When the timing isn't right, make your own luck
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Recruitment can so often be about good timing. So what do you do if you find yourself looking for a new job when the market is a tad on the quiet side?
Be present. Online and offline. Make sure you’ve got online profiles set up with all your relevant buzzwords so you can be found by employers. Go to meetups. All of them. (Ok, perhaps just pick 2 or 3 meetups you enjoy and consistently go to them). These don’t have to be exclusively related to what you’re doing now, either. Whatever it is that interests you. Through widening your network you may just meet people who might be able to help you (and you might even have a good time doing it!)
Try new things. It’s great to be an expert in one area and we often advise that people stick to their preferred development language and know (nearly) everything there is to know about it. Having said that, it’s worthwhile playing around with a few different things to make sure you can adapt if a role comes up that is a little outside your commercial skill set. This could be learning something completely different to what you’re doing now like learning a functional programming language, contributing to open source, or perhaps you’ve never built an API or a native mobile app.
Talk to your favourite recruiter. It’s a recruiter’s job to know what’s out there in the job market, even companies that aren’t hiring through them. Your recruiter might also know of particular areas you should be concentrating your search on.
So, when timing doesn’t seem to be on your side, go outside and talk to people. The market is always changing so don’t give up.
