Furbita lives in Orlando, Florida, and she has broken the Careerist record for getting the most job offers in the shortest period of time. This spring she received five job offers in just one month. Today she’ll share her story with us all.
Tell us about yourself and your background...
Basically, I have a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. I worked for six years in the tech industry, but then I swapped from work to being a full time parent. When I decided to rejoin the tech industry I felt that I needed some career coaching, because the IT world was, and still is, constantly changing and I wanted to keep up to date with everything that was going on.
I joined Careerist on December 16th, 2020 and I completed the course on January 14th, 2021. Right after that, I joined the 2-week internship that was provided by the school.
What was it like looking for a job again?
My job search started on January 31st, 2021. And the whole month that I was looking for a job was hectic. I had to apply for 30 jobs a day, five days a week. At the same time, I was attending interviews in the morning and afternoon, and at night I was applying for more positions.
It’s a time-consuming process, but you will see that there are so many jobs available, and you’ll get a lot of responses too.
How many jobs a day were you applying for?
I applied for 568 jobs on LinkedIn and Glassdoor in total. I got 17 calls from recruiters from different companies in week one. It wasn’t a big success initially. But, in the second week I started receiving more and more calls.
What were your interview questions like?
Actually, the first two or three interviews I went to were confusing and stressful for me. After a while though, I realised that I was constantly hearing the same interview questions, so this helped me to gain some confidence.
The questions were rather behavioural and related to my current job, for example: “Why do you want to leave your job?”, “What challenges are you facing at your company right now?” and “Have you had any conflicts with your manager?”
In my resume, I also mentioned my API and SQL experience. However, only one company asked me a question related to this topic. Others gave me more practical tasks like showing me screens where I had to find the bug.
They didn’t ask me any questions about my previous job experience. They did clarify whether or not I was open to working in automation positions in the future, because I was only applying for manual positions.
Most of the questions I was asked were already mentioned in the document provided by Careerist to help you prepare for interviews. If I had any new questions I would just ask them on the Slack channel, where Careerist coaches chatted with us.
How many interview stages did you go through with each company?
There were from three to four interview stages with each company in general.
I did go through five interview stages with one company, but that was because they were confused with my relocation history. (They thought I could relocate immediately, but I couldn’t because of COVID).
Where were your offers from?
All five job offers were from five different states. One from Florida, another from Wisconsin, one in Ohio, and a north state service company that has remote offices in Texas and Florida.
In total, I got five offers in one month.
Did you get good offers?
When I started to get multiple offers, I began to negotiate my yearly salary with them all. On that note, I just want to say thanks to those who taught me how to negotiate a good salary.
So, I started with salaries around $68,000 a year, but I managed to negotiate them to salaries around $70,000 a year.
I have since got a better offer of $80,000 a year. I’m joining this company soon and it’s a 100% remote job. It’s full-time with a leave plan and joining bonus.
I couldn’t believe that I had received five job offers so soon to begin with. To get five offers in just one month was a total surprise for me. Very unexpected. To be honest, I was attending graduate meetings and I was ready to spend months searching for a job. I guess applying for lots of roles certainly helped me out.
Do you have some advice to share with your mates?
Remember that in order to get interviews and job offers you have to work for it and stay motivated. The more motivated you are the more responses you’ll get.
Also, keep a separate file to track all the interviews you’ve been to, and follow all the news on the Slack channel to keep up to date with the latest trends.
Well done you on getting five offers! You must be overjoyed! As you can all see, if you work hard and stay motivated you can achieve great things. We are so proud of you, and we wish you all the best in your career!