Show Notes
Coding Chats episode 43 - Guy Allen and John Crickett discuss how software engineers can effectively work with recruiters to find a job. They explore the importance of building relationships, understanding different types of recruiters, crafting an effective CV, leveraging AI in job applications, and maximizing LinkedIn for job searches. The discussion emphasizes empathy, visibility, and the need for clear communication in the recruitment process.
Chapters 00:00 Building Relationships with Recruiters 04:22 Understanding Different Types of Recruiters 12:13 Crafting an Effective CV19:45 The Role of AI in Job Applications 21:49 Leveraging LinkedIn for Job Search
Guy's Links: https://www.linkedin.com/company/futura-talent/ https://futura-talent.com/
John's Links: John's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett/ John’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johncrickett John's Twitter: https://x.com/johncrickett John's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.social
Check out John's software engineering related newsletters: Coding Challenges: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/ which shares real-world project ideas that you can use to level up your coding skills.
Developing Skills: https://read.developingskills.fyi/ covering everything from system design to soft skills, helping them progress their career from junior to staff+ or for those that want onto a management track.
Takeaways Building relationships with recruiters is crucial for candidates. Candidates should follow up on applications to stand out. Empathy towards recruiters can improve communication. Tailor applications for different types of recruiters. Providing clear context in CVs is essential. Candidates should highlight their achievements and impact. AI can assist in job applications if used wisely. A detailed LinkedIn profile increases visibility to recruiters. Networking on LinkedIn can enhance job search opportunities. Understanding the recruitment market dynamics is important.
More from Coding Chats
Coding Chats Episode 83 - In this episode, VB from OpenAI’s developer experience team explains why he thinks plan mode is obsolete and how coding agents have shifted from step-by-step instructions to outcome-driven, long-running work. We cover how to write a good agents.md, why tests still matter when agents write the code, spec-driven development, and why cloud agents may be the future of dev tooling.
Coding Chats Episode 82 - John talks with Dave Westgarth, head of delivery at a Databricks consultancy. Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery manager, and whether either needs to be technical.They also look at how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, John argues there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.
Coding Chats Episode 81 - Ben Howdle talks to John Crickett about being a first time CTO in a start-up. Ben, author of The First CTO, shares what changes when you move from building technology to leading a technical team: the pressure, the trade-offs, and the realization that writing code is only part of the job.Drawing on startup experience and lessons learned the hard way, Ben discusses how to balance quality against runway, manage people, and communicate technical decisions in terms that founders and other non-technical stakeholders can understand. He also explores why resourcefulness, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity matter so much—and why CTOs often spend more time selling ideas than they expect.Whether you’re stepping into your first CTO role or leading a technical team at an early-stage company, this conversation offers candid insights into the realities of technical leadership.
Coding Chats Episode 80 - start-up advisor Alexander Berkovich shares his expertise on building successful start-ups, hiring strategies, CTO roles, and the importance of communication between technical and business teams. Discover practical tips for navigating the challenges of early-stage companies and how to align technical excellence with business goals.
Coding Chats Episode 79 - Richmond Alake, Director of AI Developer Experience at Oracle, joins John to discuss agent memory — how AI agents store, retrieve, and adapt to information. He argues that developers building memory on flat files are naively reinventing the database, and that once you factor in concurrency, security, and scalability, a proper database is inevitable. The conversation covers the full memory stack and how Oracle's AI database keeps embeddings and data together without shipping sensitive information to external providers.