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How I Found a Job as an Engineering Manager Twice: in 2023 and 2024

Recently, a friend asked me how I look for a job. He has became a Head of Engineering, working at a small company where he no longer sees any prospects. He said, there are few job openings available, and those have some strange requirements. If recruiters reach out, it’s mostly about team lead opportunities. The advice I gave him, I adapted and expanded into an article format — and now I’m sharing it with you.

I have something to share because I:

I will tell you how I composed my CV and applied for vacancies. Then I’ll explain how I controlled applications and the contexts of different positions. Next, I’ll give some tips based on the interviews I went through. Along the way, I’ll share other things I encountered during the job search process.

These are very extensive topics — each one could almost be a book. So, I do not claim to provide exhaustive recommendations. For each topic, I list the main ideas I personally use. At the end I’ll provide additional materials if you want to dig deeper.

CV

I’ll start with my positioning and reflecting on the desired position. Then, I will move on to filling out the LinkedIn profile as an extended online version of the CV. Finally, I will separately discuss how I composed a classic one-pager CV.

Positioning

I decided to position myself as an Engineering Manager for product teams, which may include frontend, backend, mobile, QA, and infrastructure engineers. This aligns with my experience at Tinkoff and then at Emerging Travel. My main career has been in Russian IT, and EM corresponds most closely to what is called a Head of Development Department there. Sometimes there is still confusion because Engineering Manager = Team Lead in some companies, but mostly it matches the vision of mid-level manager role.

Your positioning is about between specificity and abstraction. The more specific and narrow it is, the more opportunities you theoretically cut off. This is not a problem if they do not suit you anyway, but you never know for sure what you miss. At the same time, more specific positioning makes responses more targeted and gives others an understanding of what you are interested in.

I was guided by the idea that only small companies might invite me for roles like Engineering Director, Head of Engineering, or CTO. They are likely to invite me even with the positioning of an Engineering Manager. Perhaps you can choose a more flashy positioning by default if startups or early-stage bootstraps are your target companies. I resolved this by creating several one-pager CVs with different positioning to attach the most suitable one to the application.

LinkedIn Profile or other extended online CV

Screenshot of my LinkedIn profile

Everyone knows about LinkedIn. It’s the main international social network for job searching. A well-filled profile will help you quickly build your networkand receive more interesting messages from recruiters.

Cover. I’ve seen many cover pictures where people add their contact information on something abstract. I find this unnecessary as you have plenty of space in your profile and inconvenient since you can only retype this info. I prefer something visually pleasing and minimalist so that it doesn’t distract from the profile itself. Photos where you are a speaker also look great — but not a close shot, so it doesn’t duplicate the profile photo.

Photo. I believe it’s better to use a photo that shows what you look like in real life rather than a passport photo. Therefore, in my photo, I am smiling, sitting with a laptop at the edge of the world, and wearing the same clothes I usually wear. The face should be clearly visible, and there should be no distractions nor other people. Ideally, the photo should have a monotone background, but no one has taken a fresh photo of that kind that I’d like :D

Headline. Briefly indicate your positioning. It’s great if it significantly distinguishes you in the contact list and helps others understand what you do.

Contact information. It is said that recruiters from large or old-fashioned companies still sometimes call via mobile. I’ve never experienced this — everyone contacted me via email or Telegram. However, I still provided an up-to-date number from which I can comfortably receive international calls.

Location. I also indicated where I am located — in case of a call, it suggests convenient time zones. It also gives an idea of where I will be working remotely, the kind of permit I have or where I might need to relocate from. I’ve heard advice to indicate the location where you primarily want to get a job, even if you are not there now and do not have the necessary permit. This should help with ranking algorithms on the social network and passing HR filters. It’s up to you to experiment here.

About. Again, start with the positioning or title. Begin indicating the Senior level if you have reached it somewhere. However, the levels in the target company may differ significantly, so be prepared for that.

Next, highlight skills, principles, and interests that describes you as a professional. If you can fix a broken CI without yelling, write that. Or that you put yourself in the user’s shoes. Or that you seek a balance between pragmatism and perfectionism. These are some popular stamps, but you still can combine them to describe yourself.

Reading this section, a hiring manager should say, “Yes, this is the person we need,” so don’t be afraid to be specific. Yes, this also increases the probability that someone might filter out your resume, but I think this is for the best — you won’t end up in the wrong company.

