If you’re on this page, you’re likely wondering, “So…. What on Earth is Job Hacking?”
Well, let’s first clarify that it has nothing to with breaking into people’s computers or cutting slabs of meat.
In many contexts, the term hacking means the application of ingenuity to optimize a process. The most common usage for this is “Life Hacking,” which means applying ingenious techniques and tricks to make life better. Often, these techniques aren’t necessarily intuitive – which is exactly what makes them ingenious. Otherwise, everyone would be doing them naturally, and they wouldn’t be much of a trick.
Similarly, Job Hacking is applying certain ingenious techniques to optimize the landing of a job. Old-fashioned intuitive job hunting can be long, arduous, and extremely frustrating, and even when successful may only lead to a mediocre job. However, Job Hacking is the unique set of tips and tricks that can help you land the job of your dreams, and land it relatively quickly.
Who am I?
My name is Jay Wengrow, and I am the founder and CEO of Actualize, a coding bootcamp that trains and helps adults become software engineers. In the vast majority of cases, our students come from entirely different careers. Thus, we help social workers, secretaries, and taxi drivers become software engineers, web developers, and computer programmers.
I’ve personally worked with hundreds of Actualize graduates to help them transition careers. Frankly, making this career transition isn’t easy, and this is because of an axiom that applies to the vast majority of white-collar careers:
The skills you need at a job and the skills you need to get a job are two completely different skill sets.
So, you can be a brilliant coder but still struggle to land a coding job. Similarly, you may be a great accountant but find trouble in landing an accounting position. And the same applies to salespeople, marketers, and pretty much everyone else.
The skill set of getting a job involves knowing your way around resumes, networking, personal branding, interviews, and much much more. And it’s really difficult to develop this skill set because how often do you actually job hunt? For most people, they only engage in these skills just for several small periods during their lifetimes. Even a brilliant novelist may struggle to write a resume since it has its own unique set of rules.
This is where Job Hacking becomes critical. In this blog, I share with you exactly what you need to do (as well as what not to do) in order to land your dream job. Admittedly, my background is in education and software engineering, not in career coaching. But through my experience at Actualize, I’ve done (and continue to do) an incredible amount of research on the most effective job hunting techniques. Most of the ideas I present in this blog are not my own, but come from my research and then putting the techniques to the test by having our graduates try them.
Indeed, among the many job search books out there, there is much contradictory advice, as each book advocates a different approach and also tells you that the other books are wrong. I’ve found that there’s a lot of just plain bad advice out there as well. I’ve put all the techniques to the test, and share with you here what works and what doesn’t. I also specifically focus on the most effective techniques. So even if there are 100 tips that can help you land a job, I focus on the ones that have greatest effectiveness, since it’s impossible to implement 100 different techniques.
This blog is a work in progress, and I continue to do more research and continue to experiment. But as you follow me along this journey, I hope that my advice will help you launch your career and avoid as much frustration as possible.
Although each blog post can be understood on its own, I do highly recommend that you start with the first blog post and then make your way through the subsequent blog posts in order, as the initial blog posts give a lot of important context that make all the other blog posts easier to understand.