It is clear that we are having some issues and some problems that out of our control that are keeping us away from finding the job that we want, or need.

What I really mean by this is that we are having a meltdown or we are getting our impostor syndrome at 100% since we are not getting what we want at the time that we want.

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

In my personal experience, I started to become a fearless person since I started to understand that we are no different from any other person since we are humans and the only people that are keeping us away from opportunities are other humans that live in the same world as us.

For this reason, I have to be ready to be open to doing something that I don’t know how to do it well, I understand that I have to be open for several different positions and that not everybody will love my work. What is important here is to make sure that we put the time and the effort to learn new things every day, and that we care less about other people’s opinions since every single human in the world will have a different meaning for success.

Meaning that my story will never be your story, or that your story will never be mine. We are unique, and we can only tell stories to others to inspire people or to show others different ways to succeed, and to find ways to skip problems or to know how to find faster solutions.

Our Potential

A lot of people will mention that we are not able to do multiple at the same time since we have to focus on something, rather than learning multiple things. In my opinion, this is not the greatest advice, and I’m 100% sure that you have been hearing this advice a thousand times.

The issue with this is that if you learn one thing very well, it will provide you one valuable skill, but if you think about it, we never do one thing at a time since we have to learn how to drive to move to different places, we go to college and attend multiple classes, we go to work and we help thousands of people, we have families, and we have to teach kids of how to do things. In many aspects, we are still students, teachers, etc.

The fact that we have to be open to many new opportunities is because we have to understand that the best way to improve ourselves and to do more is by learning every day.

If we learn new things, we can do as many things as we want every day. We can find new jobs, new friends, new colleges, etc. As an example, I went to college for Web & App Development where I’m expecting to find a job as a Software Developer. However, I have been working in the tech industry for 4 years where I worked in multiple roles as UX Designer, Front-Engineer, QA Automation, Networking Engineer, Technical Support. By having these opportunities, I would love to say that I found what I love to do which is talking to people and solving problems.

Now, I know what is my potential, what I like, what I love, and what I hate. By knowing this, I’m starting to be happier with myself because I know that I can do whatever I want.

Learning how to do whatever you want

If you already have some big knowledge, you will maybe want to learn how to get into that specific place that you want. What I mean by this is that we have to understand all the walls that we can get across in front of us.

My first barrier was my second language “English” since 6 years ago, I didn’t speak, write or even read English. My second barrier was that I didn’t know anyone in this country, I didn’t have a job to keep my finances stable enough. My third barrier was after I started speaking in English because some people try to thread me differently because I had an accent. This created big insecurity for me which cost me 2 years of my life to get over it.

To solve or to find possible solutions to these barriers is to work hard, work for yourself, and find what you love to make sure you can put the right focus and the right effort to overcome any fears, any issues, and to make sure you can start doing more.

Possible Solutions

To work on possible solutions, you will have to see what is the thing that you’re doing wrong. In my case, I would like to say that I didn’t have enough practice with my second language, and what I did was starting communicating with several people only in English. I started to write a lot in English and I started to read more books, and I decided to take some communication classes at college.

I started to call centers as a joke to start practicing even more my English and to start listening to people with a variety of accents. To make sure, I will be able to understand more people.

I started to have more interviews (every week) to see what people will ask me and to know how to respond better to those questions.

I started to listen to music and watching movies only in English. After that, I finally discovered that after 6 months of doing the same, I was able to improve my skills.

Play with the system

How many interviews have you had already? If the answer is none or not enough. I will recommend you start getting random interviews to improve your skills.

Have you change or update your resume? If the answer is not, you will have to start looking into making a change to it. If you don’t know how to write a perfect example, I will recommend you to look up examples on Google, and use templates from Canva. In this way, you can see how engineers have been writing their resumes and how they designed their resumes as well.

If you don’t know what to type on Google, you just have to type “Software Engineer Resume Example” & I bet you will have a thousand results that will give you some ideas.

Some companies will use an internal system that will do a scan, and that will check for keywords. If this is the case, search on LinkedIn for common words for the position that you will apply for and add them to your resume. You will add the skills that you know with black text, and you will add more skills that you don’t know yet with white text to make sure your resume will pass the scan.

Automate the process

Are you tired of applying to different jobs? Now it is time to automate your job hunting. You should create some bots with python, selenium. Cypress, and javascript, etc. In this way, you will apply to thousands of jobs. This will increase your opportunity to find a job.

Be Open Mind

As I said before if you want to find a job, you will have to be open. Even more right now since you can work from anywhere. You can even find a job in one state, and even make more money because of that.

You can find a job in a different country, or you can start other people to develop an idea which will provide you experience and more money. If you are a Software Engineer, you can find a job as a Salesforce Developer, Data Engineer, Automation Engineer, Networking Engineer, Back-end Engineer, Front-End Engineer, Full-Stack Developer, etc.

Keep in your mind that we can find multiple roles in the same field, and you don’t have to feel weird because you are applying to something that you don’t know since the role of an Engineer is to solve problems and to build and help other to develop a better product in less time with the best resources available.

Build your portfolio

Building a portfolio can be difficult because of many reasons. Even more, if you don’t have a lot of experience, but the best advice is to start asking neighbors what you can do for them. In my experience, I started to build websites for small business, I started to design logos for friends, I started to write content for small businesses and for clients that want me to do everything for their websites, I started to build small projects with simple ideas like databases, I started to build automated systems that will help me to find and apply for a job, etc.

Everything that you want to learn, you can try to build it and start designing your portfolio to show your projects. My actual Github account has a variety of projects where I show that I’m capable to read documentation, build systems, and create projects from the ground.

It is important to remember that we don’t have to have a solution for every single idea that we have. The most important thing is to know how the tools work, and how to explain things to others since this is the way that you can show what you know.

Remember

We don’t have to know everything, but we have to try everything to see the outcome and the result to see if it is what we want to do. Keep it up, and you will see that you will find a better job soon!

Where do I find help?

If you need some help, you can contact me at my *LinkedIn account, you can find me on my [Facebook page](facebook.com/madebyuxdev)*, or you can send me a comment here. Please let me know if you have more questions or concerns and I would be more than happy to help you.

*End-Testing Cypress Pipelines| How do I get a job as an engineer? | UX Developer | I am the Engineer that you are looking for | Send Multiple Messages through the Terminal with the iMessage App!*