Back At One - A Chart-Topping Approach To Your Job Search
Tags: career, motivation
Published: 2022-11-29 11:56:01

I'm turning 40 this week, which means I'm old enough to remember _both_ versions of the hit song "Back At One". If you remember the song, it's probably the Brian McKnight version that was a huge R&B/pop hit in 2000, but did you know it was also a No. 1 on the country charts for Mark Wills in the same year?

I have a mostly-useless ability to remember song lyrics better than anyone else I know (except my sister) and while I'm not sure I could sing the whole song from memory now, I definitely remember the chorus:

> One, you're like a dream come true
Two, just wanna be with you
Three, girl, it's plain to see
That you're the only one for me
And four, repeat steps one through three
Five, make you fall in love with me
If ever I believe my work is done
Then I start back at one, yeah, eah-eah
> 

You might be wondering, "Why is Julia taking us on this trip down memory lane? Is this even a good song? What kind of song includes a method with recursion and conditionals? This is not romantic at all!" 

To the latter line of questioning, I would just say that _two_ charts can't be wrong. This song is a classic, and I won't hear otherwise. And anyway, relationships take work, so some recursive tenderness is probably a good thing! (Though I'd argue that 1 through 3 aren't really steps at all - if this song was written in a compiled language, those lines would definitely throw some "not a method" errors.)

As for "why", one explanation is that I'm writing this post at 2:30AM! 

Really, though, the point is that someone asked me if I would write a post explaining my approach to job hunting, and as I was thinking about it, it reminded me of this song. Then I needed an intro to the post, and here we are!

No more wasting time! Here it is:

## The Job Search Cycle
Sing it if you can:
 

> 
**One**, apply for some jobs and seek feedback.
**Two**, use that feedback to set learning/growth goals.
**Three**, make some progress on those goals. 
**Four**, don't repeat steps one through three yet! You need to document your progress and update your job search materials! 
**Five**, repeat steps one through four! You're going to have more success than before!
If ever you believe your work is done, then you start **back at one**, yeah eah-ah.>

## A Bit of Background on My 'Why' 

Perhaps you've heard the expression "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Something like that. Aside from being kinda ableist and inaccurate for discussions of mental health, I think it's a pretty solid description of a typical job search - it's practically the explicit strategy behind the 'numbers game' approach that so many people promote. But if you send our 499 resumes and get 499 rejections, why on earth would you expect the 500th one to be different? No wonder job hunting can be such a tax on people's mental health. 

If you want different results, you need to change the inputs. If you want to make progress in your tech career, you have to make routine investments in your growth. It's a cycle, not a race to a finish line. 

At the same time, it can be really daunting to try to figure out where to invest! If you spread yourself too thin, you won't get meaningful outcomes. That's why I think it makes sense to apply for some jobs now, wherever you're at - not because you'll necessarily get them, but because if you don't, you gain a great source of information to help you decide what you want to learn. It may be feedback from a hiring manager that helps you identify marketable skills, or it may be your own reflections on what kind of jobs really appeal to you. 

Treating your job search as a cycle turns it into an intrinsically valuable and motivating set of activities. Rather than having a single goal - a job - and potentially spending hundreds of hours of time on unsuccessful attempts at that goal, you reframe the process around a series of achievable goals with measurable outcomes, and keep iterating, growing both your skill set and your self-knowledge and confidence in your direction.

##An Instance of the JobSearchCycle Class:

When I was looking for my first job in tech, my main portfolio piece was a .NET MVC app for managing caregiver communications. One hiring manager I spoke to said he felt the framework was a little outdated and I wasn't ready following current best practices for dependency injection. I asked what would be a more compelling way to build the same application, and while he didn't really give me concrete ideas, he mentioned several things that were unfamiliar to me. 

I decided I needed to do some more research on the topics he mentioned, which lead to my learning a lot more about other frameworks and design patterns. Along the way, I learned enough about Mongo that I was able to write a paid article about it, and I decided to commit more energy to learning Django and Postgres and less to .NET and mySQL. I updated my LinkedIn, my resume, and my freelance profile to emphasize Python/Django, and almost immediately began getting more contacts, which netted me a few interviews and my first job as a developer. Now, I actually work in-house for the agency that assigned me that Mongo article!

I applied for jobs, got feedback, set actionable goals for my own learning, made progress on those goals, then made sure my next batch of job applications reflected the skills I had gained. I also was applying to jobs that were more focused on work I really wanted to be doing, which I knew because I had already started doing that work on my own.


So embrace that "Back At One" spirit! Use your job tracker spreadsheets if you want, or don't if they make you crazy and despondent! The point here is growth, always. Progress, not perfection. Iteration on concrete goals, not intangible, unachievable standards. Brian McKnight puts his pants on one leg at a time just like anyone else. But my dude is still making music, and it's clear he knows the secret to making gold records is iterating towards a better version of yourself, one step at a time.