How I got 5 Tech Job Offers in One Month

(AKA the most comprehensive personal guide to technical interviewing you’ll ever need)

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Part I: My Tech Interview Journey

In 2021, I decided to get a new Software Engineer job, which meant… the dreaded tech interview process. I had spent the last year voluntarily unemployed for personal reasons which meant I was not coding the way I used to and now I had to get back in the game!

For those of you who may not be familiar, interviews for Software Engineer positions are not one and done interviews. It’s a whole process that takes mental and physical endurance.

The Technical Interview Breakdown

1. Recruiter Call (30 mins)
2. Live Technical Coding Interview (1 hr) or Take Home Assignment (3+ hrs)
3. Onsite (3–4 hrs)
4. Coding (1 hr)
5. System Design (1 hr)
6. Behavioral (1 hr)
7. Q&A with Higher Ups (Managers, Head of Engineering)
8. Offer/Rejection

This process isn’t something you just jump into. You have to STUDY STUDY STUDY and prepare your butt off. I gave myself 2 months to study before I entered the job hunt, eyes wide and resume on the ready. And then I dived into the craziest one month of technical interviews I’ve ever been through.

I applied to 62 Backend Software Engineer jobs through LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Hired, AngelList, and BuiltInLA.

• 20 of those jobs rejected me based on my resume
• 19 never replied

Which left 23 companies that were interested in interviewing (whoo hoo!)

One company interviewed very quickly, with no technical portion to it at all (what?!) and gave me an offer within two weeks. It was the first job offer I received, which was way before I even started the first technical rounds of the majority of my applications. So the question was… do I take this first offer and finish my job search now? Or keep interviewing and let this offer go? (Because I wouldn’t be able to extend this job offer for a month to wait for potential future offers)

Well, I decided to bet on myself and let this job offer go to see if I could find a better match.

And so I scheduled technical coding interviews for the other companies.

Two companies rejected me after the live technical coding interview. Which made sense because I severely mismanaged my time and didn’t finish the code. BUT, in a way, this worked out for the better because it taught me how to manage my time better, which led to my success later on.

Eight companies moved me into the onsite phase. At this point, I started to tell the other companies that I would not continue with their interview process. I know that these interview blogs tell you to take any and all interviews, but I knew that going through 9 on sites (3–4 hrs each) would be a lot and I didn’t want to burn myself out.

I would be lying if this didn’t worry me, but I decided to prioritize quality over quantity. To devote myself to these 8 interviews and see where that took me.

And then my impatience overtook me and I did something I suggest you never do. I scheduled 4 onsite interviews on 4 consecutive days. I was only able to do this because I was interviewing virtually during COVID.

And let me tell you, I was exhausted! After every interview, I took a 3–4 hour nap afterwards to recover. In your interviews, I suggest spacing them out because you don’t want to appear exhausted during an interview, so make sure you get some R&R in-between!

And so completed my week of on-sites.

And then, it happened.

CUE THE TRUMPETS!

All 4 of my on sites gave me an offer! Yes! All my hard work paid off! And it was an emotional rollercoaster ride! When you start looking for a job after one year of voluntary, but still very real, unemployment, you have some self-doubt on what you can do and how much salary you can ask for.

But now I had 4 full offers in my hands!

I honestly liked all the companies I received offers from and even though there were more onsites to do with other awesome companies, I knew I would be happy to choose one of the 4 offers, so I withdrew my application for the remaining ones.

And now that you know my job hunt journey, it’s time to tell you HOW I did it.

The Timeline

Before you even THINK about interviewing you need to give yourself months in advance to study and prepare, or else you’re walking into a minefield and you WILL be tossed on your butt.

I studied for 2 months straight before applying for jobs and then I continued to study throughout the month I was interviewing. Keep in mind, I was unemployed so I had the time and energy to devote a lot of time to studying. If you’re currently working, I would give yourself even more upfront time.

I spent an average of 2–4 hrs a day studying for interviews. I think 4 hours is the max before it becomes inefficient to learn. Remember, you need rest and time away to give your brain time to absorb and process what you’re learning.

Tips for Studying:

• Month 1: Study with the intention of learning and beefing up your skills
• Month 2: Start testing yourself with time, giving yourself 30 min on easy levels and 45 on hard levels
• Month 3: Interview Practice with real people and time yourself, taking notes on what you need to improve and focusing on that for the next time

The Study Plan

There are 4 main things to study before interviewing. Technical. Resume. Behavioral. Branding. Let’s break them down.

