What B2B sales taught me about engineering jobs
I love the energy students bring to a college town. Now that the holidays are over and graduation is around the corner, many join in the local professional groups to network. It’s exciting to see them show up and ask about landing their first “tech job.”1 🐣
Relying on “spray and pray” job applications wastes time that’s needed to finish the school year strong. While job boards, resume tips, and other resources are helpful, let’s focus on targeting your efforts effectively. This is a skillset beyond what you learn as an engineer. Here’s what I wish I had understood earlier in my career:
😇 Every job is a sales job. 😇
💸 Finding a job is selling you. 💸
It’s common for engineers to have some distaste for the business side of things. With graduation approaching, let’s walk through the process of selling you with a common sales methodology called “MEDDPICC”. Each letter stands for something to understand throughout the enterprise buying job search journey.
M - metrics
M is for metrics, the things you can measure. You’re probably aware of many numbers. The problem is that the ones I see on résumés I review aren’t typically compelling. While there are lots of numbers to discuss, keep in mind the following advice:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-Mark Twain2
There are two frequent misunderstandings about metrics and looking for work.
Impact metrics
Your résumé, and any public presence, is sales collateral on a multi million dollar investment - you! Be sure to cover the basics of tidying these up, removing complex formatting, double-checking the spelling and grammar, etc. Then highlight the metrics that are relevant to the role you’re applying to. There’s a wide range of roles that are “in tech” and they don’t all care about the same things.
Here are a few examples of questionable metrics from résumés I’ve reviewed lately.
- Overall college GPA for someone who was years past getting out of college.
- Number of followers or post impressions on Twitch/LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. may be important for developer relations, but I’m not sure how relevant it is for an entry level software engineering role.
- Leetcode/similar scores for senior roles. These mean increasingly little in the age of AI solving trivial programming challenges. In my experience, junior roles all have their own “challenge platform” and with few exceptions these aren’t meaningful numbers.
- Your GitHub commit history graph. It’s utterly meaningless and easily gamed. However, definitely include relevant open source contributions because it’s an easy way to look at how you collaborate with others asynchronously and the quality of code you can write. Links to pull requests, projects you maintain, etc. are usually relevant to software engineering.
image courtesy of gelstudios/gitfiti: abusing github commit history for the lulz
The money part
What are you worth? Do you have some numbers to prove it?
This has gotten easier over time with the wider publication of salary bands, platforms like levels.fyi or repvue.com , and community chats around compensation (think Slack workspaces, tech forums, etc.) Many larger companies have only-halfway-secret spreadsheets of compensation data to help you benchmark offers as well. Networking has perks. 🕵🏻♀️
How your potential compensation is structured is critical to understand and compare options against each other. Salary, stock or options, bonus, commissions, benefits, and more each take a long time to understand fully. You should ask at some point (reasonably early on) in the process what the range is and comprehend the total compensation package.
E - economic buyer
Who’s making the decision? You want to know this person/people because ultimately, they’re the one who decides whether or not to hire you.
In bigger companies or in high growth situations, this isn’t always going to be the manager on your team. It could be another manager on a similar team in a hiring rotation. Hiring takes a lot of time. It isn’t uncommon to bundle this work together so others can continue to build the things that drive the business forward.
In smaller teams or slower-growing situations, this is probably someone in the leadership chain of that position. You can be much closer to hiring when there are only a few openings versus many roles to fill.
D - decision criteria
I think job descriptions are “dream boyfriend lists” of way too many things and not focusing on the more important parts … again, just my opinion.
Some of the things on that list are way more negotiable than others - but which ones? During high-growth situations, there are some very silly incentives to get butts in seats and you may have more leverage than you think.
Just ask the question. You may be surprised by the answer to a quick question like “There’s a lot in this list. What’s the most important skill here?”
The other part of this question is all about you. What do you want? What are you optimizing for? Remote work? Compensation? A great exit opportunity (the brand name in your work history, the consulting connections, and other alumni perks)? There’s a whole list of things and having put a bit of thought into it up front helps you target better things in the time you have to spend on it.
