Nobody will forget the grueling experience that is their first job search, and we as bootcamp grads are some of the lucky ones. We’re fortunate enough to be in an industry that isn’t currently at saturation, and that has interviews that can be systematically studied for. That said, it’s still on average a multi-month endeavor of grinding every day. Let me tell you, the second job search is so much better than the first. App Academy loves talking about their hiring numbers straight out of their programs (and they should), but I want this post to excite App Academy students about looking for a job as a software engineer with experience. I promise, it’s way more fun. To start, let’s take a look at some numbers.

Here are the stats for my first job search out of App Academy

• Length: 3 months full time
• Applications: 481
• Tech Screens: 15 (3%)
• Onsites: 5 (1%)
• Offers: 2 (0.04%)

Here are the stats for my second job search after working at Hulu for 2 years

• Length: 3 months part time
• Applications: 45
• Tech Screens: 18 (40%)
• Onsites: 8 (18%)
• Offers: 5 (11%)

Just by the numbers, the difference between my first and second job search is drastic. I applied to 90% fewer jobs, and received more tech screens, more onsites, and more offers.

Here are even more things that those numbers don’t show: Of the 15 tech screens I got during my first job search out of App Academy, I was only excited about three of them. Of the onsites I got, I was excited about two of them, and of the two offers I received, only one of them was even remotely realistic (my first offer was 75k a year to be the only engineer at a two person startup in SF and work in Elixir and Phoenix, neither of which I know). For comparison, 90% of my tech screens the second time around were with companies I really wanted to work at, and I would have been happy to accept four of the five offers I eventually received. Each of those offers bumped my base salary or total compensation by at least 20k, one of them came with a 50k sign-on bonus, and two of them were for roles in Python, the language I most wanted to work in. My point is, there aren’t just more options, they’re better options, too.

How to prepare

Now, for my second job search, my plan was to approach it in the same fashion as the first. I studied for three months, and then applied to smaller companies before working my way towards my real goals. I started with those I’d be less excited about and worked up to the ones I wanted most so that, with any luck, I’d have offers in hand when I applied to my top choices. But there were two main differences that emerged quickly, and completely changed my approach.

The first was that the studying was nowhere near as difficult as the first time. This time, algorithms and data structures work was review. And, as much as it can feel like the opposite, you actually know a lot more coming out of your first job than you think. I had an irrational fear when I started my second job search that I’d be un-hirable. After all, I’d forgotten a good amount of the JavaScript that I’d learned at App Academy, and it’d been almost two years since I’d used React, or even messed with CSS. All of this stuff comes back faster than you’d think and you definitely don’t need to study the same breadth of material for your second job search because you won’t need to apply to as many different types of jobs. You can tailor your studying to the role you want. Personally, while I did some small review for my front-end skills, I focused mainly on the back-end because that’s where I wanted to stay.

Don’t over prepare

The other big difference was that my hit rate changed dramatically between my first and second search. Enough companies responded to my first batch of online applications that I had to stop sending them for a little while so that I could actually study for and complete the interviews that came out of them. My initial fears that my interview skills had atrophied, and that I hadn’t learned anything during my two years at Hulu were dispelled when my first tech screen resulted in an onsite and then an offer on the flight home. So, for the remainder of the process I kept my applications to places I’d actually really like to work at. One reason for the improved success rate was that the bar for interviews had been lowered substantially. When I was leaving App Academy and entering my first job search, it felt like I had to be absolutely perfect or I’d fail. Often I wouldn’t even know what went wrong. During my second job search, however, I had multiple instances where I almost finished a question and got through, and even an instance where a company gave me a do-over after not receiving an offer from an onsite. The bottom line here is that companies are much more willing to accept imperfect results because you already have some experience.

Be selective about where to apply

As far as where to apply, one of the big frustrations with the first job search is the feeling that you have to take what you can get. Especially when you’re coming out of a bootcamp and required to fill 40 applications a week, you’re going to run out of companies that you’ve heard of pretty damn quick. By the end of it, you’re putting in lots of applications on sites like AngelList to startups with 1-10 employees. The problem with applications like those is that they tend to take up a lot of time for not a lot of payoff. Many of them will have take-home coding challenges that will require you to spend a day or more to learn a new language or framework, and even if you get lucky and can use whatever language you like, the odds are the challenge will still take upwards of four hours. Instead, a standard phone screen for an established company will take an hour or less. The worst is when you actually go through that four hour take-home problem and don’t get an onsite. Ouch. During my second job search, I only filled out about five of these types of applications before getting an offer, and so it didn’t really feel necessary to pad my application numbers to hit a quota. One of the beauties of the second job search is that it’s on your own time. This is helpful because time is a more valuable resource when you already have a job, and can’t afford to be doing take-home challenges and phone screens with places you aren’t serious about.

Leverage your network

Another impactful difference between my first and second job search was the power of referrals. Don’t get me wrong, I had a few during my first job search, but most of them didn’t really do anything the first time. I applied through referrals to about ten companies during my first job search, and didn’t even get a call from nine of them. I don’t blame my friends for that either, they could have written the best referrals in the world, but at most of these companies it wouldn’t really matter; they have plenty of applicants with experience AND referrals. But now you’re one of those applicants. For my second job search I had the same referrals from before, and could add my extended network from working at Hulu for two years. People I had worked with had left and given contact info, and all the people I worked with also had networks at their old companies that they were happy to extend to me. Only two referrals during my second job search didn’t lead to at least a tech screen, and one was by choice (the position they wanted me for didn’t interest me).

Weigh your options

That last sentence segues nicely into my final point: this time, you’ve got options. I didn’t really want to work in ads when I joined the Hulu Ad Platform team. I loved the people that I’d met during the interview, and they gave me a great offer, but honestly I accepted that offer because I thought it was the best that I was going to get. By the end of my second job search I was turning down onsites from Spotify and Amazon because they didn’t want me for roles that I wanted. I’ll admit,  during my second job search I had a bit of a secondary goal to avoid working in ad tech again. This made it a little scary when a lot of the replies I’d get from companies were along the lines of to be honest