ask them if they can refer you to someone else they know in their network. Ask them for any help at all.

From there, get started on building out your network. You can start small by commenting/replying on posts from LinkedIn & Twitter. From there, slide into DMs and build a relationship. And don’t forget to attend local meetups.