The section can be filled out with recent feedback or performance reviews. If someone wrote something constructive to you, it’s about your strengths and limitations, use it.

For technologies, leave those you know how to work with and would like to continue working with.

Experience. List all your jobs and what you did there. If you have been in the profession for a long time, you can shorten early experiences to one line. For the rest, fill in your achievements. The STAR method can help with this:

After the work experience section, list the education you have. Often it doesn’t significantly affect, but there are situations when it is:

Licenses and certifications. I add all that have online certs. If the hiring manager knows the school, it will be a plus. If not — at least it shows how interested you are in self-improvement. For some positions, vendor certificates are also valuable, like Google Cloud Engineer if the position involves working with it. There are also notable organizations that issue valuable certificates, like the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

Skills endorsements and recommendations. They say they don’t matter because they are somewhat devalued on LinkedIn. However, I still write recommendations for my former colleagues and collect them. This can shorten the reference collection stage during interviews. And skills can be helpful for rankings and applications inside LinkedIn.

If you can validate your profile, you should take advantage of it. While I am writing this article, I am getting a new Serbian ID, so I don’t yet have a checkmark myself, hah.

A couple of editing tips:

Most of the advice above is applicable if you want to create a resume on another platform, a personal website, or publish a Notion page.

As a reference I’ll also share a couple of my friends’ profiles I find great:

One-pager PDF

Screenshot of my one-pager CV in Figma

That’s an “offline” version of your CV you attach to emails or other applications. It’s great if everything fits on an A4 page because it saves time for the recruiter and hiring manager, and in fact no one looks further. However, don’t make it too cramped — it’s better to fill out a ready-made template at the default scale. If it turns out to be a couple of pages, that’s fine.

The format itself is similar to the online one: contacts, about, experience, education.

In the contact section, also include location, phone number, email, and a link to LinkedIn, a personal site, a portfolio, or GitHub — if you have something to show. Even better, include a link to a specific, most representative project.

For the rest, keep it brief and leave the details for the online profile — those interested will read it. I recommend not to add a cover, as it takes up space and doesn’t provide useful information. I also recommend not add a photo because it doesn’t align with some companies’ diversity policies, and recruiters will have to remove them. Besides, the photo can always be viewed on social media.

I used Wonsulting AI to create my resume because it has a large selection of templates and you can use a built-in advisor. Later, I adjusted the block positions and redesigned a similar CV in Figma.

After you’ve build and downloaded your one-pager PDF, don’t forget to compress it in any suitable tool. It’s kinda good manner. Also, you’d better name it as “CV-{Full-Name}-{Position}.pdf” to ease recruiter’s life.

Reviewing Feedback

After publishing, it’s important to gather feedback and iteratively improve your profile and resume. You can ask:

Comments may be controversial. I personally listen to those that are repeated from different people, that I deeply understand, or there I subjectively like the result when applied.

As a result, we’ve created a non-zero probability that HR will contact us. We have also prepared materials for our own applications. Just remember to update your profile and one-pager whenever there is something new meaningful to add.

Vacancies

I search for vacancies through various sources: social networks, communities, newsletters, and job sites. Let’s go through each one.

Social Networks

Let’s go back to LinkedIn. The larger your network, the higher the chance of receiving a relevant offer from a recruiter. Popular profiles also receive more preference when applying for jobs. Actively growing your network to 500 contacts is worthwhile, as LinkedIn hides the exact number beyond that under a 500+ label.

In my profile, I have 880 connections. Initially, I added friends, classmates, and university fellows. Then I moved on to former and current colleagues. Once I reached around 100 connections, people started adding me themself. I connected with those who didn’t seem like spam or fake profiles. When I actively started job searching, I began adding those I interacted with during the hiring process.

There are a couple of less obvious social networks where I invested less than I should: GitHub and Medium. Employers highly value a strong GitHub profile when they come across it. GitHub also allows you to find great projects and establish initial contacts, which can later turn into job offers. Here are some basic tips, though:

As for Medium, it’s a well-known platform for sharing thoughts and ideas about management and technology. Company blogs and their ambassadors are also common here, and besides functions for creating and distributing content, there are social networking features. I won’t go into how to maintain a technical blog and the benefits it can bring — instead, I recommend this email course and an article by the creator of refactoring.fm. As alternative platforms, I know Substack and DevTo.

