It’s Hard to Find a Job Right Now
I've been actively searching for a new role for 2 months. I've had 5 phone screens now and have been rejected from all of them. I don't think I can overstate how uncharacteristic of my experience this is. Across all my prior job searches, I have not received 5 rejections in total, let alone in 1 job search. But I have some thoughts on this.
I'm pretty bad at selling myself. Most people overstate their abilities in interviews. My wife tells me I do the opposite. If you asked my coworkers about me, they'd probably tell you I'm one of the best engineers they've ever worked with (not to toot my own horn). My manager would say I'm the most productive employee he's ever had. And I know deep down I'm very talented. I'm obsessively passionate about the field and honestly just find the work fun. I also work my ass off and it shows. But I'm unsure how to communicate anything along these lines in an interview, and I wonder if I come across as less capable because I lack bravado. Usually I just let my work speak for itself.
I have a learning disability. It defies standard characterization, but suffice to say, I have processing difficulties. For example, the other day I was doing a Leetcode problem to find a path through a grid. I've solved problems like this many times. The hardest part for me was writing my tests. Specifically, translating a path to a series of row/col tuples is unreasonably hard for me. In general, simple mental accounting is my achilles heel, but I usually do fine and compensate by taking more time. When I'm asked to move quickly, my performance degrades precipitously. Timed coding problems exacerbate these processing difficulties.
I also find that I don't keep up well with the pace of interview conversation. I interviewed at a well-known internet company the other day. I knew all the material cold but found myself saying things that are slightly technically incorrect. I found myself omitting important questions and details. At my job I slow down and get it right, but I wasn't finding myself doing that effectively the other day.
The same issue happens in behavioral interviews. I'll say things that just don't sound good, or I'll overshare. This make me seem inexperienced. I'll fail to convey nuance as I walk through previous situations. I'm not sure why, but I don't have this issue in the workplace, probably because I've built up a lot of trust as an expert.
I also have performance anxiety during interviews. In my most recent interview, I was given a leetcode-esque problem. It was a trivial recursive problem, and I completely blanked. I hacked out something that was fundamentally broken. After the interview, I solved the problem in a few minutes. This experience was beyond frustrating given the problem was simple.
I've completed 413 unique Leetcode problems to date. I wouldn't say I'm great at Leetcode, hence all the practice, but I'm hardly bad at it. The practice didn't show in the most recent interview, and I'm not sure more practice would have even helped given how capable I was of solving the problem.
This job search is different in that I'm looking for senior/staff positions or technical leadership roles. I've been the technical lead on my past 2 teams, and I'd like to continue it going forward. Part of me wonders if my problem is that the interviewing bar is just higher for these positions. And when I say something that makes me look a little bad, whereas previously it might have been disregarded, now it disqualifies me.
I haven't been job searching that long and the job market is terrible, but this search feels fundamentally different. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on my situation. I'm open to any advice and also job opportunities.