How I Prepared to Change Jobs as a 3rd-Year Backend Developer Who Started as a New Grad
I recently succeeded in changing jobs, so I'm leaving this as a record of my preparation process. I hope it can be at least a small reference for people preparing like me.
First, the conclusion. It took 4 months total, I applied to 6 places, and got offers from 3. In the end, I moved with a 22% salary increase.
1. Starting Job Change Preparation (1 Month)
First, I rewrote my resume. But this was the first wall. Expressing what I did at work as "achievements" was really difficult. If I just wrote "developed an API," there was nothing distinctive about it. So I changed it to this: "Improved the N+1 problem in a query API that handled 200 requests per second, reducing response time from 400ms to 60ms." Once numbers were included, the response was definitely different.
2. CS + Coding Test Practice (2 Months)
This was just daily repetition. One hour of coding tests in the morning, one hour of CS in the evening. I organized mainly operating systems, networks, databases, and data structures. Most of the questions that actually came up in interviews also came from here.
3. Go Deep on One Company Project
What interviewers really ask about is "why did you do it that way?" I chose the payment module refactoring I did last year as my topic, and organized how I resolved concurrency issues and why I chose that method. This became my biggest weapon.
4. Interviews (1 Month)
For a month after applying, I almost only did interviews. I wrote down feedback each time and improved in the next interview. I treated the first two places as just practice.
The biggest thing I felt was that "people who can explain well how they did something get accepted more than people who just worked hard." It took me quite a long time too, but it eventually worked out, so everyone, stay strong!