For a Russian-speaking audience, Habr is an alternative to Medium. I have only published one article there, so I can’t say much. But a strong profile on Habr is useful because it has its own job site.

Russian-speaking audiences might also be interested in Telegram channels. I personally find interesting positions in @jobfortm, which is run by the New HR agency. You can look for other channels using keywords related to the desired position.

Any participation in professional or semi-professional communities also helps grow your network.

Communities

In addition to strengthening your profile, communities can provide direct benefits. Friends and former colleagues share job opportunities at their companies. You can also ask about opportunities yourself in chats or during meetings.

Communities can also help you find someone who can refer you to a position within their company, which we’ll discuss in more detail in the section on applications.

I belong to the English-speaking community refactoring.fm and the following Russian-speaking communities:

It’s hard for me to suggest something else specific and international, but there are often communities for:

It’s worth checking if there are any communities you can already join to find a job. Or consider doing something to gain access to such a community.

Newsletters

I subscribe to several newsletters whose authors publish open positions:

These authors also curate talent pools on Pallet. There, you should set up your profile similarly to LinkedIn and update it, perhaps slightly less frequently.

Job Boards

There are two main categories here: aggregators and company websites. I rarely use aggregators myself, but I’ll still list them:

Using company websites is trickier. When I was actively looking for a job, I created a long list of companies I would like to work for.

Screenshot of Google Sheet with a long list of a companies where I’ve looked for positions

To do this, I wrote down a list of criteria that are important to me, what they mean in detail, and what compromises I am willing to make:

After that, I started recalling all the companies whose products I use or just know and that may fit the above criteria, and added them to the list. Then I went through the entire list and searched for suitable positions on the career websites of these companies. Every two weeks, I reviewed the websites where I hadn’t found a suitable position, if they opened one.

If there are many vacancies, you can divide companies into target and non-target ones and start with the latter for practice. They are useful for training, building confidence, and maybe getting a Plan B offer. With target companies, it’s worth putting in more effort: customing applications, seeking contacts, googling questions and correct answers for the specific company’s interview process, and all that stuff.

Applications

Screenshot of a Google Sheet with my applications and statuses

I started recording all applications: when and with whom I contacted, what we discussed, and what’s the status. For interactions that went beyond initial call with recruiters, I kept notes. This helped a lot in not having to keep the context in mind and being able to restore it in a few minutes when needed. It also prevented me from repeating questions and allowed me to use each communication to specify the information about the company, team, and position.

When I apply on my own, I try to find someone who can refer me. Even with referrals, they might ignore me, but without them, the likelihood of being ignored is even higher. When I contact someone — recruiters, interviewers — I add them to my social networks. You can do this even before the interview — it demonstrates interest and some level of preparation 🙂

My statistics: in the first round, over 3 months, I contacted 20 companies. Of these, 5 contacted me themselves, and I applied to the remaining 15: 6 with a referral and 9 cold applications. With 10 companies, I progressed to calls with recruiters, and with 4 of them, I moved on to the next stages. As a result, I received one offer that suited me.

In the second round, over one and a half months, I contacted 7 companies. Of these, 3 reached out to me, and I applied to the remaining 4: 2 with a referral and 2 cold applications. With 3 companies, I had calls with recruiters and progressed to the next stages. As a result, I received one offer, turned it down, then improved the terms and accepted it.

To apply effectively and stand out, it helps to carefully read the job description and use what’s already there.

Customing CV for Specific Positions

This is a labor-intensive approach that I don’t use frequently. The simplest step here is to update the job title in your CV to exactly match the one listed in the job posting. You can go further by filtering out the achievements and technologies that are most relevant to the position. A resume scanner tool can help with this. LinkedIn Premium has a built-in one, and I’ve also used Cultivated Culture. Both tools provide suggestions you can use before applying.

Writing the Cover Letter

Cover letters are rarely required, but if you are applying cold, your application essentially becomes the cover letter. It’s also very useful if you’re writing to a company where you haven’t found a suitable open position. Just saying “please consider me as a candidate” isn’t enough. Ideally, write directly to someone in HR or a manager in the team you’d like to work with. Explain why are you writing, how can you be useful, and what do you want.