D - decision process
How is this decision getting made? Always ask next steps and when to expect to hear back.
Good tidbits of info to find out here is if there are any other candidates being considered or if the req is possibly not going to be filled. This question is closely related to “decision criteria” and sometimes gets lumped in, but with respect to hiring, understanding how that process is going to go gives you insight into timelines, who you’ll talk to, and what they want to see from you.
P - paper process
Paperwork is important, too. Hiring follows a specific storyline here, looking mostly like this:
- Some application of some sort
- Recruiter screen
- Hiring manager screen
- Some other people/tests/something
- Some capstone/panel
- … wait …
- Hiring manager gives good news
- Recruiter talks money
- Papers to sign, etc.
- Background checks, I-9 paperwork, and more.
- … wait for it …
- Start!
Understand this process, whatever it’s going to look like for you and the company. As early as the recruiter screen, ask what the process looks like. It’s good to know and helps you figure out timelines.
I - identify pain
Why is this job open?
Bigger companies are always hiring. They have mature “entry/junior” hiring programs. Some are phenomenal, allowing you to experience a few teams before settling into one. Some set you up with mentors or guides that are more for company or engineering feedback, outside of your direct manager. You, in particular, are probably not solving any one problem.
This is increasingly important to know as you talk to smaller companies and/or specialize in something. Smaller companies or teams have fewer roles and are more likely to be hiring for a specific need. Likewise, if you have deep knowledge or experience, you’re more likely to be solving that exact problem because you’ve done it before.
Knowing why the job is open helps you highlight classes or projects that’d be relevant to this job at this company.
C - champion
In a real “sell a product” arrangement, this is the person who really wants to buy the product - going to someone with purchasing power, making the budget request, etc. In a job search, this is the person who really wants to hire you. The hiring manager should like your qualifications for this role, at least.
This hopefully is more people too. For example, if you have an internal referral, will they speak well of you? At the entry-career level, this could be a connection with a classmate or a professor with ties to industry. Once you’ve been around for a few years, this could be a former coworker or manager. Either way, knowing who would want this role to be filled is helpful.
C - competition
Again, less relevant in the context of a job search. In sales, it’s more about understanding the other alternatives the buyer has to your product. There are other candidates (internal or external), doing nothing or leaving it empty is an option, or more.
Don’t sweat this one.
Worrying in detail about competition is a fast pass to nowhere great - imposter syndrome, burnout, jealousy against imaginary opponents, etc. Instead, focus on finding more opportunities. 💖
Just fscking ask
Just ask the questions. Stop making it weird.
Your time has value. While it may be easier now to “spray and pray” hundreds of applications with semi-automated tooling, it still doesn’t account for the time you spend
- finding the roles to apply to
- customizing your résumé and cover letter
- preparing for interviews
- interviewing
- negotiating offers
- and all the other things we went over
Even if you don’t have all of these abbreviations covered, having some structure to use your time effectively and hunt for likely opportunities is a good thing.
This is a financial arrangement. You are expected to talk about money and value, even when those two aren’t always the same thing.
This is “what B2B sales taught me” and I’m embarrassed by how awkward these conversations went for me as an engineer. Don’t be me. Be smarter. 🤑
More reading
- Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued - literally the best salary negotiation article for tech folks I’ve ever read.
- The Business 2023 is another fantastic piece on the negotiation steps during an offer.
- Advice for breaking into InfoSec is from a friend in the industry who leads and builds world-class technical teams. Much of his advice here is equally true of programming, devops roles, and so much more.
- Why online identities are smart career moves breaks down why you should have a reputation for professional competence and how to do it well.
Footnotes
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Even when they scoff at a sales person showing up at the same tech networking event 🙄 … the “engineering superiority complex” of engineering undergrads is petty and toxic. As someone who was that stereotype as an undergrad and got thoroughly humbled by real life. I see you and hope work life is nicer to you. 🤭 ↩
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Mark Twain is definitely credited for making it popular in the US, even if the origins are unclear. More about this quote on Wikipedia . ↩