Software Engineer Job Market March 2025 and Some Job Search Tips
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The IT software engineer job market seems warmed up a bit recently, from my observations. I am getting some emails from the recruiters and they are real jobs.
I think during the middle of last year (June 2024) I came across the below software engineers job chart, and it could be a bit misleading because the start date is Feb 2020. Basically we can say it just showed the dramatic increase of software engineer jobs and subsequent declining of job openings due to the pandemic over-hiring earlier, big tech big cuts following Elon’s huge cut at Twitter post his acquisition.
(FRED) Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States
Indeed and LinkedIn
In recent years, I mainly use Indeed and LinkedIn for job search. But for my last 2 jobs (Mastercard and Ascension) I found them mainly through Indeed.com.
Typical process (St. Louis based dev jobs)
Phone screen, technical screen and manager interview. Offer.
Some other tips
Background check
Don’t lie on your resume. At the same time, don’t stress over the background check. Usually background check is a part of the pre-employment process, and you would need to give two weeks notice at the current place. That’s also sometimes people have stress – what if anything goes wrong with background check?
My experience with this is: as long as you don’t break laws, etc., you should be fine. It seems to me the background checking companies are mostly providing a service anyway, and in the process making some money. I have done quite a few background checking in last 5 years or so. In fact I did three (or 4) background checking in this school year: depends on how you count it.
First: the volunteer background check for the school district I volunteer. They have two background checks: one requires fingerprint (and I assume some sort of FBI database lookup) Missouri Automated Criminal History System (MACHS); another one is for Missouri educator sort of check called FCSR, stands for Family Care Safety Registry, this can be done online exclusively.
For Uber: it’s done fairly quickly. Cannot find the background checking company from my email now.
For Lyft: it seems they used checkr.
For my current job, I did background check via clariti (now a part of DISA Screen). Btw, I noticed they had a security incident recently 🙁
Reference check
It seems this is rarely done nowadays.
Microsoft Teams – multiple Microsoft office 365 accounts
I learned my lesson the hard way during real interview. I clicked on the Microsoft Teams link on the Chrome browser that I usually use. But I forgot that I recently used that browser for outlook (another email account, different email from the link I was clicking). And the Chrome browser gave me an error right away. So I copied the link, and open a new incognito window and pasted my link there, it prompt me with some new information. I was not sure what to do. So I opened Safari as I believe I haven’t used that browser for a while, and got information similar to the new Chrome incognito window (at least they are consistent), and I just clicked the link there and it worked.
Reference
(MarketWatch, Paywall) LinkedIn co-founder has known Elon Musk for years. Here’s what he says Americans don’t understand about the Tesla CEO.