A Junior Backend Developer’s 6 Months of Trial and Error (40 Applications)
From the second half of last year to early this year, I applied to 40 companies, passed the document screening at 6, and got a final offer from 1. I learned more from the process than from the result, so I’m writing it down.
1. Your resume shouldn’t just list projects; it should be written in a problem-solution structure.
2. For coding tests, doing 2 problems a day for 3 months was the most efficient. Cramming was pointless.
3. Technical interviews keep asking “why.” Don’t just prepare “I’ve used it”; prepare why you used it.
4. About half the time, rejection emails just never arrive. Letting it go is better for your mental health.
What I regret most is spending the first two months only watching Inflearn courses. It would have been better to get even one project going quickly.
If any of you are preparing now, feel free to ask me anything. I’ll answer as much as I know.
8 answers
Agreed — the problem-solving structure in a resume is really important. I switched to STAR too, and my application pass rate went up a lot.
Two coding problems a day for three months... isn't that different for everyone? For me, batching them on weekends helped me focus better. I'm a bit curious about the basis for it.
I totally relate to rejection emails never showing up lol At first I kept refreshing my inbox, but after 3 weeks I just ended up giving up. Guess the answer is to let it go.
But if you applied to 40 places and passed document screening at 6, that’s a 15% pass rate—is that really something to brag about? For an entry-level backend developer these days, isn’t that just average?
I went through a similar phase, and the period when I was only watching Inflearn courses is a real trap. Whenever I finished a course, I made a point of building a toy project with that technology, and I got so much more out of it. The moment you watch three courses in a row, your brain melts...
Oh, I didn’t know that half the time rejection emails just don’t come.
They really do ask 'why' in interviews. Especially, 'So why didn't you use the other option?' That was the killer question. If you can't answer it, you just get eliminated instantly.
Well, you say you regret only taking lectures for the first two months, but if you'd jumped into a project without the fundamentals, that might have taken even longer. Everyone's different, so generalizing this is a bit...