3 Months of Job Search Prep: Only What Actually Worked

I'm a backend developer with 4 years of experience. I prepared for 3 months, got offers from two companies, and changed jobs last month. Here are only the things that were definitely worth the time during preparation.

• Use 'numbers,' not 'contributions,' on your resume

Instead of 'performance improvement,' say 'response time 400ms → 120ms.' After changing just this one thing, my resume screening pass rate went up noticeably.

• For company research, only look at the last year's news

Tech blog, job posting keywords, recent service changes. Just looking at these three gives you a rough sense of why they're hiring for this position.

• For coding tests, types matter more than quantity

For me, mastering 20 problem types completely worked out better than doing 200 problems.

• Prepare a list of questions to ask the interviewer in advance

Questions like 'What's the biggest technical debt on the team right now?' apparently stick with interviewers even after the interview ends.

On the flip side, what didn't work was rushing to contribute to open source or suddenly starting a blog. Explaining the experience you already have well is much faster.

by 밤샘코더594