Step 4. Create a Linkedin Profile
Linkedin will be your new favourite social media platform. It is effectively your Facebook for your professional work. It will attract internal recruiters and headhunters. Having a well-presented and up-to-date Linkedin Profile will set you apart from others when being scouted. Interviewers also tend to browse through candidates’ Linkedin profiles to look for questions, discrepancies and other achievements that didn’t fit on your CV.
Employers usually post Job advertisements across multiple websites e.g. TotalJobs, Indeed and Linkedin is one of them. Application via Linkedin is considerably more straightforward as you could bypass most of the irrelevant steps e.g. persona Q&A, and cover letter, by applying with your profile directly. This will cut through all of the irrelevant steps e.g. persona Q&A, cover letter. You will also be able to reach out to more employers with considerably lesser effort. Some employers also have direct integration with Linkedin for prefilling part of their application forms.
If you have a particular company in mind, the optimal strategy would be to connect with engineers employed by that particular company and ask for an internal referral. The referer will usually be awarded a referral bonus, which makes it a win-win for both of you. This usually skips a few of the preliminary stages and companies usually favour referral as they prefer someone connected as opposed to leads generated in the wild.
Finally, you could also export your Linkedin profile in PDF format for use as a CV.
Go ahead and create one! It is a must in this digital age.
Step 4. Create a Linkedin Profile
Step 5. Update your CV
The structure, wordings and presentation of your CV will define who you are to all of your prospects. Someone you never met will decide if they want you or not solely on this piece of document. The interviewer is usually swarmed with dozen of these CVs and they have gotten really good at only picking out useful information and discarding the majority of the information they deem irrelevant. This is extremely important to bare in mind when updating your CV. You want to be succinct and to the point. Everything on you wrote must serve a purpose e.g. Completing the hardest certifications in the industry. Really think hard about how the interviewer will interpret everything you write as you will want to keep this as short as possible and definitely no more than 1 double-sided A4 page.
The structure and styling of a CV usually vary and depending on the channel of application, sometimes CVs are standardised by software or the head hunter before reaching the interviewer. This helps the interviewers to spot the difference between candidates and pick up the best out of the bunch.
Tips for writing your CV:
-
- Something I have learned from a recruiter is always write you brief introduction in a third person rather than first. The name will repeatedly appear /
Step 5. Create a portfolio
Step 6. Approach Recruiters
Step 7. Practice Interviews
Step 8. Dont walk this road alone (FDM)
On top of following all of the steps above the most effective way to get yourself into tech is via a tech agency. Most of them consist of a training and recruitment division. They are usually free of charge