After 600 applications, 52 initial interviews, 7 final rounds, 3 offers, 1 accepted. It took 11 months.

Most of the companies I interviewed with were tech, some of them in F500, 3 of them FAANG, and others mostly startups. The roles I interviewed for were Sr. FP&A/Financial Analysts.

Here are my key take aways:

1) Companies are not interested in all the things you do, they are interested in the things you do, which they want you to do in their company.

On "tell me about yourself" part, I was mainly focusing on key responsibilities on their job description (usually first 2-3 bullet points). For instance, the job mainly supports Product team, tell anecdotes on how you helped the Product team at you company. Also, I started tweaking my resume to match those bullet points. For instance, I did DSO automation, but it was a small part of the bigger model I was developing. But the job description wanted the person to work on DSO improvement, so I put that achievement on my resume as the first line in my current role.

2) Technical skills will make you stand out. Most of the interviews I had luck with wanted someone with technical experience (financial systems implementation/administration, SQL, data analysis, automating data flows). However, you not only need to have these skills, you need to talk about projects where you used these skills. I was selected for final rounds in several applications after I passed their SQL tests ( Finance Data Analyst, Strategic Finance positions).

3) Try to schedule interviews as early as possible. I made a mistake with one of the roles. I was deliberately choosing interview spots on later dates, because I thought I was a perfect fit for the position and they wanted me. When I scheduled a final round with a date almost 2 weeks ahead, after a week I got a message that the position had already been filled. I guess it is first in first hired.

4) If rejected, tell them that they are free to contact you if anything changes (i.e. their candidate didn't accept an offer, another position became open, and so on). One employer, after rejecting me after the final round, contacted me saying that they would want me to talk to other team, because the team member who interviewed me really liked my profile. They told.me they did that, because I said that they could contact me. But, I guess it will work only if you've been rejected after the final round.

5) I did well with the companies I didn't want to accept offers from. I merely interviewed with them as a practice or got disinterested after talking to their team. 2 of the offers I received were from such companies. And they were not really bad offers ($120k equity) or bad companies. But I feel like my disinterest made me feel confident.

6) If you got rejected, it doesn't mean because there was a better candidate, despite the "no-replu" email says so. One company opened-closed-opened one role under different titles several times, and I was interviewed for all 3. When asked, what happened with previous role, I was told they downgraded the role or put on hold. Another position, after rejecting me after the final round, didn't even hire anyone, despite recruiter told me that they were proceeding with more experienced candidate.

Just wanted to share my take aways from my job hunting experience in this market.