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Navigating the job market after a layoff: A step-by-step guide to preparing for your next career move.

Losing your job can be a difficult and stressful experience, but it is important to remain focused and take action to improve your situation. One of the key steps to take after being laid off is to prepare for job interviews.

First and foremost, it is important to update your resume and tailor it to the specific job opportunities you are applying for. Be sure to highlight your relevant skills and experiences, and be prepared to discuss how you can contribute to the company’s goals and objectives.

Next, research the company and the specific role you are applying for. This will help you understand the company’s culture and what they are looking for in a candidate. It will also give you a chance to prepare questions to ask the interviewer and show that you are interested in the company and the job.

It is also important to practice your interview skills. This can include rehearsing answers to common interview questions, practicing your body language and eye contact, and dressing professionally for the interview.

Another important aspect of interview preparation is to prepare for potential challenges. For example, if you have gaps in your employment history due to being laid off, be prepared to explain why and highlight any positive experiences or skills you gained during that time.

Overall, being laid off from your job can be a challenging experience, but it is also an opportunity to take control of your career and focus on finding a job that aligns with your goals and interests. By taking the time to prepare for job interviews, you can increase your chances of success and find a new job that is fulfilling and rewarding.

INTERVIEW ADVICE:

  1. Update your resume and tailor it to the specific job opportunity you are applying for.
  2. Research the company and the specific role you are applying for to understand their culture and what they are looking for in a candidate.
  3. Practice your interview skills, including rehearsing answers to common interview questions and practicing your body language and eye contact.
  4. Prepare for potential challenges, such as gaps in your employment history or weaknesses in your skillset.
  5. Dress professionally for the interview and arrive on time.
  6. Bring copies of your resume and any other relevant documents, such as references or certifications.
  7. Be prepared to ask thoughtful and engaging questions to show your interest in the company and the job.
  8. Be honest and authentic in your answers, and avoid oversharing or providing too much information.
  9. Follow up with the interviewer after the interview to thank them for their time and express your continued interest in the job.


RESUME WRITING TIPS:

  1. Start with a strong and concise objective or summary statement that highlights your relevant skills and experiences.
  2. Use a clear and easy-to-read format and structure, with headings and bullet points to organize your information.
  3. Include specific examples of your skills and achievements, using metrics and quantifiable data where possible.
  4. Tailor your resume to the specific job opportunity you are applying for, highlighting the skills and experiences that are most relevant to the position.
  5. Keep your resume concise and focused, avoiding unnecessary or irrelevant information.
  6. Use keywords and phrases from the job description to help your resume be found in applicant tracking systems.
  7. Proofread your resume carefully to ensure that it is free of spelling and grammar errors.
  8. Save your resume in a common file format, such as PDF or Word, and use a professional-sounding file name.
  9. Consider including a cover letter with your resume to provide additional context and information about your qualifications and interest in the job if applicable.


COMMON INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR SOFTWARE PROFESSIONALS:

  1. Tell me about your background and experience as a software engineer.
  2. Can you describe a specific project or problem you solved using your engineering skills?
  3. What are your top skills and strengths as a software engineer?
  4. How do you stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and trends in the software engineering field?
  5. Can you describe a time when you worked in a team to develop software, and what your role was in that process?
  6. How do you handle difficult situations or problems when working on a software engineering project?
  7. Can you describe a specific project or problem you encountered that required creative thinking or problem-solving skills?
  8. How do you approach testing and debugging software to ensure that it is reliable and effective?
  9. Can you provide examples of how you have used your communication skills to collaborate with other team members or stakeholders on a software engineering project?
  10. What do you enjoy most about working as a software engineer, and what motivates you to continue learning and growing in your field?


INTERVIEW PREPARATION RESOURCES:

There are many resources available for software engineers to prepare for technical interviews. Some of the most common include books, online courses, practice problems, and interviews.

Books:

  • “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
  • “Elements of Programming Interviews” by Adnan Aziz, Tsung-Hsien Lee, and Amit Prakash
  • “Programming Interviews Exposed” by John Mongan, Noah Kindler, and Eric Giguere

Online courses:

  • “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell on Pluralsight
  • “Algorithms and Data Structures” by Michael T. Goodrich and Roberto Tamassia on Coursera
  • “Programming Interviews” by Alex Miller on LinkedIn Learning

Practice problems and interviews:

  • InterviewBit
  • LeetCode
  • HackerRank
  • Pramp (for practice interviews)

In addition to these resources, it can also be helpful to talk to friends, colleagues, or mentors who have experience with technical interviews and can provide guidance and advice.

