In 2001 I accepted a job working as NASA's Johnson Space Center as a software developer. I was equally parts shocked and excited when they offered me the job. Over the next 15 years I would have a great career working there. In May of 2016 when our contract was renewed, the government changed some things up from the previous contracts I had been on. Long story short, I ended up with a significant pay cut. It had already been 3 years since my last pay raise due to budget cuts. And with Congress at an impasse more and more, government shutdowns were becoming a regular threat. So for those reasons and others, I decided to start looking for a new job.
In July of that year, I got a call from a recruiter that had found my resume online. He told me about a frontend developer job just down the road from NASA. He got me an interview and I felt pretty good about it. Afterwards he told me that I was their first choice based on my resume and experience. However, after a few weeks went by and I heard nothing, I contacted the recruiter to get a status. He told me that they had decided to go with someone else. I was shocked, although in retrospect I shouldn't have been. I had done a terrible job of selling myself.
I also had a revelation after that: I had not dedicated enough time to professional development. In a perfect world, an employer will make professional development a priority for their employees. But we don't live in a perfect world and so the onus was on me to keep up. And I had not. Over the next couple of years I would take to Twitter, newsletters, and online training to educate myself on the latest and greatest tech in frontend development. I landed interviews with several companies during that time (sometimes even multiple interviews) but couldn't seem to get an offer. I finally decided to take a break from the job search.
About the time I made the decision to quit looking, I got a call from that company I had first interviewed with in 2016. They wanted to know if I'd be interested in interviewing for a developer job. I interviewed with some of the same people I had interviewed with before. And this time, I got an offer. I accepted the job and with much sadness, I left NASA after 17 years.
One day I realized that my coworker DJ (not his real name) was the person who had beat me out for the frontend developer position two years earlier. So I asked him about it. He told me that when he had interviewed for the job, he built a small prototype to demonstrate his skills. I really think this extra initiative on his part was what won him the job.
Lessons Learned
Professional Development
The world of web development is changing very rapidly. I had let my success at NASA stagnate me. I did look at new technologies from time to time, but I wasn't making a concerted effort to study and learn. That was a mistake. Take a little time every day out of our schedule for professional development.Interviewing
Don't expect your resume to do all of the talking for you. I have a really hard time talking about myself. I don't like to draw attention to myself. But when you are interviewing, you have to do this. Build an online portfolio to show your work. Do something to make yourself stand out. For one job I applied for, I incorporated the company's colors and logo into my resume. The interviewer mentioned that it caught his eye.It Will Take Some Time
When I first started interviewing, I thought it would take a few weeks maybe a couple of months at most to get an offer. I had no idea it would take two years! Be patient. Don't get your hopes up too high. Sometimes an interview will go great and you'll still get passed over for the job. That's ok. That job might have sounded great but maybe it wasn't so great. Maybe the people were difficult to work with. Maybe the management was unreasonable. Maybe the company is about to go under. Just assume that if you didn't get the job, it was for good reason.Oh and for the record, I think hiring DJ over me was definitely the right decision. :)
