And I want to welcome everyone for joining today's session.Before I join into the explaining the perspective of how to get hired, I just want to give my, technical journey. So my technical journey, personally, how it started is I had many failure moments. I was invisible lot of time. But the advice that I got was not working harder, but being smarter, being visible, and structuring your thinking, tuning yourself. So all these are what helped me with my fifteen years of tech experience. So today, I want to present the same thing that has helped me and how to use those skills to get hired in today's competitive market.

So right now, I know the market is unlike anything that we have seen in the last decade. Even very highly qualified, brilliant graduates are struggling to get callbacks. And I want to say, this is not your fault. This is how the market is right now. But to beat that market, we need to tune ourselves, strategize ourselves, and be the one outlier. So another thing, if there is one role that opens up, recruiters are receiving thousands plus of applications for that one single role. So sometimes most of the regimes don't even reach the human eye. So the struggle is not the reflection of who you are, but it is how you show yourself. Let's dive deep into it. So here, I want to tell you some analogy here. So why I'm calling out hard work alone is not enough.

So let's take an example. So say some you want to drive to some place which is, like, two hours away, and you just get into your car and start driving. You don't you think you know the direction in general, but you don't turn on your GPS. You just start driving. And you think, okay. Taking it right here makes sense, and you take it. And then you start driving. You enter the freeway. You just keep driving, but you don't know if you will reach your destination or not or at what time. But you end up wasting a lot of time making wrong turns and losing hopes. But now imagine the same trip, but this time, you turn on your GPS.

Suddenly, you know the path. You know where how and when you will reach your destination, and the path becomes predictable. You still driving the same car, same journey, same road, but right now you're having the clarity. So I want to put the same example here. Say, I have when I was mentoring, I have two mentees. So one of the mentees, they open all the job applications, and they were trying to hit apply to whatever job application they were seeing. So here, going back to the first example, there is no tracking. So they were just being random. Whatever comes up, they were just applying to all the job applications. So now let's shift the gear. So now and what with the first approach, you feel exhausted. You don't know.

You've been applying for so long, and you're still not receiving any calls. You don't know what is happening. So the first approach, it feels exhausted because there is no structure, there is no format, and nothing. So it's random. So another mentee treated the job search like a project. It had defined schedule. It has defined tracking. So it's like turning on the GPS. So whatever job applications you see, maintain an Excel sheet or somewhere. There should be some tracking. List down all of it. Like, whatever job applications each day, track them. To which role you're applying, track them. Did you do a follow-up, track them, or make a note? Okay. I have applied it so and so and add a reminder that I need to follow-up. And track your resume versions also. For example, you're trying for different roles.

So you're applying for a data analyst, data science, or machine learning. So it might have different versions of your resumes. So alter your resumes based on the role that you're applying to. So when you apply, track the version of the resume that you're applying for each of the job posting. So in this way, you have a structure to what job positions you're applying, which role is it, which version of the resume it is. Or if you're getting callbacks, you know, okay. I have applied this version of the resume, and this is what makes sense. So you know what is working and what is not working with this way. So in this way, you don't feel hopeless, but, you know, you have some traction.

And along with it, there is two. One is, like, applying for jobs, getting a callback, and other one is in parallel. You need to keep preparing for the interviews. So every day, I would say, set one to two hours aside for applying for jobs and one to two hours for preparing for interviews. So I want to take an example. Once, I was interviewing a candidate at Amazon. He was coming from a big tech company. He had a very good experience, but he completely bombed out of the interview. Why? Because he didn't prepare. His interview skills were stale. So I want to say interview is not about how intelligence you are, but how do you frame? How do you articulate? All of this, it requires practice. So I tell my mentees, every day, as I recall before, set a time aside.

Treat it as, like, you're actually working in a company or, actually, it is your project. So set a time aside every day, morning or evening. So prepare for the interview. I mean, you can start recording yourself so that way it tells you where you're rumbling or where you are, feeling nervous. So repeat it. Take some technical it could be any technical story. It could be any behavioral questions that you're preparing for. Keep recording. Keep practicing. So interview is nothing just like a muscle. The more you train it, the more it becomes good. And once you have set a practice aside and let's see, how do you alter your resume? So one thing is, these days, like, most of the resumes, they go to this ATS, like, applicant tracking systems that scans the regimes.

