I'm developer and I can't get a new job. The lasting #OpenToWork state

The Covid pandemic in 2020 had caused many developers to lose their jobs in the blink of an eye. Probably it happened to you or a friend in the past. You go to LinkedIn and change your availability to #OpenToWork, and it has been like that for more than two months or more.

As long months pass, you feel the career is not for you, or even worse, you don’t know what’s going on.

And this is a bad thing.

🤔 Why?

Reviewing different developer profiles on LinkedIn who are looking for a job, I have seen that the problem of job reinsertion for most of the candidates has, for the most part, three leading causes:

Outdatedness, lack of soft skills and lack of self-confidence.

❓How is this even possible?

Whether you are Frontend, Backend, Devops / Sysadmin or Mobile Developer, focusing on a single area for an extended period of time or not having gone beyond is a problem that has probably been dragging on since before 2020.

The people I have seen who have always been getting some work, are the ones who have always been in something different from what they have done in their day-to-day life.

And I can understand that there is probably a family to support, time-consuming matters or just having fun out of work. It’s 100% valid. The problem with this approach is, that whatever we decide to do, there are a lot of things that we are leaving for another day and if we are not persistent, we will never be able to finish or reach milestones about what we need to do.

Here, I will explain in detail how each cause could affect your progress:

Outdatedness

Every day technology is becoming obsolete. A new library is created, a new framework appears in the market. We can have arguments against new stuff as we become older, or we can become too comfortable working in the same stuff, and that’s fine. You can become an expert in a specific technology, but you can try to increase the complexity of what you are doing every time. So, you have two paths to follow, and if you have enough time, you can take both: Go with a new technology or, in the stack that you know, become a real expert.

Lack of soft skills

As long you progress in your career, obviously you can keep working among different frameworks and languages. The thing is, there is a high chance that you will end up working in a team, or you will want to manage a team. So, having that capacity to analyze, discuss and coordinate with your team members is becoming more valuable every year. Also, the ability to influence and guide a team to a single goal is a really big plus.

Lack of self-confidence

I know, the list of requirements seems bigger when we try to apply for a new developer’s job. But here is a secret, many job descriptions come from recruiters. They try to get the best talent who knows all the stuff listed there, but they will gladly accept any person who doesn’t match all of the requirements. Apply anyways, what will you lose? Don’t discard yourself, that is recruiter’s job.

👟 Big progress is made on little things…

Are you still improving your English level daily or weekly?

Have you ever tried to test that trending technology all the people are talking about and make a demo project?

Have you led or been in charge of a project in which you can explain why you made certain technological decisions?

Have you maintained or been in a technology community with shared interests?

If your answer to all of the above is NO, then it is very likely that you will continue to maintain that state.

Now that you have time, use it to improve your skills piece by piece without setting yourself a short goal. It’s going to take time, it’s not going to work for you the first time, and there’s a good chance that what you do is broken.

But you will be moving forward.

And probably when you master that new skill, it will serve you much more than for work.

It will be helpful for your life.