Mention how you heard about the company, what attracts you to the company and the position, how your bio and experience resonates with the company’s mission and job responsibilities, your motivation. To check if your letter is convincing, ask yourself “so what?” for each point. If there’s a good answer on it, edit the letter.

Here’s how I write a cover letter using an example from the Director of Engineering position at Synthesia. I was rejected for this position, but I received a personalized response instead of a default rejection, which is already something these days! My letter was:

Application to the Director of Engineering position

Hey!

My name’s Vladimir. I’ve just seen your job description and was really impressed. Thank you for such a simple, clear, and yet detailed portrait.

I admire the operational model you describe: focusing on delivery and making balanced decisions along the way instead of over-managing and building a lot of rituals. I believe that approach is scalable with 100 engineers and beyond.

I think I might be useful as a Director of Engineering as you describe it, so I’d like to apply for this position. Yet, I’m not the perfect candidate:
— I started my career as a manager. Yet I have some hands-on Node.js experience and proven system design skills and achievements.
 — I’ve been working in companies with a wide range of products. Yet I’ve contributed to products that are the main source of selling ads or services or the main tools employees work with.
— I’ve never managed teams of over 75 engineers. Yet I’ve grown teams from 12 to 50 engineers in 2.5 years or from 15 to 30 engineers in half a year. I also built organizational charts and processes that were later successfully scaled up to 80 employees as they were.

In other points, I believe I suit the requirements well enough:
— I always study and experiment with engineering practices. I also conducted customer development interviews with end users to form hypotheses on how to technically improve the product I was working on.
 — I use ADR and RFC myself to find balanced technical solutions and foster that culture among my reports.
— I set up and optimized delivery processes, measured, and worked with delivery metrics.
— For the last half a year, I’ve hired 4 software engineers and 2 Go team leaders myself, set up hiring processes to interview system architects and other engineering managers, conducted more than 50 system design, management, and fit-interviews to hire these positions.

I’ve also attached my one-pager CV, which better covers my experience. Here’s my LinkedIn with even more details of my career.

I’d be glad to discuss further details regarding this position. But no problem if not. As I said, I really appreciate the way you’ve described this position and the processes you follow. I believe that’s important for the industry as a whole.

Good luck with your business and hiring for that position!

Best regards,
Vladimir Lazarev

What do I do here:

  1. Clearly state what I’m applying for.
  2. Highlight what caught my attention in the job description. Here, it’s the format of the job description and lightweight processes. This is sincere. If nothing genuinely catches your attention, maybe you shouldn’t apply.
  3. Copy-paste points from the job listing, divide them into two categories, and address each. I start with the points where I don’t perfectly match or don’t fit ideally. Comment on how close I am to the requirements, how I’ll handle mismatches, or why I decided to apply despite them.
  4. Then comment on the points where I do match. Sometimes even with a surplus, and I point that out.
  5. Invite discussion but explicitly allow to decline without guilt. Also offer to stay in touch even if it doesn’t work out this time.

Interviews

Screenshot of a note from an interview

When it comes to interviews, I take notes at every stage. Later, I try to transfer these notes from paper to Notion, though I often get lazy about it. When dealing with multiple stages and several companies in parallel, notes are extremely helpful for not keeping the context in mind but quickly refreshing it before the next interview. Each document ends up with this structure:

I treat every interview as practice: with recruiters — to master my elevator pitch and company-related questions; technical interviews — to recap my skills. I join the interview with a thought that I’ve already failed it. Strangely enough, this helps me to relax, makes it easier to cope with failure if it does happen, and allows me to find moments that will help me succeed in the next interview.

I won’t go into detail about how I prepared for and passed each stage. Here’s the variety of stages I encountered:

For each stage, you can find specific materials on how to prepare and practice.

In most cases, I interacted with Russian-speaking companies. With international companies, I simply switched to English, and everything went okay. I focused more on “I” instead of “We” and was even more polite.

Reverse Questions

I prepared a standard checklist of questions and copied it into the notes for each company. When there was time left during interviews, I would go through it from top to bottom. I checked if the interviewer could answer the question, and if so, I asked it. If I had already found the answer on the website, in the job description, or during another interview, I checked it off and noted it down to avoid repetition.

