How I spent a year looking for my dream job in this IT of yours

Introduction

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, who clicked on this article with a hot headline! Let's get acquainted: my name is Artem Solovyov, and at the moment I am a Middle iOS developer in a large leasing company, where my team and I are engaged in the development and support of internal CRM systems.

Everyone who is somehow connected to the IT world – already working in some positions or just “getting their feet wet” – constantly asks themselves questions: “How can I get my dream offer?”, “How can I find my first job?”, “What happens behind the scenes of interviews and how does it all work?” In this pilot article, I will tell you about my personal experience of searching for a job as an iOS developer:

What difficulties I went through on this path;
What problems did you solve?
How I almost went crazy;
What new and important things did I understand?

Sit back and relax, bon appetit to everyone who is eating, and let's fly!

The Long Way. Startups. Useless Outsourcing Companies

I have not been involved in iOS development for very long, since about 2021, but during this time I have experienced a lot. There were ups and very painful falls, so I definitely have something to tell you.

Startups

Let's start with something simpler – startups. This is a completely separate, isolated world, where its own rules and laws apply, where there is a “king” and his “subordinates”. Here, you will not be served everything on a silver platter, you can forget about a clear business model, there can be no talk of any structured work. You will never understand what they want from you, but you, as a developer, must do everything in the shortest possible time, mega-fast, because the “king” already tomorrow needs to show the MVP of the application to investors or upload it to the store. The salary will be 60 percent lower than the market, the argument is that: “Well, now the project will take off, and we will definitely raise your salary. In the meantime, please sit on instant noodles and do not forget that tomorrow you have to hand in a task with a closed module of the gateway for payment through the bank.” What? Some bugs in the application? Do you want to write a normal structure for the project and not write shitty code? It doesn't matter, forget about it, you have to complete tasks in a maximum of a day, the project has to bring profit here and now!

In this interesting universe, I worked for a total of two years at two startups. And I can say that… it was interesting. Yes, that's right. Despite all the downsides that every startup has a priori: tight deadlines, working for food – this is an invaluable experience that can only be obtained here and nowhere else. Is this experience useful? In my opinion, it is certainly useful. It helps to look at the task from a different angle, expands your horizons. You are a direct cog that participates in building an entire possible business from scratch, you see the whole background – what bricks are laid in the foundation. This can definitely play an important role in the future and, in principle, develops you not only as a developer, but also as a potential founder of the company. So yes, it is very interesting!

The main useful points I have learned while working in startups:

To get your first experience in development, this is an indispensable stage in your life (I think this applies to those who are just starting to look for their first job);
You are not only a developer, you are also an analyst, a designer, an architect, and a tester;
Freedom. Yes, you are free to make any decisions regarding the project. Your opinion will always be heard. Here you can not be afraid to be creative;
This experience will definitely come in handy in the future.

Outsourcing companies. Fatal error?

After the “startup” stage, as I call it, I realized that I needed to grow further, build up my hard skills and establish myself as an iOS developer. So I started looking for a new job, but this time I was aiming for big companies where I could definitely grow. But then the nastiest rake was waiting for me, which hit me on the forehead at the speed of light – outsourcing. I will not speak for all such companies, and for the sake of anonymity I will not name the one where I worked. I will simply express my opinion on this matter, based on the experience I gained working in such a company.

Yes, like a little girl, I was taken in by the beautiful wrapper and promises that I read in the offer, and, of course, I accepted it, without even thinking about the consequences of such a decision. I was promised mountains of gold and an interesting project, but in the end I got several months of endless interviews in different companies through intermediaries, a lack of understanding of the current situation and daily promises in the style of: “If not today, then tomorrow. Everything will be fine!”

The business model of this outsourcing company was built as follows: you are a product that the company sells to other similar companies that are desperately in need of some IT product, putting an incredible markup on you and passing you off as a super-duper-mega Senior developer, although in fact you may be a junior. And you will receive some insignificant part of this scheme, which will be called a salary.

Some might think that it sounds pretty good, nothing criminal. I thought so too during my first month of work, but it was a big mistake. There were very few interviews, and those that were, were very terrible, after which you never received clear feedback and did not understand what you did wrong. Work on mistakes had to be done by watching the recordings of interviews, which were made either by you or by the intermediary who was always with you at interviews. Watching the recordings, you tried to understand what the customer's developer on the other side did not like. It was a game of “Battle of Psychics”. Plus to all this, until you “enter” the project, you receive only 40% of your salary, which you have to somehow live on.