Technical

Leetcode (Paid Version)

• Use this site for practicing your coding and algorithmic skills. There are plenty of sites that will give you practice coding problems, but Leetcode has the most quantity and comprehensive questions I know and the membership is cheap, so why not?
• Leetcode (Paid) have pre-curated list of commonly asked questions and categorizes, so you don’t have to build your own coding question list, you can just do the ones they give you.

Pramp

• There are so many smart, capable developers out there, whose greatest weakness is choking in the spotlight. I get it. It’s nerve wrecking to have someone judge you while you try to solve a hard coding problem in 45 minutes or less. That’s why it’s imperative to practice in this environment. That’s where Pramp comes in. It’s free to join and you get paired up with someone else who is practicing interviewing just like you and you each take turns asking questions that Pramp gives you. You must must must practice in front of an audience, so use Pramp!

Grokking the System Design Interview (or Youtube)

• Every onsite technical interview will inevitably ask you a Systems Design question and the best way to study this is to use this site. Youtube also has some great free System Design interview examples that you should study too.

And last but not least… Know the company

• System Design question will probably be about something they know so study system design of products similar to the company, for example if you are applying to Spotify you will probably be asked how you would system design uploading a song, or how to show the top 10 played songs in the last month, etc.
• The coding question, if it’s not a Leetcode question, would be related to the product of the company — like if you were applying for an e-commerce company they would probably ask you to categorize a list of items, or calculate correct item prices based on specific rules.
• Based on the job description you can tell what they value, someone who knows API’s, or someone who wants you to work with data pipelines, these will clue you in on what coding questions you will get. An API role will probably ask you to code an API, or ask you API related questions like “What is the difference between PUT and POST?”

Resume

• Choose 2 big projects you’ve done in your resume and know everything you can possibly remember about it — the architecture, the problems you faced working on it, how you would change it to make it better in the present
• Do not write down any technology you don’t really know on your resume — because they WILL ask about it

Behavioral

• Build a list of common behavioral questions tech companies ask — you can literally type this into google and find a list. The exact questions don’t matter, what’s important is knowing what your stories will be — write down all possible answers even if you’re repeating yourself. When you do this you will start seeing a pattern of what stories come up the most and will memorize them for answers to any behavioral question out there.
• Pick 2–3 main stories of projects or situations that have taught you the most

Market/Brand

• You know what people hate to do, but is almost necessary in life? MARKET THEMSELVES. Now, you don’t have to do this, but I believe this separates you from being just another code monkey in the interview process. It’s your BRAND. It’s how you decide you want to pitch yourself to these companies, something that will make them lean in and go: “Oh. I think I want this person in my company.” And luckily, it doesn’t have to be this big flashy thing, just a short 1-min pitch of yourself.
• For example, you can say if you’re a frontend, backend, or full stack engineer and what technologies or projects you have most experience in, or what you’re strengths are.
• Tip: If you have experience in a project or technology that you do not want to do in your future career, don’t market yourself as a person with that experience. For example, if you hate FrontEnd, but you’ve had experience in FrontEnd, DO NOT market yourself as a FrontEnd Engineer. Say you are Full Stack with an emphasis and interest in Backend

And after all this, you will have to go through the ACTUAL interviews. So here are my tips and tricks on that!

The Real Deal Interview

Timing

• You’re probably not going to do your best in the first or second interview so choose your ‘backup’ or ‘second’ choices as these first two interviews.

Momentum

• You should take interviews even if you don’t know if you want the company because it builds experience. You start to pick up on similar questions companies ask you. Think of every interview as a chance to level up your interview game for the one company down the line that you were meant to be in.

Whew! That was a lot of information wasn’t it? I know it can seem overwhelming sometimes, just remember to take it one piece at a time.

And remember, no one is perfect, you can’t predict what each interview will be like in detail, but if you follow this guide, the one key thing you will have is CONFIDENCE. And that confidence will be built on the fact that you prepared, you know what to expect, you can solve problems in 45 minutes and you know what you want. And that will change the game for you.

I hope this guide helped you in some way and may the odds be ever in your favor.