So it should be visible, And it should show what impact like, if you are putting your projects or it could be your masters or internship, anything, it should show have an impact based story. And when a re interviewer or when, the recruiter is going through your resume, they should be able to understand what your resume is trying to say. So they need to know who you are, what you're applying for. Are you suitable for the current role? So and try maintaining a simple format, no graphics, no flashy templates. So here, let's see an example. So in your resume, you can vividly put, hey. I worked on data pipelines. Instead, if you change it to, I built seven ETL pipelines ingesting one twenty millions of records per day, and it has improved the SLA from 82% to 97%.

Here, you're showing the impact you created. So numbers speak more, louder. So you need to go through, understand all your projects, and understand each of it. Like, what is the impact that your project has created, and what is the metric? Try to alter it. And the next thing is, like, don't put lot of paragraphs in your resume. So your profile should be the headline of your career. Make it targeted. Make it specific to the role that you're applying. Make it you. It should convey who you are and what you did. So the summary should tell your story. And, also, keep it clean. No technical jargons. No wait trades. Be concrete. And, again, here, I want to show one other example. Here, I'm calling out the technologies in the first example.

So I'm writing, I'm a full stack engineer with experience in React, Python, and cloud technologies, build large scale system used by many teams and cross collaborated with other teams. You're saying it high level, but it's not showing the actual impact that you're trying to make. Here, I rephrased it. So I'm a full stack developer building products that scale from the user experience down to the distributed systems behind them. I specialize in event driven microservices and AWS cloud native data flows. I have delivered React front ends and Python back end services that process high level volumes data, like 50 k events per minute. And it powers real time analytics and support AI driven features, and this is used by 100 plus internal teams in HR.

So the first different the difference between the first one and second one. And the second one, again, I'm showing the scale that I worked at and the impact my project has caused. So here, it when a recruiter is looking, it I mean, when they're glancing, they show who it was a large scale project, and this was used by many teams. So that's how try you try to refresh your resume. And after doing all this that we just walked through, still sometimes it may not work. So, again, restart. Reiterate. Think of this, as I said, like a product or a project. If something is not working, you just don't leave it. Iterate and work on it. Test versions and keep tracking which version of the resume is getting you more calls. And And now let's see, jump into the neck next aspect, which is technical storytelling.

So the first things that we have talked about is you preparing your resume, applying for job searches, and the next part comes is say you get a call from a recruiter. How should you prepare? So in interviews, there is two aspect. One is a technical interviews, and the other one is behavioral interviews. So in technical interviews, most of the interviews, what they look at you is so when you they are looking that are you thinking out loud? Can they see what your reasoning behind the problem that was given to you? They are not just looking for the result. They are looking if this candidate is good enough. Can they reason properly? Can they collaborate with others? And can they solve if I give him any ambiguous problem, can they solve ambiguity? How do they approach the problem?

Whether they would enjoy solving any problem with you in the room. So they also test how you communicate, how you press I mean, handle pressure. It's just not pure intelligence. So all this comes with practice. So you have to keep practicing. So take some example, like, how do you build an Uber or anything? And try to articulate how would you tell it to the interviewer. How do you think about approaching the problem? And the next is, system design. So system design also, I would say, you have to think of it as a conversation between you and the interviewer and not a solo performance. It's not like, hey. I have by hearted this 10 different architectures, and now let's pick and just go with it. So system design also should be like a collaboration. Think of two engineers sketching ideas together.

So, I mean, you have to show how you're analyzing, how you're approaching the design, how you're handling failures, how, like, how do you trade offs between this architecture one or architecture two. So you have to talk all this out loud and make it this as a conversation between you and the interviewer. So strong candidates, they explore, they ask questions, and they ask feedback, and they also listen to the interviewer hence, not just like working. Okay. I have this idea. Let me just go blah. Done. And the next thing I want to call for any company, any big tech company, They have this leadership principles, what they call as behavioral interview. So rather it's Meta, Amazon, Apple, every company has their own set of leadership skills. So I think all this you could find in Google or any searches.

