| HN Mirror

Stooooop using job applications. You're limiting yourself to an extremely tiny pool of jobs when you go through the front-door of posted jobs. The vast majority of jobs are filled through networking, not cold applications.

My last 10 years of jobs have all been gotten through networking. I've still applied to jobs through postings, but I've mostly not gotten any replies from them. And definitely stop using recruiters. They don't have any access to jobs you can't find on your own. They're just trying to move candidates as fast as possible into companies that can't find employees on their own.

Get out into your community. Get to know people. Be friendly and helpful to them, and eventually they start asking you if you're looking for a job.

The primary problem is that you just don't know what work is out there. Networking is like getting dozens of people looking for jobs for you, and you don't even have to ask them to (and seriously, don't ask them to, it hurts your ability to build relationships with them).

That was the biggest change for me. I grew up in a podunk town and had to get out of it to find people I could stand to hang out with long enough to build useful relationships. I didn't realize at the time that that was what I was doing. And maybe if I understood the importance of finding "the good people", I could have worked harder back there to find the types of people I wanted to work with, and been fine even there. But it's definitely easier in a major metro center.

If you can't, go to conferences. Go to conferences in industries other than tech. Go to enough of them in one industry and you'll end up meeting the same people. It takes a little more time, but actually not a lot. Something about seeing the same people at conferences tends to open people up to each other.

And there are a lot of online conferences these days (for the obvious reason, but there were a lot before, too). Definitely use this time to get out and start meeting people. Hell, I live in DC and one of the communities I'm more active in is actually centered in Austin, TX, and I've never even been there. The particulars of why it happened aren't important, just that it's very much possible to get involved in different groups without actually having to travel.

You might even volunteer at a local foodbank or some other community service type thing. On the surface it will sound unrelated to what you want to do, but you're also meeting other volunteers. Some of whom might be people you want to work with. My first major freelancing gig came from an engineer at a sensor manufacturer that I met because we were volunteering at the same place to teach kids STEM skills.

Hell, take up marathon running. I have never done it, but my wife used to do it, and she always ran and bumped into the same people (if you'll excuse the pun). Anything that gets you into a position to reliably meet people. That's it.

It's hard when you're in a miserable job. All you can think about is the misery you're going to experience next week. And then a year goes by and you've had 52 miserable weeks without even realizing it. "The future always gets here". Literally do anything that breaks you out of that routine (short of shooting heroin, I guess) and you'll probably be a lot better off in a year.