Job Hunting in a Global Pandemic and Recession; What We Told Our Students

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I run a coding school in Tokyo. A little over a week ago, we graduated our 11th class of software engineers…into a global pandemic and impending recession. 😨😰😱

I wanted to share the advice I gave to our students, as undoubtedly many people are finding themselves with the not-so-great timing of job hunting during this COVID-19 mess.

This advice is specifically aimed at software engineers and developers looking for work, but to be honest, it is relevant for anyone looking for a job no matter where you are.

These are things that we recommend you try IN ADDITION to all the work you are doing now job hunting. These should NOT be a replacement for applying to jobs and interviewing. We still urge everyone to make applying to jobs and interviewing their highest priority.

The Current Situation

How long will this last? Maybe a month, if we’re lucky, but very likely this will last a few months.

So yes, your job hunt will be impacted:

• Hiring freezes
• Offers get rescinded
• Reduced head count, less hiring
• Layoffs
• Visas not being processed
• Travel restrictions
• Less face-to-face networking opportunities

I spoke with a few recruiters in Tokyo and the message was about the same across the board: Engineering jobs are down anywhere from 5% to 50%. Companies in the obvious sectors (travel, tourism, etc.) have halted. Fintech hiring have not shown many signs of weakness. The situation in Japan is changing by the day.

The lovely people at Candor have also compiled a live spreadsheet with people self-reporting the statuses of companies. The list is very US-centric, but has been tipping more global as it’s getting shared.

The Advice 🤔

I want you to focus on three things:

1. Double down on a routine and schedule 🗓
2. Build your brand 👷🏻‍♀️
3. Continue to network, remotely 👋

1. Double down on a routine and schedule 🗓

During Code Chrysalis, our students are in their seats before 9am and have a structured schedule throughout the day until 6pm. Once they graduate, it’s natural for them to want to spend the next week in their pajamas eating ice cream. However, for all of our graduates, we strongly encourage them to create a routine after they leave our program and maintain a Monday through Friday work schedule.

In fact, for our Immersive bootcamp graduates looking for work, our dedicated career coach has mandatory check-ins with them once a week and helps them stay on track.

With the coronavirus situation, it’s even more important that you do whatever it takes to find a routine that keeps you productive, mentally busy, and emotionally upbeat.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. I’ll use a cliched, but very appropriate statement.

Assume that we are in this for the long haul, so maintain a pace that you can commit. You don’t want to burn yourself out.

Here’s an example of a daily schedule:

08:00 am — Wake up, breakfast, get dressed, etc.
08:30 am — Check inbox & reply to emails from companies
09:00 am — Work on coding assignment from company that you’re interviewing at
12:30 pm — Lunch & take a walk
01:30 pm — Apply to 3–5 companies
02:30 pm — Find other job opportunities to apply to; put them in a spreadsheet or task manager
03:30 pm — Snack break & check email
04:00 pm — Study — algorithms, architectural design, etc.
07:00 pm — Dinner & free time
09:00 pm — Watch some tech talks; continue studying or applying to jobs
10:30 pm — Housework; start getting ready for bed
12:00 am — Lights out

Whatever your schedule looks like, find ways to stick to it and find people to help you stay on track. Use a schedule to help you cultivate a positive mindset.

Ideas:

• Find a friend who will commit to writing consistent blog posts. Check-in with them every week to make sure the two of you are on schedule.
• Have a standing remote date with a work-out buddy so that you have someone to work out with while at home.
• Do you have a friend also looking for work? Make a recurring session every week to do mock interviews with each other.
• Don’t forget to reward yourself on accomplishments

2. Build Your Brand 👷🏻‍♀️

Use the extra time to build your brand as a software engineer.

What does your brand look like? Is it easy to find what you can do? Do you have evidence beyond a degree of your skills and accomplishments? There are many ways to establish yourself as a software engineer now.

✍️ Blog, blog, blog

This is the best time to start or restart blogging. Write about what you’re doing, what you’re learning. I don’t think I need to go into detail about blogging, but I do want to address two bad habits that I see:

Bad Habit #1: Spending too much time setting up the blog

Just use Medium, or some other one-button blog. I often see people spending too much time simply creating the blog itself that they never get to writing. The focus of this is the content, not that you used the latest and greatest to build it.

Bad Habit #2: Thinking your blog post needs to be long or a particular way or about a particular topic

Short blog posts can be just as good and impactful as long blog posts, so don’t think you can’t publish a post because it is too short.