So to I mean, for the interview to understand how can this candidate, deal ownership, Or how can they handle conflict? Or how can they handle ambiguity? So to test all this, the interviewers ask certain type of questions. How do you answer these questions is what I want to talk about. So let's use a star framework. I want to talk briefly about this. So what is star? So s stands for situation. So they want to see when you're explaining something, they want to see what was the problem, why did it matter. And the task shows responsibility. What was your role in that project? What how were you accountable for it? And next thing is action. It reveals your behavior. How did you think? How did you collaborate? How did you communicate? And what trade offs you had to make? And the last one is result, showing the impact.

You explain all this, and the end, whatever you have did, you have to show some impact, what the project had made an impact. So they look for what changed because of what you did. What did you learn? How did you handle differently? So here, I want to take an other example. So one of the example, mostly, they try to understand if there was a conflict that you're working in, how would you try to resolve it? So I have put one example. Let me just read it out. So the interviewer may ask, tell me about a time you had a conflict with cross teams. Now they try to understand, hey. There was some conflict. Were you able to resolve it? If so, what actions did you take? And based on that, what was the final result? So I want to tell a story about a project that I was working.

So in it was an analytical programs project. So I'm saying, yes, I'm calling it as situation. So the situation was, it was HR analytics programs I let. Our engineers teams had major conflict with the data science group over which data should should be treated as a source of truth. So task. Now what is that I'm doing? As a product owner, instead of arguing over options, I collected lineage evidence for both datasets and facilitated a triage meeting with both the teams. And action. So this tells okay. I know this is what it is, but what is the action that I am taking? I worked with everyone through how each dataset was generated, which transformations I need to apply, what is the correct source of truth.

I had these meetings with both the teams, and we quickly aligned. And what was the result out of it? We jointly created a unified data contract, validated checks, prevented future disagreement. Not only did we deliver the forecast model, but we collaborated between the teams, which dramatically improved the afterwards. So you need to understand when you write your resume, when you put all your projects, try to craft story for each of the project with this. When you explain it to the interviewer, try to understand. Okay. This project that I did, what was the situation? And task, what was your action? And what was the final result? Try to take, like if you have three projects, try to make stories for all of them.

And this is also another example the where they want to understand if you had a conflict. This is more commonly asked. So if you had a conflict with your manager, how would you go about it? Here also, I've just put an example. This there was a conflict. Manager was suggesting something, but you were in disagreement with it. So the approach when you explain it to the interviewer, you had to understand. So I do you can't just simply disagree with your manager. Right? So you say, hey. This is what I found. This is what if we follow your path, this is what it leads to. You have to show the evidence. So and, also, you have to come up with an action as well. So instead of this, I propose this, and this is our route. This is what we take.

And at the end, you can show the result as well. So every story that you craft, craft it in this way so that it makes sense. So and you don't go around about it. Sometimes in interviews, the candidates, they just start with something, and they just go in circles. And they go into more technical details when they ask they missed, okay, what was asked before, what is that question that I'm answering, they become very confused. So instead, if you follow the STAR format, understanding your project and crafting stories, it will help you articulate it better, and you don't get confused. You don't go in circles. And sometimes when you do that, the worst thing that can happen is the interviewer, they get disengaged, and they don't want to listen to your story anymore.

So crafting your stories properly, showing the impact that you made, showing the result, showing the outcome that what makes the behavioral interview noted. And I don't wanna go more depth about it. And this is also I mean, for me, when I ask a candidate or when I start with my interviews, I just start with this question. Hey. Tell me about your projects, or walk me about a project from end to end. So this is your best bet. When you pick a project, pick a project. Talk about a project where you are involved, Not just to the project that was big or you worked with other teams, but the project that you were involved personally and where you made a real impact. So start with that project. So even with that project, when you are explaining, try to put everything in this format. What was the situation?

Why you had to do that project? And if that project was assigned to you, what were the task? Note those task. And action again. Okay. I was given to develop so and so pipeline, or I was given to develop a dashboard. So what is that? So are you designed or you collaborated with others? The design was ambiguous. You don't know who were the end users, so try to put everything. And that's how it I mean, interviewer understands, hey. This project, what this candidate did had a real impact. So here, at the end, I just wanna call. If you see this example here, at the end of it, the project that I worked, I'm showing the end result. I'm saying, hey. I created this pipeline, and it increased 99% reliability. And it has enabled real time insights for 300 plus internal users, reduce incident tickets by 40%.

