The time to start looking for your next role is earlier than you think

I quit my job as a software developer in August in a very difficult job market with no concrete plans for employment lined up. While many peers thought I was taking a huge risk, I knew that I was actually in a good place to make a career move at the time, in spite of what the market was doing.

Is it because I am the world’s best developer? No. Is it because I have a groundbreaking idea for a new app that will make me millions? Definitely not.

To be perfectly honest, I have been feeling a lot of guilt around my own career mobility right now, when I have many connections who have been struggling to land interviews for weeks and months now. A friend recently reminded me that I’m not just ‘lucky’ to have landed my current work, but that I’ve actually spent hundreds of hours working towards my current job stability. Since announcing my new titles on LinkedIn, I have received more than a few DMs from people asking me for tips since they have been laid off and I am always worried about disappointing them, since my answer is this:

The best time to start looking for your next role is when you are employed (or still in school). The second best time is today.

I haven’t gone through a formal job application process since 2021, I have never responded to a job post on LinkedIn, and I’ve never landed a role through a recruiter. While my ‘strategy’ for building my professional network was not intentional, I do have some insights as to what has set me up for success, so let’s dive in:

1. Don’t be Transactional

I know this is easier said than done, but my best professional connections have come from genuine connection. Talking about your favourite movie or current nerd obsession at a meetup will leave a longer lasting impression than sharing your LinkedIn and sending a resume.

If you are fortunate enough to have a job right now, then now is the best time for you to start networking because you can make those connections without having an ask at the end of the conversation. Just with that stress gone, your connections will feel more organic and sincere and lead to stronger relationships in the long run.

If you are currently looking for work, don’t fret. You can still have meaningful conversations that may end up in employment, but you just have to police yourself a bit. Most good connections will not lead to a job in the immediate future, so be prepared to play the long game. And when you do meet someone with a potential role, keep the conversations going with others too. I’ve had job connections come out of the woodwork years after our initial conversations. If you want some tips for navigating the LinkedIn Hellscape to be less transactional, I recently wrote about that too.

Show up to events and bring your passion with you. If I go to a meetup and talk to 19 people who ask me for a job, and 1 person who geeks out on the latest news from AI, or node, or OOP, or whatever they love, there is 99% chance that that is the person that I remember, and will inevitably come up when I am in a place to share a role.

This leads me to the next point:

2. Share the wealth (when you have it)

One of the side benefits of always networking is that eventually, you will have people reaching out to you with contract and full-time work pretty consistently. If something doesn’t seem like a fit for me, I try to very specifically go through my contacts and use whatever clout I may have to recommend a candidate in my place. Since I am external to these companies, I generally only get 1 name to potentially throw in the running, so being that 1 in 20 person from a meetup is really important here.

When I first got into tech, many people were extremely generous with their time and resources. Now that I’m in a place to give resources, I really try my best to pay it forward. Unintentionally, I’ve cultivated a community that acts and thinks pretty thoughtfully about others (shameless plug here for CITI if you happen to be a Canadian in tech). Months and years after making the right introductions for a person here and there, the same people have come back to me with job and contract offers when I start looking once more.

Making connections matter for connections that exist outside of your own gain.

3. Always interview(ish)

I actually had no intention to quit my full-time role this summer and decided to make the move pretty suddenly. The week before I decided to quit, I had 3 first round interviews.

I want to start by saying there is a balance: it isn’t fair to waste anyone’s time if you have no intention to follow through with a role. Interviews are as draining and time consuming for a company as they are for an individual. If someone reaches out with an opportunity that I know isn’t suited for me, I will always default to trying to refer someone in my place. If it is a role that I find interesting, I let the person know ahead of time that ‘I am not actively looking for work right now, but if the right opportunity comes up I would seriously consider it’. Generally that leads to a more informal coffee chat or first round interview where I can decide if it is something that I would pursue seriously. I try to be pretty frank about my priorities like career goals, work/life balance, and total compensation so that I don’t find out in round 7 that the pay is significantly lower than what I expected.

There are other benefits to interviewing all the time. The industry is shifting pretty quickly these days, and making sure that you are up to date with procedures and practices will go a long way when the time comes to start seriously applying. You can also learn about tech trends and use that to guide your learning and personal projects toward more relevant technologies. It also works a bit like exposure therapy in that the more you interview, the less nervous you are for them. When you are interviewing without the stress of absolutely needing to nail it, you also generally interview a lot better because you are more relaxed and yourself.

To sum it up

Navigating the current tech scene to land a role is a lot harder today than it has been for a long time. A lot of roles today are found through more established connections and referrals, so it is to your benefit to start building them up today and now so that you aren’t scrambling if and when you need to find your next role.