Do you love your current job? If you do, it sounds a little crazy to interview for other jobs, doesn’t it?
Well, while having a job you love is immensely important for your mental and physical health, getting too comfortable can be dangerous for your job and your career. Being too content with your current role or company can affect your productivity, zeal, and drive to work.
Even if you’re completely satisfied with your current job, it is still important to interview for other jobs for several reasons.
In this piece, we’ll look at why you should interview, even if you love your current job. We’ll look at the prime benefits of taking this course of action and how it can transform your career.
Here are the benefits we’ll cover:
- Perfect the Art of Interviewing
- Find Something Really Interesting
- Know Where You Stand in the Market
- Get an Inside Scoop on the Competition for the Role
- Understand What Recruiters Are Looking For
- Set Yourself Up for Your Dream Job
- Expand Your Network
1. Perfect the Art of Interviewing
If you think interviewing isn’t an acquired skill, think again. Knowing how to navigate interviews, especially the ones that are highly competitive and challenging, is a skill that will help you move closer to your dream job.
As such, it’s hard to define what a dream job would feel like. You might feel your current job is the best job you could have, but without having grazed unexplored pastures, you’ll never truly know. By interviewing regularly, (ideally at least once a year), you’ll end up getting better at interviewing, sheerly because of an uptick in your level of confidence.
Confidence can do wonders in interviews. It can help you overcome interview anxiety, a rather dreaded aspect that can jeopardize your success by impacting interview performance.
2. Find Something Really Interesting
Another reason to interview even if you’re currently satisfied with your job is that you’re highly likely to find a job that’s potentially more interesting than your current one. Moreover, the new job you’re interviewing for could be more challenging and exciting, presenting better opportunities for growth and personal development.
Recommended Reading:Â Best Software Engineering Jobs at FAANG
3. Know Where You Stand in the Market
Regardless of your profession, knowing where you stand in the market, especially with the current skill-set you possess, is super important if you wish to grow in your career.
Interviewing often will help you understand what skills are more in demand in your profession, allowing you to work towards acquiring skills that are more attractive and high paying.
4. Get an Inside Scoop on the Competition for the Role
The competition for technical jobs at big tech is immense. Companies like Google and Facebook filter in less than 2% of engineers who apply. It is pretty much common knowledge that getting into Google is harder than getting admission into Harvard.
Also, a lot of engineers who’re currently working with top tech companies have faced rejection multiple times. So even if your dream company is Google, along with Google Interview preparation, by interviewing often with other companies, you’re able to get a feel of the competition and brace yourself for what it takes to beat it.
5. Understand What Recruiters Are Looking For
An extremely important formula for interview success is to look at things from the perspective of the interviewer. By interviewing often, you’ll understand what recruiters are looking for with enhanced clarity, allowing you to work on specific skills that can ensure your next interview is successful.
This is true, especially in the case of technical interviews at big tech companies. Understanding what exactly recruiters are looking for is absolutely key to making a great impression.
A great way to go about this is practicing mock interviews with the right professionals. If you want to practice mock interviews with hiring managers and technical leads from FAANG+ companies, check out Interview Kickstart — the most fitting resource for technical interview preparation and software engineer interview prep.
6. Set Yourself Up for Your Dream Job
Perhaps the most crucial reason to interview, even if you love your current job, is to unlock your dream job. Exploring challenging opportunities is the way toward professional growth — there’s no way around it.
You never know what’s out there if you don’t try and explore new territory. Without you even realizing it, you could be setting yourself up for your dream job.
Recommended Reading:Â How to Get Your Dream Job at a FAANG Company
7. Expand Your Network
Having one-on-one conversations with recruiters and industry leaders will help you absorb a lot of valuable information, making it a priceless experience. By interviewing often, you can expand your professional network with new contacts that might come in handy down the road.
For these reasons and more, it’s always a good idea to continue interviewing. Even though you might end up declining an offer, you still would have gained a lot of knowledge, experience, and confidence from the process.
Recommended Reading:Â 10 Highest Paying Tech Jobs in FAANG Companies
Get Interview-Ready With Interview Kickstart
You might love your job for a variety of reasons — easy commute, friendly coworkers, decent pay, exciting work, or all of the above. But as we’ve outlined in this article, interviewing for other roles can have multiple benefits.
So, if you’re a software engineer, coding engineer, software developer, engineering manager, or tech lead, start preparing for tech interviews to keep yourself up to date.
To start your prep, check out our technical interview checklist, interview questions page, and salary negotiation ebook. Also read, How Long Does It Take to Prepare for Coding Interviews and Best Online Coding Bootcamps to Prepare for Tech Interviews for more tips.Â
Having trained over 6,000 software engineers, we know what it takes to crack the most challenging tech interviews. Since 2014, Interview Kickstart alums have been landing lucrative offers from FAANG and Tier-1 tech companies, with an average salary hike of 49%. The highest-ever offer received by an IK alum is a whopping $933,000!
At IK, you get the unique opportunity to learn from expert instructors who are hiring managers and tech leads at Google, Facebook, Apple, and other top Silicon Valley tech companies.  Our reviews will tell you how we’ve shaped the careers of thousands of professionals aspiring to take their careers to new heights.
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