So at the end, after you explain what was the project, everything, you have to tell the impact that project has created. And next and the most important thing, again, I want to call out, when crafting your star stories, choose the right project. You don't just pick the biggest project. Pick the project that best highlight your strength. Interviewers don't want to hear something your team did. They want to hear something about you changed, you improved, or you have led something. Big project something where stakes were high, like something you were working with customers, and you had to make the business decisions, or it had involved some cost, or it was working with some tight deadlines. And you should have a real ownership in this project. So if the project something like without you, the project would have fallen off. That would be a good project.

And a project where there was ambiguity. Something like requirements were not clear, data was messy, teams were all in disagreement, and there was no architecture, and you had to figure out the how. And something also, the project, it should have a technical depth. So sometimes when I ask someone, okay. Explain me the most technically challenging project that you worked. They just say one line. So, okay, the system was performing bad. I had to change the up stream, then it started working. So it doesn't tell what exactly the candidate did. Right? So try to answer by choosing your technical depth as also. So what was the trade off? What were the constraints? What was the architectural decisions? If there was any bottlenecks, if was there any scaling challenges? Was the performance bad? Or the debugging was difficult?

So try to think of the projects where you know that you can show this metrics. And also the project that I'm calling, it should have an impact at the end. Like, I was calling, hey. I changed the latency from four hours to three minutes. Or earlier, it was processing 2,000,000 records per one hour. Now it can do just in twenty five minutes. Or earlier, the product that I created just had 100 users. Now with all these changes I made, now it has the user base has increased to 100 k. So at the end, it you should be able to show the real impact. So when crafting your star stories, pick the projects and think of all these points. And when you're telling your story, tell it with confidence. So after you do all this and still you need to be noticeable and you need to get the calls.

So one way is you can use LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, I want to call out three points. So one is you need to have profile clarity and positioning. So craft a headline that instantly communicates your niche and strength, and highlight your domain expertise, your tech stacks, and your impact areas. When someone looks at your LinkedIn, it should work like a billboard. It should instantly convey who you are and what is your niche skill. If a recruiter can't understand who you are in few seconds, they just move on. So position your profile that you wanted. Use language. Use some keywords that clearly place you in the role that you want. For example, when I say keywords, you say, for example, you are applying for a data engineering role.

So you have to call, mention something about data pipelines, mention something about ETL, something about event driven systems. Or if it's something in AI or governance, you can put some keywords like responsible AI or working on data lineage. So these keywords match recruiter searches. So when they are searching for some certain job, looking for candidates, these keywords that you put on your LinkedIn help with the recruiter searches. And the last one, visibility through consistent activity. So start with sharing out some short stories or short any technical learnings or try to post some insights weekly. And you can also comment to another any of the technology post or any of the channels that you're following. Just go comment on the post so that it increases your visibility. And, also, you can just go put your what do you say? Like, any showcase you're thinking. Hey.

This is what I'm thinking. This is was my design. Something. Anything. Just go put any of your thinking as well. It doesn't necessarily have to be pure technical. It could be anything. It could be any topic that you read today in the news or anything. Just go and say, hey. I just read it. This is what you think. I will try creating polls and understand what other people think. So it increases the engagement. So this way, you increase your digital footprint. So posting at least once a week is also good. And I said posting on relevant topics, share small insights. And other as I said, in today's market is tough. To get noticed, you have to be the outlier. When I say outlier, I want to call it I mean, say some analogy. Say you're in a big giant tech conference where there are thousands of people.

Everyone is wearing some orange badge, and suddenly you notice a group of people who are wearing pink badges. Suddenly, your eyes go on them. Not because they are special, just because they have a different badge from you. So it gets noticeable. So this is what I mean to be an outlier. You have to be an outlier in today's job market. So to be an outlier, you don't need to have 20 or 30 accomplishments. You don't need to be have the perfect profile. Try to find something that stands out, something recruiter or hiring manager can recognize, something which is unusual. Say something, right now hundreds of people can, call it, hey. I have experience in React. I'm a full stack developer. But many few peoples put skills like, hey. I have experience in so and so cloud technology.

