This post is the third in a series of posts about managing a programmer job hunt (including hunting for a job in another city). You might be interested in the other parts:

Part 1 (the initial research) Part 2 (the sanity check)

The job hunt itself

I used 2 sources for software development jobs leads, exclusively: Dice.com & LinkedIn. I used to just use Dice.com - but LinkedIn has become very important for technical recruiting in my experience.

Getting started on the job hunt itself was as simple as filling out my profile completely on both sites (both sites are completely free for job seekers).

When I was ready, I…

  1. Switched my state in my profile from Arizona to Georgia
  2. Set my profile/resume to searchable
  3. On LinkedIn, set my interests to include finding a new job
  4. Applied to a few places on both LinkedIn and Dice that were in Georgia
  5. Set my phone number to my Google voice number I got a new Atlanta based number for Google Voice for just $10

Recruiters started calling like crazy.

So crazy that I had to shut off the ‘call through’ feature of Google voice so that recruiters just left voicemail, so I could call them back when it was more convenient for me.

I knew I had to come up with a new process…

I thought I could do several phone screens a day (ha!). I quickly went nuts. To keep my sanity, I reset my goals to do 2 phone calls a day: 1 tech screen in the morning, 1 recruiter callback at lunch. This worked MUCH better.

Protip: Use tools like Google voice to your advantage.

It worked really well having recruiters call my Google Voice number (it was set to not call through to my cell or notify me at all) and then calling them back. I was getting an average of 10-15 calls a day from recruiters. For weeks. I had to get something in place to screen calls

Protip: Use a CRM tool.

I used Highrise by 37 signals. You can manage all 3 major touchpoints of an interview:

Protip: Get help if you can.

My wife helped me by going through the Google Voice voicemail backlog and entering information into Highrise and scheduling callbacks for me.

If she found their information in Highrise, she’d just add a note If she didn’t find their information in Highrise, she’d add a new contact for me.