Reentering the Workforce as a Developer
It’s a scary time when you’re on the outside trying to get back in. Reentering the workforce as a developer can definitely feel overwhelming. However, many have navigated these rough waters and there are things we can do to increase the chances of success.
I do have a bit of experience in this department. Personally, I spent way too much time doing the wrong thing before I finally stopped beating my head against a wall. I changed my job search strategy and it was key to ending my extended involuntary sabbatical.
I like to think of the approaches to job searching in terms of passive vs active. If you’re currently reentering the workforce as a developer it is much more critical to skew towards an active job search. What makes a job search “active?”
Active Job Search
The most critical element of an active search is having a public component. Meaning, some of what you’re doing is publicly available and easily verifiable. Some good examples of this are having an active Github account, contributing to open source, or volunteering.
In these examples you are demonstrating initiative and taking accountability. I suspect most hiring managers would greatly prefer to have more people like this on their teams.
Fortunately, it has never been easier to run an active job search as a developer. You don’t need anybody’s permission to show what you can do.
Imagine you were an HR Generalist and were trying to get back into the workforce. How would you publicly demonstrate what you can do? Aside from sparse volunteer opportunities, your options would be extremely limited.
Now in our case as a developer, you don’t need anybody’s permission. You can create a Github account and repository in minutes.
Then bounce over to https://start.spring.io/ and create a project in another minute. Commit and push and there you go! You’ve already started a public resume adjunct in less time than it takes to fill out a job application.
Connect
Connecting with 500 recruiters on LinkedIn might feel like you’re doing something productive. However, I’d recommend prioritizing deeper connections which I’ve covered here in more detail: Managing Career Risk as a Remote Developer.
Becoming active in your local tech community is far more likely to yield opportunities. If you live near any major metropolitan area there are bound to be many user groups. Just click on over to https://www.meetup.com/ and search for your area and tech and voila!
You don’t need to be an expert to show up and learn. The vast majority of developers don’t show up. By simply showing up you are increasing the surface area for opportunity to find you.
Why Does it Matter?
You may wonder why this stuff matters. It matters because we have to overcome the gap on your resume. And one way to accomplish this is by doing things that most developers don’t do.
The average corporate developer does not have an active Github account. He doesn’t contribute to open source, work on volunteer projects, or come to meetups. He does his work and goes home and does other things.
The average developer can get away with this because he has a job. If we’ve been out of the workforce for awhile, we can’t afford to appear average.
We must be mindful that a hiring manager will have to sell you to her boss for approval. The hiring manager needs a compelling story to tell her boss about why your resume gap doesn’t matter. Make this easy for her and your chances of a job offer improve dramatically.
What Most People Do
They do a passive job search. They scour the internet for job postings and apply through the company websites, never to be heard from again.
Then they spend a lot of time studying and running through tutorials. These feel an awful lot like work so they must be helpful, right? Not particularly. The main problem is that nobody knows how many hours you’ve poured into these activities.
Where on your resume are you going to put that you spent 100 hours reading about Reactive programming in the past two weeks? Or that you did 5 tutorials on implementing the Netflix microservices stack?
Getting a job takes more than answering tech trivia questions. Don’t fall into this trap! The trap of thinking that studying in and of itself will get you a job.
Knowing more certainly can’t hurt, but you’re wasting your time if you’re doing this instead of much more productive activities. Like creating public examples of your code or connecting at a meetup.
Studying is an accessory activity to a job search, not a primary one.
My Story
I left my corporate Java Developer job back in 2005 to join the Peace Corps. I completed my service in 2007 and continued mostly living abroad until early 2009 when I arrived back in Minnesota. The financial meltdown was in full swing and almost nobody was hiring.
So what did I do? If you look up at the “What Most People Do” section…that’s what I did. As you can guess, it didn’t go well for me.
I studied and studied and filled out countless job applications for what few jobs were available. I managed to get a couple scattered interviews that went alright, but not well enough to get a job offer.
Volunteer Project
After about 8 months of this I finally stopped banging my head against the wall and did something different. I started a volunteer project. I had been tinkering around with Perl for several months and decided to actually build something with it.
Over the next few months I built my volunteer project to help an organization back in Tonga, where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Maybe it was all a coincidence, but shortly after putting this on my resume I started getting responses to my job applications. Soon thereafter I had two job offers and a third was likely on the way.
I don’t think it was simply having a current volunteer project on my resume that made the whole difference. It likely helped get me interviews, but having a current project to talk about in the interview was hugely beneficial.
It’s very useful to be able to tell a story about how you initiated a project. Likewise, how you solved some interesting problems along the way. Moreover, I think hiring managers just like to see that you are doing something proactively.
In retrospect I wish I would have started my volunteer project far sooner than I did. Some lessons take a little pain in order to really stick though unfortunately. I hope you will all be much smarter than I was and avoid the unnecessary pain.
Summary
Reentering the workforce as a developer is always hard. Yet in some ways it’s never been easier.
Conducting an active job search requires doing work that is publicly available and verifiable. Popular ways of doing this are through Github, open source, and volunteer projects.
This is a permissionless way of showing your skill as a developer and your willingness to take initiative and accountability.
In contrast, conducting a passive job search is not smart and not recommended. Filling out countless job applications and studying only is an inferior strategy.
Seek out local tech user groups and meetups for opportunities to learn and connect.
In order to overcome a resume gap it’s important to stand out in other areas. These extras, Github/open source/volunteer projects, will help you get a job more quickly in the short run and in the long run can open up many more opportunities.