Career path
Get hired
Make your skill visible before the interview starts.
Resume, LinkedIn, referrals, recruiter signal, negotiation and first-90-days systems.
Software engineers whose applications go quiet before their engineering work is evaluated.
Are you on this path?
Signs you are here
- You apply and hear very little back.
- Recruiters skim your profile and move on.
- Your resume reads like a job description, not evidence of impact.
- People who should know what you do, do not.
Work this path deliberately.
Use the books, resources and writing in this path to solve one career problem at a time.
- 1
Read the symptoms and confirm this is your current bottleneck.
- 2
Take the first move below to make the problem concrete.
- 3
Pick the book when you need the full system.
- 4
Return to the paths when the next career pressure changes.
Books for this path
Software engineers whose applications go quiet before their engineering work is evaluated. Resume, LinkedIn, referrals, recruiter signal, negotiation and first-90-days systems. Every book here is written from the hiring side, from 500+ technical interviews, and each book page shows what is inside and who it is for.
Free resources
Free checklists, cards and templates for the get hired path. Each one is short enough to use on the problem you have this week, and each works on its own, before or without a book.
Checklist
Developer career bottleneck checklist
A short diagnostic for software engineers. Find whether visibility, interviews, system design, scope or leadership is the real thing holding you back, then take the first action that fixes it.
Checklist
iOS resume signal checklist
A resume audit for making iOS seniority visible: scope, constraints, platform depth, ownership, metrics and credible impact bullets.
Checklist
Written offer decision checklist
A private checklist for setting the comparison, walk-away rule, evidence and written response before an offer conversation begins.
Writing for this path
Job search
How I tried to clean up my LinkedIn and doubled the problem
I posted a fake dream job to thin out the wrong connections. Requests went up, CVs arrived, and people tagged friends under the post explaining there was no job.
7 min read
Career strategy
Two pieces of writing decide your offer, and you write one of them
After the loop, interviewers write notes and meet to decide your level. After the offer, your one written reply sets what you accept. How to feed the first and write the second.
6 min read
Career growth
Resume bullets for senior iOS engineers
How to turn mobile engineering work into evidence of scope, judgement and impact without exaggerating.
4 min read
Career growth
You interviewed for the job. Did you interview the team?
You can pass every technical round and still learn too late that the job was wrong for you.
5 min read
Career growth
They said you passed. Then they downlevelled you.
The interview feedback can be positive and still fail to support the scope of the role you applied for.
5 min read
Career growth
Fifteen job applications in four minutes. What did you check?
The number of applications is easy to count. The decisions behind them are harder, and more useful.
5 min read
LinkedIn profile optimisation for software engineers
An optimised profile is one a recruiter can find and a hiring manager can place at the right level in under a minute. Most engineer profiles fail the second test, not the first.
9 min read
Software engineer LinkedIn headline examples
A headline has two jobs: come back in a recruiter's search and place you at the right level in one line. These examples are organised by level and platform, and each one says why it works.
7 min read
Visibility
Personal branding for software engineers
An engineer's brand is what a stranger can verify about your judgement before they talk to you. Most engineers have the work and none of the evidence.
4 min read