Most of the time you sit without interviews, stupidly running through the same topics from interviews every single day. But there are advantages to this: personally, I have seriously pumped up my knowledge of the entire iOS platform and the Swift language in general, I even put together one big document in Notion, where I described in detail every topic that comes up in interviews (if anyone is interested, I can provide a link). But in such a rhythm of life, you seriously degrade as a developer, because you do not write code, you have no practice, you just cram theory.

Of the main points that I noticed while working in an outsourcing company, I can highlight the following:

You will clearly gain good theoretical experience that will help you in interviews;
The opportunity to make a lot of new connections with developers like you, with whom you can move forward.

Interviews. Mental issues. Burnout.

Is the resume the most important thing?

After a short period of working for an outsourcing company, I realized that this business was going somewhere wrong, and I needed to start looking for a job myself again. And everything all over again: resume, HH, endless responses… BUT! This time I approached this matter more responsibly. I understood that I had enough theoretical knowledge and understanding of how interviews are conducted. You need to look for problems that immediately catch the eye and lie on the surface. Therefore, I began to analyze how HR reviews resumes, what they pay attention to and how to write it correctly and in a structured way so that the recruiter does not filter out your resume among thousands of similar ones.

In my analysis, I was helped by numerous YouTube videos, articles on the Internet, and studying other resumes of more experienced people. From all this, I realized that a well-written and structured resume is the main guarantee of success in finding a job.

It is also important to write good cover letters for each vacancy/company individually. To do this, you need to carefully read the requirements in the vacancy and what the company expects from the candidate in general. Based on this, write a cover letter and attach your resume to it. This way, the recruiter will see that you are really interested in this vacancy, which will give you a small plus in his eyes. Interesting HR is one of the important stages in finding a job.

In one of the following articles I will definitely tell you how to write your resume correctly and look for a job on HH and other resources.

Interviews. Is it really that hard?

I had a lot of interviews before I found the company where I work now. About 60 interviews in 2-3 months of searching. As they say, “job searching is also work.” Each interview followed approximately the same scenario, the same standard topics were touched upon. The minimal differences were that somewhere, for example, they gave a test task before the interview, and somewhere this test task was replaced with live coding of tasks during the interview itself.

The most important thing to understand when going through a bunch of interviews is that the decision whether you passed or not depends not only on you, but on many other factors. The factors may be the following: the interviewer was in a bad mood; you simply weren’t liked for your communication style; the company is conducting an interview simply to assess the market; you didn’t fit the company’s culture fit. Therefore, you shouldn’t be upset when you receive another rejection for an interview, although you seemed to have answered everything perfectly. I had a lot of such cases, but unfortunately, I didn’t understand why this was happening, and because of this, my mental attitude suffered greatly. The impostor complex that we all love developed, and I simply started to burn out and thought that this was not my thing.

Here it is worthwhile to work on yourself, on your mental state. To do, so to speak, work on your mistakes. And perhaps it is worth taking a break from looking for a job. After all, it is not only your hard skills that matter, but also your important soft skills, and your mental state directly depends on them. That is why you need to come to interviews charged, tuned in and confident in yourself and your abilities. You should emanate charged energy!

In one of the following articles I will write about how to properly conduct interviews and what topics are covered there.

The main points to highlight from this block are:

A resume is the most important building block in your foundation when you are looking for a job. So it is important to write it well;
Don't lie about your experience or anything like that on your resume. These things always come to light during the interview process;
You need to please HR so that the next steps go smoothly;
Watch your mental state, it is very important;
Don't forget to prepare and prepare again. But remember that there are other factors that you cannot influence.

Summary

I shared my personal experience that I gained when I was looking for that very dream job. I tried to convey my path and show moments so that you understand that job search is not as easy as it seems, but not as difficult either. The main thing is to work on mistakes, analyze the situation and not let your emotional state go. Good interviews to everyone and good luck in your job search!

P.S.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. This is my first experience in writing, so I count on your feedback. Be sure to write what you liked and what you didn’t, I will read everything and take it into account!