Is the Tech Job Recession OVER?!

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🚨THE TECH JOB RECESSION IS OVER!!🚨

That’s the headline on a Business Insider article this week!

We’ll get to the scoop on this in just a minute, but first I wanted to announce a fun GIVEAWAY! I’ll be giving you your choice of a $50 Amazon or Target Gift Card OR a Timbuk2 backpack filled with some fun office goodies!

You’ll receive 1 entry for every referral you make between August 23rd and September 26th. The winner will be announced in the issue that goes out on September 27th!!

All other rewards are still active as well so your referrals still count towards earning resume reviews, coaching calls, and more!

Let’s get back to the Tech Jobs Recession update

Bernstein Research who has been tracking the tech layoffs announced that they are done because the layoffs seem to be over. (Though take this with a grain of salt - SOME level of layoffs are still a constant, we’re simply done with the major uptick we saw in 2022-23.)

What might this mean for someone looking to make a career move?

Keeping in mind that I’m not an expert on the job market, here’s my take:

1. Companies grew way too quickly in 2021 and early 2022, in anticipation of continued growth. When business contracted, they had way too many people without much for them to do. They had to stop hiring, and actually let go of some of that staff. And many weren’t even filling backfills because they had so many people!

2. Companies are now more or less “right-sized”. I’d imagine larger or more financially stable tech companies may still have some extra capacity, while more cash-strapped places may actually be operating without the people-power they need and be really ready to hire in order to move things ahead.

3. Many companies have also done some things that may be affecting long-term employee retention. For example, return to office mandates are forcing some people to quit due to their current location, and others to look for new jobs in hopes of remaining in a remote environment.

4. As these moves push people out, and with companies now being “right sized”, they are more likely to hire backfills, more likely to open new roles, etc. But remote roles may be replaced with hybrid/on site ones. And I think companies have learned their lessons and aren’t going to be hiring in anticipation of more business in the same way and instead, hiring more responsibly when they actually need more people power.

5. The one upside of that? I think we may see more urgency in hiring if companies are waiting until they feel the crunch and NEED more people - so maybe that will mean more efficient processes and less ghosting? A girl can dream.

So anyway, that’s my take on what’s in store for us in the next year - again, coming from someone who isn’t an expert on the market!

💼Getting ahead at work!💼

With a lot of you sharing that you’ve landed new roles recently, I want to start incorporating more content to support you with growing your career and make sure this newsletter stays relevant for everyone!

Last week, I shared some onboarding tips.

Today, let’s talk about tracking your achievements!

The reality is that no one will ever know your work better than you, and the only way that your manager and others can advocate for you is if they know your achievements. There will always be more people who want a promotion or a big raise than a company is willing to or able to give.

So one suggestion I have:

Start a “Brag Book”. This is a space where you’re going to track any position thing - big or small - that happens at work.

• Solve a problem that’s been hanging over your team’s heads? Note this in your brag book.

• Someone gives you a shoutout or sends you thank you message in Slack? Pop it in your brag book.

• Positive quotes from customers, results on client surveys, great metrics for the month? These are all going in the brag book.

You’re then going to reference this when you write your reviews or need to advocate for a promotion or a raise. It can be really hard to remember all of those little things and many won’t be visible to anyone else. Tracking them will help you identify trends. Your manager won’t be aware that 3 customers have told you you’re the best CSM they’ve ever worked with and that’s the reason they are upgrading their account - so it’s on you to track and communicate this.

P.S. One cool hack is to plug these into an ongoing thread with ChatGPT so it can synthesize trends for you. I talk about that here.

P.P.S. This is gonna help a LOT when it’s time to update that resume or bring examples to interviews as well!!

Career.io offers you a platform to manage, accelerate, and grow your career.

Starting a new job and need a 90 day plan? Career.io has you covered!

Looking to transition to a new field? Career.io has data from millions of people’s career trajectories and will help you identify a path that makes sense for you.

Interview prep? Salary negotiation? Resume help? Check, check, and check!

Where ever you are in your career journey, career.io is here to support you from landing the job to getting that promotion, and everything in between!

🙋Answering Your Questions🙋

Each week, I’ll answer a few of your questions in this section. You can submit your questions here.

So many great questions!

1. I think you can enter those skills yourself - it may autogenerate them, but if so, you can edit them! When you apply, the recruiter receives your resume and LinkedIn profile, and recruiters tend to pay more attention to those than the skills listed.

2. Personally, I think it can help - I have seem some really sophisticated fake profiles so verifying your identify can’t hurt. If you’re in recruiting, I think verifying is a MUST so that jobseekers have a little extra layer of trust.

3. Recruiters will see a badge that shows it’s a “top choice”. I’m not sure how much weight a recruiter would put on this though - I asked a few recruiter friends and they all said they ignore this so I wouldn’t stress if a job isn’t marked top choice!

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The In-Flight Amenities 🍱

Each week, I share job openings within my network and a featured jobseeker that I hope we can all support in their job search.

What I’m reading:

Side Hustle Central: This newsletter is for those of you who want to build a side business, or one day go into business for yourself. As someone who has been running side businesses since 2018, this is another one I love (along with Sidepiece which is a similar topic!).

Jobs you need to check out:
Zapier is hiring as always!
I share recently posted jobs several times a week on X, the artist formerly known as Twitter!
Remote biz dev opportunity!
Remote customer service roles in the insurance industry.
Remote project management/scrum master roles.
Remote sales opportunities.
Remote recruiter role here and you’ve got the hiring manager tagged!
And as always, I share jobs regularly in my Talent Collective! (If you’d like to share jobs, we’d love to have you!)

Jobseekers you need to hire:
Major layoffs at GM today - check out folks like Kyle Albertson who is open to a wide variety of roles like product or technical program manager or Jerry Hurst who is looking for IT development manager roles or Ryan Nyborg who looking for software engineering roles.
Alexandra Rao is looking for HR roles.
Kimberly Lundy is seeking accounting roles.
Emily Fleck is seeking project and product manager roles.

_{For more resources to support you in your search, check out my Linktree.}
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