Philanthropy – We’re giving back to our Children and Community through Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Vertical Move Giving Back To Our Community - Seattle Children's Hospital

Verticalmove_Giving_Back_To_Children_Hospital_in_Seattle

We couldn’t be more excited and proud of our ongoing philanthropic commitment within our community and specifically Seattle Children’s Hospital. With the help of our incredible clientele, we are working hard toward meeting milestones that will allow us to gift time and monetary donations again in Q3 2018.

Interested in becoming a Verticalmove client and helping contribute to our next philanthropic initiative? Please get in touch:
verticalmove@verticalmove.com

#volunteering #hospitals #donations #charities #gifts

More About Verticalmove

Verticalmove is a world-class business consulting firm that solves complex human capital challenges among the most admired companies globally such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, Teradata, Polaris Industries, Ellie Mae and Glassdoor.com. We’ve assembled a top-notch team of recruitment experts that help our clientele attract and retain the brightest Executive, Technical, Sales and Marketing professionals through our Confluence RPO, Executive Search and Contract Contingent Workforce services. With operations in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, New York and Europe, we continue to expand our reach with every new relationship we establish.

Customer Success Story – How we built a Digital Transformation & Innovation Lab for a $50 billion-dollar, Fortune 40 Retailer within 18 months

The Full Customer Story

Our client may be known as one of the home retail leaders of the world but more recently the company has made a name for itself in the technology sector. This $50 billion, Fortune 40 company is successfully altering the way consumers view home retail with the implementation of their Innovation Lab.

By working in an exclusive capacity with this client, we have managed to exceed all professional expectations in the last 18 months by making 25 hires. By tracking down evasive candidates and passing on their skill sets to the home retailer, our client has completed the digital transformation that was once out-of-reach with vital assistance from Verticalmove.

The Challenge & Objective

The Innovation Lab is a celebration of forward-thinking and creativity across all technological fields. From virtual reality visualization to robotics in store, this Fortune 40 client needed a boost when it came to hiring for vital roles to make this project a reality. The world previously saw our client as a home retailer, not as a force to be reckoned with in the technological field yet directly due to our contribution, they were named Most Innovative Company of 2018 by a respected technology industry publication.

Verticalmove stepped up to find these elusive candidates, which ranged from high-ranking executives to individual contributors. Not only were these highly qualified candidates engaging with our client in no time, but within the first month several critical roles were filled and in the past 18 months, we’ve made over 25 additional hires.

The Game Changing Results

The digital transformation of our client was fueled by competent hires that brought in highly-desired skills. We boast an average of 8:1 submittal to hire ratio and an 85% acceptance rate for the Innovation Lab. Our client is one of the largest retailers in the United States and is in direct competition with internet powerhouse Amazon. By helping the Innovation Lab hire 25 people in just 18 months and become the most innovative company 2018, we have done our part to keep over 2,370 retail locations up and running. Over 290,000 employees depend on the success of our client. Without quick-action, the Innovation Lab would have been stuck in development and jobs would be at risk. Here at Verticalmove, it is our priority to ensure the continued success of our clients.

While the Innovation Lab is a paramount accomplishment, we pride ourselves in working with highly-qualified professionals to attain real and tangible results, building next-gen teams that drive companies forward to dominate an ever-competitive market. The success of this client is a perfect example of how our work affects real people and real business progress so that they can continue to grow their bottom line.

More About Verticalmove

Verticalmove is a world-class business consulting firm that solves complex human capital challenges among the most admired companies globally such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, Teradata, Polaris Industries, Ellie Mae and Glassdoor.com. We’ve assembled a top-notch team of recruitment experts that help our clientele attract and retain the brightest Executive, Technical, Sales and Marketing professionals through our Confluence RPO, Executive Search and Contract Contingent Workforce services. With operations in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, New York and Europe, we continue to expand our reach with every new relationship we establish.

Customer Success Story – How we built a Next-Generation Engineering team from scratch for a $3.6 billion-dollar SaaS Fin-Tech Leader

The Full Customer Story

Our client, a 20-year-old leading financial technology company valued at $3.6 billion dollars, processing more than $1.0 billion-dollars daily in complex financial transactions within the $2.0 trillion-dollar mortgage industry. In June of 2015, we were retained by a long-time executive relationship. The need was to build a next-generation engineering team under his leadership that would be focused upon modernizing an aging suite of software products built upon a legacy Microsoft architecture.