I have experience in building this permission model, or I have experience in event driven systems, which I worked with high compliance teams or high risk or event driven or something like data contracts, lineage, AI governance framework, some niche skill or something that is unusual from others.

Try to find it. So, again, being an outlier is not being better. It's about being intentionally different, a way that recruiters can spot you immediately. And one other thing, networking. If you need to get callbacks, if you want hiring managers, recruiters, or your colleagues, or personally, if you know anyone who is working in tech startups or anything, you need to do your networking. Again, when I say networking, networking is not just about building your con contacts, increasing your contacts. So one strong relationship can open doors that 100 applications might not have. So most people think networking is just, hey. I ping I make 100 connections on LinkedIn. I just keep pinging everyone saying, hey. Hi. Or just send a cold message asking, hey. If there is a job opening, can you refer me? So it just not that.

Mostly, what networking means is, as I said, you need to make the connection authentically. So try posting. Try joining. Our UmenTech network is an amazing platform. Try commenting. Try to find another channels where you can increase your presence, where other people can see you, where other people know what you're doing, what skills you have. Right? So LinkedIn, I would say, makes networking easier than ever. Engaging consistently, builds visibility, trust without even sending a cold message. So the way that you are engaging and some recruiter or hiring manager sees what you do, they would directly reach you. And other one more thing. Many people I have seen is they add me and they just say, hey. Can you refer me? But after that, done. They don't even follow-up. They don't even want to know what has happened. Was your application was deferred?

So if you have made connections or if you have asked somebody to refer you, try following up with them. So there is one message that I want to convey here is stop thinking networking as asking people to do something for you. Start thinking networking as letting people see who you are and what you think. So that's how opportunities will come to you. So when I say AI as a superpower, I don't mean it would replace developer. I want to say use that to boost, I mean, your learnings. So right now, these days, there are plenty of tools that are available which can help you design, build, ship projects much faster than ever before. Take some projects. Take our earlier, I was calling out as the outlier. Right? Pick one skill that you always wanted to grow in there. Pick one skill.

So, use AI to help you design, to learn. If you are stuck, use it for debugging. Let it help you. So this way, you learn faster. You can ship the products for real time. And this way, it increases and it builds your confidence also. So earlier, maybe you might be spending three months on learning a new skill. With AI, you don't have to spend, like, coding from scratching. Instead, understand what it is, pick some projects, and use it to help you I mean, build faster and shift faster so that you have a real working product. So the final takeaways, if we reconcile whatever we just went through, you need to have a structure. Treat your job searching as a project, not or a part time job, not like random searches.

When you are very emotional, you just go apply and then you leave it. Have a structure. Make time on it every day. And try thinking how you want to position your profile and alter. Change your resume. Keep multiple revisions based on the role that you're applying, and identify all the projects where you have real impact. Create star stories. Go to all these big tech companies. You would find what leadership principles each company focuses on and create the star aspect of the stories for each of those leadership principles. Take mock interviews. You don't it doesn't necessarily have to be paid mock interviews. You might have many connections or friends, peers, colleagues who are working in big tech companies. Right? Ask them, hey. I'm preparing on my interview. Can you help me take mock interviews? So the mock interviews help you.

So when they do your mock interviews, you get the reconstructive feedback. You know how you need to improve. So once you prepare, try to get mock interviews. If you don't find mock interviews, as I said, record yourself. Keep talking. Observe it. So in an interview, you have to show that you know what you're talking. So you don't you should not show that you're nervous. So recording yourself also helps out to understand which aspects of, in the story building or anything where you have to improve. Another the last thing, treat when you're answering any technical or system design questions, treat the interviewer is looking how you are thinking of cloud. Can you solve ambiguity? Can you, work collaboratively? And be discoverable on LinkedIn. Be that outlier.

And as I said, use AI tools to increase, learn other skills, or build products that you always wanted to do or ship it. And the last, consistency creates momentum, and momentum creates offers.