Googling myself I am sure most potential employers google the potential candidates before interviewing. Thus I wanted to make sure the google gave the image consistent with my resume. This helped:
- Having my linked-in profile upto date.
- Having a twitter feed which reflected the areas I am interested in. Following professionally relevant people. retweeting relevant tweets, generating new tweets
- Having a blog with original content, blogging about professionally relevant topics. I use blogspot
- Having a professional profileat google profiles, about.me etc which linking to all my web presence sites. This makes it easy for folks who what to learn more about me. I included this link in my resume
- I use facebook for personal use and made my facebook profile private.
- commenting/interacting on the relevant forums, blogs on the websites.
Networking I also joined and regularly attended the local user group meetings (Java, Html, Startup in my case). This helps in networking and also remaining uptodate with current topics, this also helps immensely in the interviews. The local user groups is also a great place to get job leads. I found www.meetup.com a great place to learn about groups relevant to me.
Mailing Lists Apart from usual job search sites, there are locally relevant mailing lists that helps in getting local job leads eg. In denver area Rocky Mountain Internet User group-RMIUG is great for finding tech jobs. boulder.me for start ups in boulder area.
Research Sites like Glassdoor.com are a great resource for researching companies, salaries, job titles etc. I found that doing a quick search there for the company/job title and salary check, helps me make my applications more potent & relevant and saves me time by weeding out misfits.
Resume tips A few things that I found useful in preparing my resume
- Adapting the resume for the job. This doesn’t mean misrepresenting. It just means highlighting skills that are relevant. Resumes are scanned by bots, and HR probably scans a huge load of resumes every day. Crafting a resume to be relevant helps them and makes it easier to get an interview call
- I found including an 4-5 line objective that summarizes and makes a strong case for the job helps a lot. This means its not canned, but customized for the job application
- Talking to the recruiter before submitting the resume gives a huge edge. Quite a few companies go through recruiters, HR from most big companies are also your friends. Most of them were open to talking to me, answering my questions and helped me a lot in preparing the resume to be relevant for the job.
- I included the link from main web presence site (about me). This site points to all the web presences (linked in, twitter, blogpost etc)
- I took away trivial tools, outdated tools, irrelevant skills from the resume. I feel this helps in cutting down the bloat and making resume sharp
- I Included soft skills, specially if the position demands its. Most senior level positions do
- I made it a point include a few lines describing my specific contribution to each project on the resume. In order to keep resume short, I excluded irrelevant projects.
Interview tips. Some things that I found useful during the interview
- researching the company, its web site etc, before the interview
- googing/linked in checking the folks that will be interviewing me, asking the recuriter for names etc ( most of them give me the name of the interviewers)
- Reading puzzles books eg : http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/0316919160, puzzles for programmers, programming interviews exposed
- I found having an list of questions to ask the interviews also helps. Having a relevant question is a great way to differentiate myself from the bunch
- Being relaxed, using interviewers first name, using “us” vs “you” etc helps
- Googling for interview questions usually asked at the interview by that specific company.
Hope this is helpful. what did I miss ? I am eagar to find out how you landed your job and your tips for the same !