You also don’t always need to stick to code. You can write about your day, a video you watched, what you’re struggling on. Your blog post can just be a list of resources and why you like them. It can be a list of books that you want to read, or a list of tech topics you want to explore.

In short, don’t feel like your blog post needs to be any particular way. Just write and you’ll hit your stride.

🌍 Contribute to open-source projects

Just because you’re unemployed doesn’t mean you can’t contribute to the world or a community in a meaningful way.

When I tell people to contribute to open-source projects, they tend to immediately think about having to write features or fix bugs on famous frameworks or libraries and get intimidated.

Contributing code is certainly one way to contribute, but it’s definitely not the only way.

🌏 Do you speak another language fluently? How about translating documentation into that language, as one of our students discovered.

📝 Do you notice inconsistencies in the documentation? Make a pull request.

🐛 Did you come across a bug that no one’s reported? Make an issue.

There are also a myriad of projects that you can contribute to. A lot of the coronavirus trackers and resources, for instance, were started by regular techies who saw a need.

Many of them are open-source, including this covid19japan.com built by fellow Tokyo techie, Shane Reustle.

There are all kinds of projects out there that are looking for contributors. Here’s a website to get started if you are a first-time contributor: First Timers Only.

Then, blog about it.

👨‍🏫 Give remote workshops and talks

This one’s a little trickier to do, but it essentially requires you to put together a tech talk. Before you freak out, we actually have all of our Immersive Bootcamp students create and deliver a public tech talk as part of our course. So if they can, you can too.

Pick a topic, research, and put together a presentation on what you learned. Practice it on Zoom with friends.

Start reaching out to communities, meetups, etc. doing remote events to see if you can give the talk. You would be surprised by the amount of tech meet-ups that are always looking for speakers. You can also reach out to us! We are always looking for speakers.

Get a few of those down and work your way up to applying to remote conferences.

💄 Spend time beautify-ing your GitHub projects

I guarantee that everyone reading this has unfinished GitHub projects. That’s completely normal and in fact, I would be very skeptical of any software engineers that say otherwise.

However, just because they are unfinished doesn’t mean they can’t be organized and look nice.

Spend some time writing a good README explaining what the project is, how to set it up, challenges, and what your future plans are. Avoid going down the rabbit hole of restarting the first project you look at and getting sucked into refactoring the code. Focus on reflecting and writing documentation.

Then, turn it into a blog post.

💁🏻‍♀️ Create a personal website or focus on one of your unfinished projects

Not much to add here. Make sure you keep your README updated and make sure you do not end up in a rabbit hole of refactoring and not shipping 🚢. If it’s been a week and you’ve barely made any progress, you should probably back away and focus on something else.

Remember to blog about it — whether you’re successful or not.

3. Continue to Network, Remotely 👋

Make sure you are positioned to take advantage of the inevitable future uptick by keeping yourself on top of people’s minds and inboxes.

💻 Leverage social media to your benefit

Make an effort to reach out to people working at companies that you want to target, even if that company isn’t hiring. Get practice cold-emailing 2nd and 3rd degree connections and setting up meetings with those who respond to learn more about what they do and their company.

LinkedIn is the easiest way to do this — look up a company you’re interested in and cold-message some engineers who work there.

Do this to learn about positions, get to know a company, stay on top of people’s minds, and expand your network.

Use your social network to also see if any of your current connections have leads or advice. Post that you’re looking for a job — you’d be surprised at the response you may get.

👥 Get involved with the tech community online

Follow engineers on Twitter to see what they’re doing or talking about. Make an account on StackOverflow to help out others. Find people online interested in what you’re interested in and join in on the chatter.

There are fun hashtags like #100DaysOfCode and online tech challenges that you can participate in. Be more active in the community by supporting people and getting support back. Even though we are isolated, we can still be fully connected.

It’s been one week in the job hunt for our graduates and while they are getting fewer job leads than previous graduates, they are getting leads. There are still many opportunities out there.

It’s easy to feel helpless right now, so we hope that with the above, you can focus on things that you can control.

You can control what you will do with your time. You can control keeping your tech skills sharp. You can control how much effort you put into this job hunt. You can do this.

Stay safe. ✌🏻

Have any questions? Additional advice? Comments? Please email us at hello@codechrysalis.io. We would love to hear from you.

Code Chrysalis is a full-stack coding school located in the heart of Tokyo🗼. Our programs include a 12-week advanced software engineering bootcamp, and a beginner coding course in English and in Japanese.

See why we are an industry leader in tech education in Japan.

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