Getting a job takes A LOT of Rejection

People often want to know how I got a job in tech “so fast”.

The secret is not as glamorous or as cool as people hope, but here it is...

I got rejected... A LOT.

For context, I started my job search in August 2022, and had a job by the end of the same month...

But do you know how many applications I sent out in just that one month?

Close to 300.

I was absolutely relentless.

Every free minute of the day, I was applying to jobs.

I was applying on LinkedIn, on Indeed, on Monster jobs, on Angel list, on DataCamp, and on the Google career certs job board.

And I wasn’t just mass spamming my resume. I was tailoring my resume to each role, trying to give myself the best odds of getting hired.

And every morning I would wake up groggy from my overnight warehouse job, and immediately check my emails…

Where I'd be greeted with 5-10 rejection emails.

It felt like a punch in the gut.

And for the first 30 minutes of the day, as I showered and got ready, I would question if this was even possible for me...

But then I'd get on my laptop and do it all again.

My point here is you need A LOT of rejections to get a job.

When I hit 100 job applications with no luck, I told myself,

"Fine. I'll send out 1000 job applications, and if I still haven't gotten a job, THEN I'll think about quitting"

But people come to me for advice on breaking into the industry, and when I ask how many applications they're sending out a day... their reply is something like 5 applications a week...

It's harder than ever to break into the industry... but it's still VERY possible.

Every day I see people on LinkedIn and Reddit talking about how they just landed their first job, or landed a new role.

That could be you…

Embrace the challenge... learn to shrug off those rejection emails, keep touching up your skills, and before long you'll be receiving your first call or email asking for an interview...

And that's where the real fun begins!

Until next time,

– Josh