How I looked for a job as a lead in 2024

I updated my resume, added my experience at the last company and sent it to my HR friend (I could have written about the importance of networking here, but some other time).

They told me what to fix, how to describe it better, and after a couple of iterations I received a pretty cool resume. In addition, I asked how much I could ask for, to which I heard: “Actually, I don't know now, but a year ago you could easily ask for 350k”, add inflation and get 400k+.

Opened the resume and moved on to the next step.

We respond to vacancies

In fact, everything is simple here: open xx and respond to relevant vacancies. TO ALL that you can reach. Don't be shy about responding to all suitable vacancies – it's free. As for me, it's better to go through more interviews than to try to get into something specific. You can never guess which company may have ideal conditions. And personally, I'm always interested in hearing what people do and what projects they do.

HR screenings

For those who don't know, this is the first stage of assessing you as a specialist. Here the recruiter has already done an initial review of your resume, put it together with the vacancy he has, realized that you could potentially be suitable and decided to start communicating with you. Usually they write in a messenger, less often by email, arrange a call and clarify details that are easier to discuss right away, so as not to waste time on further actions. As an example, this is a question about how much money you want and whether you are going to work from the Russian Federation (relevant for information security, some banks and the public sector).

Then you call, they ask you to tell about your experience, sometimes they ask some absolutely idiotic questions that the technical specialist passed on, they ask what you are looking for, clarify the conditions and tell you about the project. Ideally, before calling, look up on the Internet what kind of company it is and what they do.

If everything is OK, the call ends with HR showing the resume to the technical specialist or future manager and promising to return with time slots. Sometimes they ask about your slots in advance.

In essence, this stage is an assessment of your communication skills. You are tested to see if you can speak, if you communicate adequately, etc. But for the candidate, this is also a great way to understand whether this position is right for him or not.

Technical interviews

The topic is so vast that you can get stuck for a long time. In general, after the previous stage, you agreed on the interview, you were told or not told what the format would be, what topics to repeat for preparation (usually in large-scale) and organizational issues such as the camera.

Finally, the hour X has arrived, you join the meeting and chat a little.

You will be asked about your experience again, but more specifically, they will ask questions on the topic (backs on backs, fronts on fronts), they can give tasks of varying levels of craziness or, God forbid, code something online. In the end, you will be given time for your questions and sent to wait for feedback.

If you are lucky and they don't ignore you, in a couple of days the HR will come to you and tell you about your successes and failures. Here either the offer is discussed, or (again, if you are lucky) a list of topics where you failed and which should be improved is given. In the first case, we move on to the next point, otherwise we improve our knowledge.

Select an offer

I don't know about others, but I feel a lot of anxiety before I get my first offer.

I repeated this step until I had my first good offer and a little bit more after that, so that I had something to choose from.

I went through about 15-20 technical interviews, received 2 offers for lead positions and decided to stop at the first offer. It's all about money and good conditions, and I really liked the project.

Summary

Every good story should have an ending and a moral. The ending is clear, I found a job and closed my resume, which I am very happy about. What is the moral? I think it is that the process of finding a job as a lead is generally not much different from finding a job as a developer. Yes, there may be other questions. Yes, somewhere they ask you to go through more stages (hello big tech again). But overall, there are no striking differences or difficulties.

It is worth being persistent in your search, not giving up and perceiving this process not as something negative, but as a way to test and improve your skills.

Thank you for reading to the end and see you in future posts! Write how you feel about job searching and share your stories in the comments!