When it comes to searching for a new job in tech, it’s difficult stand out. Perhaps you’re early in your career, or you are competing against other professionals with very similar skill sets. Whatever the reason, submitting your resume just does not seem to be making the impact you’d like.

Vaco Seattle (formerly Greythorn) is a recruiting firm that focuses on tech roles in the region, and our research and work has revealed three behaviors that consistently make a positive impact on a candidate’s job search.

Connect with the right people.
Whether we like it or not, landing a dream job may be about who you know—and if you don’t know the right people, you’re out of luck. Finding one or two recruiters who truly understand the technologies you work in is a good first step, but a great second step is to find and attend events and Meetup group gatherings that revolve around technology.

WTIA has a calendar you can consult, and we’d recommend you check out Meetups like Seattle Scalability, Seattle Java Users Group, Seattle React.js and Seattle Design Thinking & Innovation Collective.

Participating in these events will allow you to learn about some of the interesting companies in the region, meet tech professionals working on cool stuff, and may lead to you hearing through the grapevine about an unposted job opportunity that would be a great fit.

Learn the right technologies.
It’s always wise to keep your skill set updated and relevant, but some technologies will end up being more valuable to you than others.

In Vaco Seattle’s 2017 market report, we reported which technologies were most used by survey participants. After analyzing three years’ worth of data, however, we also discovered which newer technologies are gaining ground on industry stalwarts.

Scott Hirleman, a former technical recruiter, laid out which new technologies were popular with survey respondents: “Docker is used by 25% of survey respondents, the eighth highest of any technology in the report—and it was only released in 2013. NGINX, used by 14% of survey respondents, is gaining quickly on Apache HTTP Server (18%), which seems to correlate with overall market share trends. Apache Spark (15%) is gaining strongly on the older Apache Hadoop, which was used by 27% of tech professionals participating in our 2015 survey, but only 17% of them in 2017—a decrease of 58%. MapReduce fell similarly from 17% in 2015 to 10% in 2017. Apache Kafka, despite graduating from Apache incubation less than five years ago, reached 11%—not bad for a technology that didn’t have a major commercial backer until late 2014.”

Whenever possible, it’s important to know which technologies are still trending upward,  and which ones are waning and would be less helpful to learn.

Use the right terms.
Many times when you submit your resume online, it’s going straight into an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). That means your information is being scanned by an algorithm looking for keywords and phrases to determine if you’re qualified for the open role. While a human who understands the job might know that if your resume says you’ve worked with NGINX, you’re probably familiar with open source products, a computer system may not get it.

To combat this problem, create a list of terms related to your core competencies, and try to use them in a natural fashion in your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile.

If you incorporate these three principles into your job search strategy, you’ll increase the likelihood that a hiring manager will be bringing you in for an interview.

As you’re probably aware, an interview can lead to a job offer. If you’d like to participate in our anonymous annual research about compensation, you’ll be able to benchmark your own salary and benefits, see what your skills are worth in the marketplace, and learn what other people are earning. For every survey response we receive, we’ll donate $1 to the Apache Software Foundation.

You can take the survey here.