Advice for Job-Seekers, from Udacity Grads Who’ve Been There, and Done it!

Udacity alumni share strategies for a successful job search.

Searching for a job is a difficult process. It can sap your spirits, but also offer revelatory moments of learning. You need to have perseverance and resilience, but while you might occasionally feel overwhelmed, you’ll also gain valuable insights along the way that will inform your career advancement.

Here are some of our recent graduates with advice for making your job search a success. All of them have been job-seekers themselves — stressing over resumes and worried about interviews — and all of them have ultimately landed rewarding roles.

Mastering the interview process is a learnable skill

Let’s start with Seth Watkins. He’s a graduate of the Android Developer Nanodegree program, and Seth urges jobseekers to practice for interviews, because it’s something you CAN improve on:

“Accept that the job hunt and interview process is really a skill you must develop. It’s wonderful to be a great developer, but it won’t get you a job on its own. It can be difficult to properly articulate your experience and skill set during the application and interview process, and I failed horribly many times before I understood what worked. So you need to view each experience as practice, and learn from every attempt.”

This is an excellent way to view the job hunting process. It is far more constructive to treat each application as an opportunity to learn, rather than as a life-or-death moment.

Take every interview opportunity

Dustin Summers, also a graduate of the Android Developer Nanodegree program, agrees with Seth about what you can learn from the process of interviewing:

“Really prepare for every interview. I would suggest doing interviews with companies that you may not even have particular interest in, just so you get practice and experience in how the recruitment process flows.”

It might sound unconventional, but any kind of interview practice is beneficial. Given that one of the best ways to overcome your nervousness around interviews is talking through your experience and skills with a real person, why not do so with someone who might actually offer your a job?

Reach out to the hiring manager

Sometimes the best advice on how to get hired can also be the simplest. Troy Buss, a graduate of the Front-End Web Developer Nanodegree program, found that making a concerted effort to directly reach out to the hiring manager was the best way to land the interview:

“The one thing I did differently when I landed my current job was reaching out to the person doing the recruiting for the company. I sent the HR manager a LinkedIn message explaining why and how I thought I would be a good fit for the role.”

The lesson here? Don’t fire off applications on autopilot. Target your applications by researching the company you’re applying to, find the hiring manager, and do everything you can to explain why you’re the perfect candidate for the role.

Build your professional brand

Speaking of research, Avi Aryan, a graduate of no less than three of our programs — Front-End Web Developer, Android Developer, and Full Stack Developer — believes it’s really important to build your professional brand to make sure recruiters don’t have to search far to discover examples of your work:

“Work hard to create an online presence for yourself. Contribute to open source projects, upload your best work to GitHub, and write some blogs.”

This a really great lesson. When you’re busy studying, your professional profile might not feel like a top priority. But it should!

This is exactly what Christian Myrvold, another Android Developer Nanodegree program graduate, focused on to find his new role. Not only did a portfolio of projects help him get interviews, it also gave him lots to talk about when he got in the interview room:

“Udacity helped me be confident in my app-making skills, and made me believe I could work in the industry full-time, not just as a hobby. After I graduated, I already had a portfolio of two apps released on the Google Play Store, which really helped to show potential employees what I could do. It gave me something to talk about and discuss, which helped a lot!”

Thanks to all these amazing graduates for sharing their advice! What’s YOUR best tip for successfully applying for a dream role?