Building your Confidence

Remember, it’s not you. There were likely many reasons that this happened, whether it be poor economic conditions, the company over-hiring, or poor financial planning. It is important to remember that you are not at fault.
Rest and recover! Treat yourself to something to get yourself back on your feet.

Making Preparations

Meet with a career coach: Career coaches can connect you to resources and provide customized job search support at any points of difficulty in this process.
Reflect on your job search criteria: What are your non-negotiables? What are things you’d be willing to compromise on? These details can help you narrow down your new job search and identify companies that you might be open to.
Think about your unique advantages: Comparatively to other job-seekers, you have already demonstrated your ability to succeed.
Volunteer: Participate in coding projects or mentor peers in CodePath to show you’re actively collaborating in the coding community.

Build a list of recruiters and company hiring managers that you’ve connected with in the past.
Ask your friends who have landed job opportunities to refer you to their company or connect you with their recruiter.
Reach out to your past internship mentors or recruiters for possible opportunities.
Reach out to your network on LinkedIn:
- Consider making a post about your situation and requesting connections that can be shared by your network. Make it easy for your network to help you!
Reconnect with the recruiter (and mentor or manager, if applicable) from the opportunity that was cancelled, and see if they have anyone they can connect you with. More than likely, the situation was nothing personal, and both your recruiter and mentor feel apologetic about this, and would be willing to help you search for new opportunities internally or in their networks.

Depending on timing, you may need to shift your role search strategy:
- Shift away from searching keywords like “Campus” or “New grad” to making skills and technology-based searches (Java, Python, Nodejs, AWS, etc.)
- Look for “Associate Software Engineer” or “Software Engineer” roles, avoid “Senior Software Engineer” or “Staff Software Engineer” roles.
- If the experience range for the role is close, it’s better to apply than not to; the worst that can happen is being declined.

Start applying to opportunities.
- Use the Application Tracker to stay on top of your job applications and to share job search data with coaches to help identify areas of success and improvement
Connect with your university’s career services and any other support services: They may know companies who have recently had a last-minute vacancy that you can apply for.
Join relevant Slack groups to see if anyone has any job openings.