Applying Software Development Process for Job Search

First phase of job search is to find out below things.

1. Job Profile – Find out the job profile or the role which interests you.
2. Technology – Find out the technology you like to work on or would like to work on.
3. Type of Company – Type of company you wish to work with, or the domain you would like to work on.

Designing

This phase is important, because rest of the process is dependent on the outcome of this phase. In this phase, you must find out the skills set required for the type of positions you have decided in above step. You must do self-review and find out the skills you lack. A good way to do this is list down the skills needed for the job profile or create a checklist. Compare your skills with this checklist and create a to-do list. Divide the to-do items into below categories.

1. Must have – Basic skills which are critical for the role you want to apply.
2. Should have – The skills which are important but are less critical.
3. Could have – The skills which are desirable but not necessary for the role.
4. Won’t have – The skills which are not required for the role but might help to perform the role better.

This to-do list is the input for next phase.

Development

Once you have the to-do list in front of you, its time for some actual work. Find out the resources which will help you to gain the skills listed in to-do items. You can find lot of online resources for developing your skills. But don’t try to eat everything at once. Use iterative approach in this phase. In first iteration work on developing Must have skills then should have skills and so on. So, usually it will contain 4 iterations, one for each skill categories.

Testing

You can start this phase in parallel with the development phase. In this phase, you will find out the companies which are hiring for the role of your interest and apply for the job. There are lot of different job portals available like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor etc. You can apply via these job portals or can go to the company’s official job page and apply directly. You can distribute your time between developing the skills and doing job applications. The best way to do is, whenever you want to take break from skills development, apply for job. This will help you to regain your energy level. This phase will also include the interviews you are appearing after applying for the jobs. Depending upon the results of the interview, again go back to designing phase and validate your results against the to-do list. You may have to adjust the list according to your interview experiences. You might have to follow design, development and testing phase multiple times. But make sure that every time you are using your prior experience to improve your results.

Note: This is not the only option to get the expected job. Above process might produce different results for everyone. Contact: If you have any questions or feedbacks then please email me on contactus@multigonal.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.