Finally some light at the end of the tunnel!
>!Long post warning!<
I got RIF’d on March 31st after a 5-year run(OCI). 4+ ratings every year, but layoffs weren’t new in my org. Still stung. The severance was decent.
This isn’t a rant about the RIF. It’s what I did next, what flopped, and what actually got me offers. Maybe it helps someone else.
> During garden leave: March 31st - last working day
Certs: Knocked out 4 cloud certs, mostly ornamental. But kept me busy and a bit of confidence boosting.
Outplacement services: Company-provided. Zero leads, but the resume critique was useful. Current trends = shorter, impact-driven, ATS keywords.
Mental reset: Spent the last week in the mountains. Call it semi-mountain leave. Needed it.
> Post-separation: Month 1
Spray + pray phase: Resume on every portal. Applied heavily on LinkedIn.
Reality check: Auto-rejection mails even when I was a 90%+ fit. ATS is brutal.
Interviews: 4 calls via portals. Blew 2 of them. Rusty, no match practice. Panic started creeping in.
Action: Rewrote resume 3x. Targeted applications only. Quality > quantity.
> Month 2 - 3: Momentum shift*
Recruiters started calling: 6-7 interviews. Some lowballed, some were bad fits. Did 2 HireVue rounds 🤢never again.
Turning point: Week 3 onwards, process speed picked up. Got 3 offers by month-end:
-2 decent offers
- 1 with 25% hike + level bump
- Plot twist: Best offer came via LinkedIn DM. Not an application. Not a portal. Cold DM from a hiring manager.
Haven’t accepted yet. Giving it 1 more week to explore without getting greedy.
> My blunt observations - not universal, just my experience
Jobs exist, competition is insane: LI posts get 100+ applicants in 30 mins. 80% are unqualified spray-and-pray I assume, but you still get buried.
ATS/Human gap is the real bottleneck: Biggest challenge isn’t skill. It’s getting a human to evaluate the resume. Referrals >> portals>>LI
Are those jobs even real?: Genuinely doubt if half the LI postings have urgency. Ghost jobs + pipeline-building is real.
Big Tech hiring = tricky: More loops, more scrutiny. Referral is almost mandatory to get past the noise. RIF isn’t a scarlet letter anymore: No interviewer cared. But lowballing happened twice.
OCI skills demand: Negligible. 90% of interviews drilled me on other hyperscalers (prev exp). OCI was “so tell me about that” context only.
Resume AB testing: We have to tweak and track. I had 3 versions. One got 2x more callbacks. Same person, different keywords.
Bottom line: Perseverance and resume iterations are the . LI job postings turned out to be mostly useless for me, but keeping my LI profile relevant helped me in getting the DM, I guess. Got much better response from the Job portals though (36 resume downloads in 2 months). So, keeping it updated with the right key words is a must.
If you’re in the same boat: it sucks, but it’s not career-ending. Keep tweaking, keep talking to people, and take that 'mountain week' or 'beach week' -whatever works for you!
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Dream jobs and dream companies don’t exist anymore. It’s a transaction- skills for money. We should keep emotions out of it. Else, better to pursue what makes us happy, provided it pays out the monthly bills too!