In early 2006, I was approaching graduation and looking for my first proper job in IT. It was surprisingly difficult.
I had worked during my studies, but mostly in various odd jobs. I had not managed to land anything in my own field. Now I was almost a Master of Science with an IT-related degree, which sounded reasonably employable on paper. The problem was that my professional profile was rather generic.
I knew one thing: coding did not interest me. So, in applications, I tried to explain that I would perhaps like to do requirements work, analysis, or something else involving people. Not exactly a laser-focused career plan.
I also did not really know what I was particularly good at. From an employer’s perspective, I was one almost-graduated IT professional among many others. There were probably enough of us in the market.
Eventually, I got a job at the university. (I have written more about that part of my career here.)
Two years later, the same job market felt quite different. I had not become dramatically more experienced, but I had become much easier to understand.
Becoming Less Generic
In 2008, I moved from the university to Accenture and started my career in consulting.
During my two years at the university, I had worked in an enterprise architecture research project. I knew practically nothing about consulting, but at least I knew enterprise architecture in theory. I had also interviewed people in companies as part of the research and learned to write reasonably well.
And enterprise architecture happened to be in demand at the time.
I applied for an open position specifically as an enterprise architecture consultant. At the time, enterprise architecture was still a relatively new field in Finland. There were not that many people around with even theoretical knowledge of the subject.
The setup was very different from my job search two years earlier. I was no longer trying to convince an employer that I was generally smart, had a relevant degree, and could probably be useful in some vaguely defined IT role. There was now a specific need, and I had at least some relevant knowledge and experience for it.
This was probably one of the most important changes in my career. I had become easier to understand.
Instead of being someone who could perhaps do something in IT, I was becoming someone who knows enterprise architecture.
Of course, I was still a junior consultant. Knowing the theory of enterprise architecture and being able to sell and deliver consulting work to a demanding client are slightly different things. I had a lot to learn.
But getting through the door had become easier because there was a clearer reason to hire me.
Getting Hired Based on Actual Work
Five years of consulting changed the situation again. In early 2013, I joined a small Finnish enterprise architecture consultancy called Coala. I did not get there through a carefully optimized application or a heroic performance in a recruitment process.
After an evening event with people from a former client, one of their former representatives asked me to join. We had worked together several years earlier. He knew how I worked, apparently remembered me positively, and had since become one of the founders of Coala, which was only about a year old at the time.
People often say that employers will not come knocking on your door. In this case, it came reasonably close.
This was a different type of job search again. When looking for my first jobs, I had tried to show that I might be useful. When I joined Accenture, I had a specific skill that matched a specific need. Now someone had actually seen me work and wanted to hire me based on that experience.
That is a major difference. A CV is basically a set of claims about yourself. References make those claims more credible. But someone who has worked with you for months already has much better information.
This is also why I have become somewhat skeptical about networking as a separate activity. Some of the most useful professional connections are simply people you have worked with and left a good impression on.
Choosing the Employer More Carefully
My latest employer change in 2022 was different again. By that time, I had already written, among other things, a book about getting a job in IT consulting. That created a slightly awkward situation: I now had to see whether I actually believed my own advice.
The basic idea in the book was to first understand what you want, learn about different employers, create a shortlist, and only then start applying. In other words, job search should include quite a lot of choosing on the applicant’s side as well. So that is what I did.
I mapped potential employers, used my network, and made only a few targeted applications. Enterprise architecture consulting is not exactly a mass market, but that matters less when you are looking at a carefully selected group of employers. I also looked quite carefully at the companies themselves. For the position I eventually took at CGI, I got a recommendation from someone I knew.
By that point, the situation had almost turned upside down. I had a fairly good idea of what I could do and what kind of work I wanted. I was already employed. I did not have to find a job. I wanted to find a job that was sufficiently better or more interesting than the one I already had. That gives you a rather different mindset.
You start paying much more attention to what the employer actually offers, who you would work with, what the role really contains, and how the company operates.
Even the recruitment process itself becomes useful information. During the job search, I encountered IT companies that took more than a month to make the first contact, companies that simply never replied, and even one that ghosted me after several interviews. CGI, in comparison, had the best recruitment process of the companies I dealt with.
A bad recruitment process does not necessarily mean that the company itself is terrible. Large organizations in particular can have surprisingly disconnected processes. Still, when you have alternatives, you start noticing these things.
The Job Search Changes in Stages
Looking back, my own job searches have gone through a fairly clear progression.
At first, I was trying to find someone willing to choose me.
A little later, employers were looking for specific expertise that I happened to have.
After enough work experience, some people already knew what I could do. Instead of evaluating me from a CV and a few interviews, they had actual evidence.
Eventually, I reached a point where I could spend almost as much effort evaluating the employer as the employer spent evaluating me.
This is, of course, partly what seniority does. A person with 15 years of relevant experience has more evidence to show than someone applying for their first job. There is no clever LinkedIn trick that removes this difference.