The Challenge & Objective

While the company had a plan to migrate exclusively to open-source and cloud, the existing engineering team lacked the immediate knowledge and experience necessary to transition in a timely manner. The company had always positioned itself as a finance company, rather than a cutting-edge technology company. Combined with their unique location and limited employer brand in the open-source community, their leadership found difficulty in launching an initial hiring initiative. They were looking to build hiring momentum, yield referrals and increased awareness over time. The next-generation engineering team, included executive searches for CIO, SVP of Engineering, Vice President of Platform Engineering, Vice President of Cloud Engineering, Vice President of Application Engineering and Chief Architect. In addition, our firm was asked to recruit various engineering managers and subsequently build engineering teams that had the required open source and cloud experience.

The Game Changing Results

A successful migration to Amazon AWS public cloud and open-source technology. A monumental task for a 20-year-old financial company built upon legacy Microsoft technology. This has led to new customers, increased revenue and a stock price that has nearly doubled during our engagement. An employee referral program that now yields 60% of all new hiring across engineering. Significantly reduced cost per each hire, as much as 50% for all executive and technical hires when compared to competitors formerly engaged by our client. The most frequently filled job titles included Vice President of Engineering, Director of Engineering, Engineering Manager, Staff Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, and Senior DevOps Engineer.

More About Verticalmove

Verticalmove is a world-class business consulting firm that solves complex human capital challenges among the most admired companies globally such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, Teradata, Polaris Industries, Ellie Mae and Glassdoor.com. We’ve assembled a top-notch team of recruitment experts that help our clientele attract and retain the brightest Executive, Technical, Sales and Marketing professionals through our Confluence RPO, Executive Search and Contract Contingent Workforce services. With operations in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, New York and Europe, we continue to expand our reach with every new relationship we establish.

Customer Success Story – How we helped establish an employer brand for a publicly traded SaaS company new to the Pacific Northwest (Seattle)

The Full Customer Story

Our client, a publicly traded software company with a mission to make people smarter through innovative online digital solutions aimed at more than 2,000 universities, school districts and institutions around the world.

In May of 2017, we were retained by the Talent Acquisition team of this client, a software as a service company which recently completed its initial public offering (IPO) and had ambitious plans for expansion. Feeling as though they’ve exhausted the talent pool near their headquarters, our client decided to expand into the Seattle region. The plan was to establish a new research and development outpost in order to lure top research and development talent from the hot Seattle tech market.

The Challenge & Objective

Their existing Talent Acquisition team was unfamiliar with the region, lacked an employer brand and talent network to source from. These obstacles seemed to deeply impact the initial purpose of coming to Seattle and scaling quickly. The objective was to establish a first time employer brand in the region, as we have reputably accomplished for past clients (please inquire about similar case studies). The initial hiring plan was to build four research and development teams that would total more than 40 combined new engineering and management professionals. Furthermore, we were tasked with providing data-driven consulting pertaining to compensation, benefits architecture, as well as offer presentation and closing strategies.

The Game Changing Results

This newly retained engagement is developing as expected. We’ve begun building an employer brand and awareness among local tech communities. This has resulted in an established an expansive pipeline of talent from targeted companies as chosen by our client.

Significantly reduced the cost of each hire by as much as 25% when compared to our competitors. The most frequently sourced job titles included Senior Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer in Test and Product Management.

More About Verticalmove

Verticalmove is a world-class business consulting firm that solves complex human capital challenges among the most admired companies globally such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, Teradata, Polaris Industries, Ellie Mae and Glassdoor.com. We’ve assembled a top-notch team of recruitment experts that help our clientele attract and retain the brightest Executive, Technical, Sales and Marketing professionals through our Confluence RPO, Executive Search and Contract Contingent Workforce services. With operations in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, New York and Europe, we continue to expand our reach with every new relationship we establish.

Customer Success Story – How we built a national Sales and Professional Services team for a leading GRC Security SaaS client

The Full Customer Story

Our client, a leading Enterprise Software company providing solutions for quality management, regulatory compliance, risk management, and corporate governance. Their customer base includes many of the largest Financial, Insurance and Healthcare companies globally.

Our 18-month retained relationship was a follow-on engagement to a successful initial contingent relationship that yielded several high- profile hires. These positions were vacant for up to six-months prior to our involvement. Based upon our earlier contingent success, the company’s COO awarded our firm with a retained RPO engagement for an aggressive, nationwide build-out of their Sales, Engineering and Professional Services teams.