Always ask:

Ask small companies:

Ask corporations:

These questions show your interest and seniority. At each stage of communication, new questions may arise, which should be added to the company’s notes.

Offer

When it comes to receiving a job offer, there are several key components to evaluate and negotiate:

  1. Salary. This is your monthly gross aka pre-tax income. It’s crucial to calculate this accurately and base your lifestyle planning on this figure alone, as it’s the most reliable form of compensation.
  2. Bonuses. These can be annual, quarterly, project-based, or sign-on bonuses. Bonuses are not always guaranteed, so they are considered more risky compared to a fixed salary.
  3. Stock options or shares. Stocks can usually only be sold during trading windows, and options are a promise to sell shares in the future at a price set today. They are a form of lottery — you might win a lot or nothing at all.
  4. Paid leave and sick days. The number of paid vacation days and the terms for sick leave are important for work-life balance and vary depending on the local laws.
  5. Other benefits. This can include everything from gym memberships to company cars. Also consider the social package, pension contributions, insurance, and other perks.
  6. Relocation assistance. This might be in the form of a monetary bonus or a service to help with moving.
  7. Family benefits: Some companies extend perks to family members or partners. This can include health insurance, access to company facilities, etc.
  8. Contract duration. The length of the contract can affect job security, future planning and obtaining residence when moving to another country.

There is an option to ask about and negotiate each of these options.

For large companies, you can find information on platforms like Glassdoor, levels.fyi, or Comparably. If there’s no specific data about a company, look for compensation details for similar roles in the close location and industry. Or on a similar role and yeras of experience. This will help establish a baseline for your negotiations.

Once you have a baseline, you can present this as your expectation, or you can inflate it to a level you’re comfortable stating confidently. It’s normal for the final offer to be lower than your initial ask but higher than the baseline and your current income. Here’s how I handle the discomfort of this process:

  1. Understand the foundation. Compensation is the basis of your relationship with your employer. It’s the company’s responsibility to make sure the business model suits your desired salary. Your job is to contribute effectively to justify this.
  2. Adopt a capitalist mindset. Maximize your benefit just as the employer does. There’s no reason not to.
  3. Consider internal salary limits. Hiring salaries are often higher than internal ones. You don’t want to look for a new job soon just for a salary bump or feel bad about not doing so.

I am transparent about my expectations. However, at the offer stage, I can ask for more than I initially mentioned. Companies are likely willing to negotiate rather than restart the hiring process. You can justify this by saying you’ve consulted with your partner, family, or advisor — or realized the true value of the role and responsibilities. Or you can promise to drop all the other interviews with other companies and accept the offer right away.

Negotiating the terms of an offer is a normal part of the process, and you should prepare for it. The most important thing that helps me is not feeling desperate. I discuss the offer with the mindset that I will decline it and keep looking. The key is to be genuinely ready to do that. If the offer meets my minimum criteria in all key aspects, I usually accept it within a day or two. If not, let’s discuss the due dates.

Usually, the recruiter will mention a due date, when they would like a decision on the offer. Or you agree on a timeline together, in which case it is better to ask for a week at least. If you are prepared for the possibility that the offer might be withdrawn, this is another opportunity to negotiate for more. For example, you could miss the agreed date, wait for recruiter to contact you, and then explain that you are hesitating because of the compensation level. If no one contacts you within a few days, you can reach out yourself: apologize for missing the deadline and decline with the same explanation.

Of course, the ideal situation is to align multiple offers within the same week. But that has never worked out for me, so I rely on minimal and sufficient conditions.

What’s Next

I left out some topics, including:

Here are some additional recommendations on the topic:

Honestly, it makes me sad to see the efforts required just to find a decent job. These efforts could be spent on something truly useful for employers, clients, or yourself. Not to mention the resources spent preparing for technical and behavioural interviews. But since I’ve gone through it all myself, I decided to share my experiences. I’ll save my thoughts on the ideal hiring process for another time.

If you found this article helpful, please show your support by clapping, sharing it with your friends or colleagues, and subscribing to receive notifications for my new posts.

If you want to talk on managing engineering teams or departments, designing systems, or improving your technical product, email me at laidrivm@gmail.com or message me on https://t.me/laidrivm.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-lazarev/.

Peace!