But I think there is more to it than simply accumulating years. You can spend 15 years becoming very experienced at something that few employers understand or need. You can also remain difficult to categorize. Experience helps, but the market still has to understand what to do with you.
My job search became much easier when my profile became more specific.
A Few Practical Job Search Rules
My own job searches have changed a lot over the years, but a few principles have remained useful. Most of them are fairly simple. But that does not necessarily make them easy to follow.
Make Yourself Easy to Understand
Especially as an expert, it helps if people can quickly understand what you are good at. You do not need to limit yourself to one microscopic specialty for the rest of your career. I certainly have not. I have worked with different kinds of architecture, strategy, IT development, and consulting assignments.
Still, people need some reasonably simple way to remember you. For me, enterprise architecture became that thing. It gave employers and clients an easy answer to the question: Why this person?
“Experienced IT professional” may be technically accurate, but it does not help much when there are plenty of people with similar education and years of experience. A more specific expertise does. The specialty can also change during your career. What matters is that at least part of your experience connects clearly to a problem somebody actually wants solved.
Turn Your Work Into Evidence
Do work that makes people want to work with you again. This sounds almost insultingly obvious, but it has probably helped my career more than any job-search technique.
Clients have asked me back into new assignments, former clients have recommended me, and one eventually offered me a job. In consulting, credibility accumulates through actual work. Someone who has already seen you solve problems, deliver what you promised, and behave reasonably professionally has much less uncertainty about hiring you again.
Your current job is therefore also part of your future job search, even when you are not looking for anything. Good work leaves behind something more useful than another line in the CV: people who know what you can actually do.
Search Narrower, Not Wider
Once you have some experience and know roughly what you want, there is little reason to optimize job search for the number of applications. I would rather map the market first and create a shortlist.
Which organizations could actually offer the kind of work you want? Which of them fit your preferences? Who do you know there? What can you learn about the team, managers, clients, ways of working, and compensation before applying?
Different employers can offer very different working lives even when the job titles look almost identical. Ten well-considered companies are probably more useful than a hundred found through increasingly desperate scrolling through job ads. That is especially true if you already have a perfectly acceptable job.
Use the Network You Already Have
Networking does not have to mean networking events. Some of the strongest professional connections in my own career have simply come from working with clients and colleagues. If somebody has seen you do good work for months, that connection is usually more useful than exchanging business cards with 50 strangers.
I would also interpret “network” quite widely. Former colleagues and clients are obvious, but friends, people from hobbies, old study contacts, and family can also know something useful.
My recommendation to CGI came from a flying friend. We happened to have lunch at an airfield and talked about my job search. He mentioned that he worked at CGI, told me a bit about the company, and said there was enterprise architecture work there. CGI had not even been on my original shortlist. He then offered to recommend me. There was no networking strategy behind it. We were just having lunch.
That is probably my preferred form of networking anyway: know people through normal life, talk about what you do, and help each other when there is a reason to.
Use the Ability to Say No
Job search becomes quite different when you can walk away. That does not require enough money to retire or recruiters fighting outside your front door. It simply means that your current situation is good enough that a new job has to offer some real improvement.
That lets you look beyond the title and salary. What would the actual work be? Who would you work for? Would you like to deal with this person every week? Why is the position open? How does the company treat candidates during recruitment? Does the whole thing still sound attractive after you have learned a bit more about it?
You can also decide that an interesting company is simply not interesting enough.
The employer is making a choice, but so are you. The further my career has progressed, the more important that second part has become.
From Getting Picked to Picking
Eventually, the biggest question changed from How do I convince this company to hire me? to Do I actually want to work there?
You cannot skip directly to that stage. It takes some combination of expertise, experience, reputation, and a useful network. A bit of luck with choosing a growing specialty helps too—preferably one that is niche enough to make you distinctive, but not so niche that nobody is hiring for it.
But you can move in that direction. Become easier to understand. Do work people remember positively. Keep in touch with the people you meet along the way. And when you have enough options, use them.
Being able to say no to a job may eventually become one of your best job-search advantages.
🏗️ Also Into Enterprise Architecture?
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👨💻About the Author
Eetu Niemi is an enterprise architect, consultant, and author.
Follow him elsewhere: Homepage | LinkedIn | Substack (enterprise architecture ) | Medium (writing) | Homepage (FI)
Books: Enterprise Architecture | The Senior Expert Career Playbook | Technology Consultant Fast Track | Successful Technology Consulting | Kokonaisarkkitehtuuri (FI) | Pohjoisen tie (FI) | Little Cthulhu’s Breakfast Time
Web resources: Enterprise Architecture Info Package (FI)
My first job in London, in 2004, was on the reception desk of a small consultancy, because it was the only vacancy that didn't ask for British experience. Every job after that came through someone who'd watched me do the one before. The picking stage you describe arrived for me at nearly forty, and it came from those same people.