The Challenge & Objective

The challenge, GRC is a niche segment within the enterprise software sector. Most recruiting targets (competitors) are located on the East Coast and require candidates to relocate with little corporate assistance or travel up to 90% of the time.

For all Sales hires, the objective was to hire experienced GRC practitioners rather than seasoned executive sales professionals. The client wanted experienced Governance, Risk or Compliance officers that would target ”people like themselves” within Finance, Insurance and Healthcare companies. For all Professional Services hires, the objective was to hire strong GRC practitioners that had Solutions Architecture, Project Management and Business Analyst experience from the same verticals.

The Game Changing Results

A wider reaching North American salesforce comprised of GRC practitioners, freeing up the existing Sales Executives to focus upon developing EMEA for a global footprint.

An evenly distributed Professional Services team across North America, creating West Coast, Mid-West and East-Coast territories. This significantly diminished the cost and burden associated with deploying technical resources to customer locations. Increased flow of employee referrals and conversion as a result of a more recognized employer brand.

The most frequently filled job titles included Vice President of Sales, Vice President of Engineering, Vice President of Professional Services, Sales Executives, Solutions Architects, Project Managers and Business Analysts.

More About Verticalmove

Verticalmove is a world-class business consulting firm that solves complex human capital challenges among the most admired companies globally such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, Teradata, Polaris Industries, Ellie Mae and Glassdoor.com. We’ve assembled a top-notch team of recruitment experts that help our clientele attract and retain the brightest Executive, Technical, Sales and Marketing professionals through our Confluence RPO, Executive Search and Contract Contingent Workforce services. With operations in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, New York and Europe, we continue to expand our reach with every new relationship we establish.

Customer Success Story – How we built the worlds first Philanthropic Software Cloud in under 10 months

The Full Customer Story

Recently, we partnered with one the largest technology companies, specifically their non-for-profit division, whose primary focus is to promote philanthropic activities on the behalf of their parent company and Founder. Our highly-capable recruitment team enabled our client to bring to reality the world’s first ever mainstream public facing Software Cloud for Global Philanthropy, completely from scratch. In just ten months, this idea was conceived, a new team was built, and the first version of the product officially went live. This product not only served our client’s needs but disrupted the global philanthropic ecosystem, which placed this client company at the forefront of the global philanthropic community.

The Challenge & Objective

This initiative required highly-skilled professionals to join their team within a very tight deadline. Some of these vital positions included ReactJS User Interface Engineers, Machine Learning Engineers, Distributed Systems Platform Engineers and Cybersecurity Engineers.

In ten months, we negotiated and presented twenty-two offers for employment to highly skilled software engineering professionals who we sourced, qualified and introduced to our client. In this period, we accomplished an 11:1 submittal-to-offer ratio which is exceptional for this particular client considering their high technical-bar, the specific skill sets they sought and the short time frame we were given to build the initial team.

Hiring a new team from scratch is extremely difficult and requires laser focus. Due to our competencies in engineering recruitment and our own personal commitment to philanthropic endeavors, we were able to exceed our client’s expectations and allow them to fully craft their vision, later to be shared on stage, as a show-stopping Keynote Presentation during their 2018 technology conference.

The Game Changing Results

Without the help of our team, this client and their Philanthropy Software Cloud would not have had the opportunity to not only meet, but exceed launch expectations. One of these expectations, of course, included an aggressive deadline, which we were expected to meet. Verticalmove had to act deliberately and with exceptional urgency to ensure the successful delivery of the most innovative and disruptive software product the global philanthropic ecosystems has yet to experience.

The commitment and fortitude we extend to this client evidences our dedication to serving our partners with incredible professionalism and results, all while operating under an extremely tight deadline. Here at Verticalmove, we understand our own responsibility as a corporate philanthropist and wanted to immerse ourselves into an initiative that we someday could leverage within our own enterprise. Working with both philanthropy and digital innovation was a perfect opportunity to combine our company’s cultural interests and professional endeavors. In 2019, we have our eyes set on another ambitious goal that we fully expect to achieve for this client, which will be an assignment to double the size of the engineering team.

More About Verticalmove

Verticalmove is a world-class business consulting firm that solves complex human capital challenges among the most admired companies globally such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, Teradata, Polaris Industries, Ellie Mae and Glassdoor.com. We’ve assembled a top-notch team of recruitment experts that help our clientele attract and retain the brightest Executive, Technical, Sales and Marketing professionals through our Confluence RPO, Executive Search and Contract Contingent Workforce services. With operations in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, New York and Europe, we continue to expand our reach with every new relationship we establish.

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