I made the decision earlier in the year to take a career break: It’s not something I’ve ever done before (I’ve always had another job lined up), but knew I wanted some time to spend on myself, some hobbies, and training. Which ultimately meant I’d need to find a new role eventually.

Now that I’m fortunate enough to have secured a new role as part of my career break, I wanted to reflect on my own experience and share it with others, as an IC in 2025. I’ll be talking about applications, interviews, and the evolving role of AI in the process.

This is all based on my own experience & perceptions, rather than any scientific approach. Also, this post isn’t about the things I did with my time during the career break: But, I would encourage you to consider a career break yourself! I’ve had a fantastic time.

Defining What I Wanted

Logically, it makes sense to start with this step. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t necessarily clear until I started the process. As part of preparing for upcoming interviews, I looked back at my strengths and achievements that enabled me to really hone in on what inspired me.

However, I did identify a bunch of areas as part of this preparatory process (that were initially just my gut feeling), thus becoming clearer that I wanted somewhere that:

• I was passionate about the product
• I could have ownership
• I could have impact
• Had technical challenges
• Had a strong engineering culture
• Was remote first (with occasional team visits)

I’d encourage anyone in a similar position to try and define this upfront if you can - I think it would have saved me some time during the application process.

Timeline Expectations

My initial plan was to take ~2 months out - so my thoughts were if I took a few weeks out without even starting the process: no problem.

The reality is that it took several weeks from the point of applying (even in the case of referrals) to get to the screening stage; so in retrospect I’d have definitely started this sooner.

Once the ball was rolling, expect 4-6 stages with a week in-between. That puts you in the ~2 month range straight away.

Some organisations I worked with were happy to fast track their process (e.g. bundle interviews to the same day or week) to keep up with other orgs and remain competitive, so it didn’t seem to be a hard rule either.

Once the interviews started to come through, it almost immediately turned into a full-time job: from having nothing on, to several at once - all requiring their own preparation!

In the end, the position I accepted took exactly 2 months from referral to offer - something for future me to remember!

Using LinkedIn Effectively To Find A Job

I personally heavily relied on LinkedIn: not only for new connections but to keep in touch with old colleagues. When I posted about my career break I had a number of folk reach out to me whom I’d worked with over the years, and also a number who offered to refer me at their companies. If it wasn’t for the power of LI I’d have almost certainly missed out on these.

It also allowed me to reach out to those who I hadn’t spoken to in some time and gauge whether there were any openings.

Job alerts on LI were also handy. There was lots of noise, but a number of applications I made and interviewed for were ultimately ones I would have otherwise been unaware of.

LI Premium

I also gave LI Premium a go (first month was free, then ~£30+ after 😱): I personally don’t think it’s worth paying for.

The insights are interesting, particularly to get an understanding how a company is growing and in which areas - but some intentionally paywalled features (like seeing all the people who creeped your profile) I cared less about.

The AI tools are not that helpful (beyond copying + pasting it straight in to free ChatGPT). Anything that was automatically written came across as AI, and the button to see “Am I suitable for this job?” was just a bit lazy (it told me I was suitable for things I definitely wasn’t, and vice versa).

InMail / Recruiters

I think this is the biggest difference I notice compared to a few years ago. Rather than receiving multiple messages a day - I’d maybe only be approached once or twice a week. I suspect we’re still in a bit of a lull due to ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) (as mentioned by Gergely over a year ago), plus perhaps some caution with the AI boom currently ongoing.

But, there are open jobs out there (startups, scaleups and larger orgs) - just seemingly quieter than it has been in the past.

The Application Process

Regardless of referral or application, this typically involved submitting an up to date CV. However I did notice that for application forms that had extra fields (e.g. specific questions or asking for a cover letter) that I filled in, I was usually invited to interview rather than a rejection upfront. My assumption is your name lands on a spreadsheet, and if you’re filling in more columns of that row you’re more likely to stand out. Or, perhaps this feeds in to some kind of AI matching better?

Using AI To Apply

This is something I didn’t do: at least, not in a heavily automated way. Having been using generative AI for a while now - you can usually see immediately when someone has taken something written by AI verbatim. I’m aware there are tools out there to apply on your behalf, but for such an early and important stage of the process it wasn’t something I was willing to do.

However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use AI either. I did use it to:

• Match job specs to the experience on my CV (thus helping me write tailored cover letters or prepare my STAR technique for interviews)
• Bring structure to my brain dumps
• Generally refine my thoughts and ramblings

Overall, it helped me be more succinct throughout the preparatory process.

Interview Stages

The stages were typically: screening, experience deep dive, take home test, test review + improvements discussion, system design and behavioural. Some orgs had fewer stages, but typically encompassed multiple criteria in a single interview. Also some didn’t have take home tests but opted for instead leet code and/or live pairing.

This table shows a worst case scenario (with stages and timings):

Use of AI

Again I’ll mostly be talking about my own usage. The only thing I noticed from the hiring side was that an AI notetaker was commonly in the same calls too.

The expectations on usage varied quite a bit depending on the company…

Timeboxed Take Home Test

I observed 3 scenarios that companies said:

1. You cannot use AI - just stick to the timebox
2. You can use AI, but you will be asked about the code written
3. No mention of AI at all

Scenario 1 is just what my experience was before the rise of AI. The solution you submit may not be perfect for a given timebox, but you’re given an opportunity to discuss those tradeoffs & shortcomings.

I think Scenario 2 is just the reality of people using AI today in their work: you’ve got to understand and justify what you’re producing for it to be sustainable.

Scenario 3 obviously requires follow up clarification, otherwise there will be an assumption on either side about its use.

Pairing / LeetCode

For me personally, this was the worst stage. Many of the companies pre-empt this by asking you to treat your interviewers as colleagues, and to rely on them as you would in reality.

Despite my years of experience, I feel flustered, rushed and panicked. I was never good at Drama in school, so pretending it was anything other than an interview didn’t work for me. These are people you’ve not met before, and are supposed to feel comfortable with for that 30-60 minute window - I’m not even sure how to overcome this beyond practicing more interviews!

I did find the problems themselves weren’t too ridiculous (e.g. I didn’t get asked to implement some obscure algorithm). It was usually a problem I needed to read, understand and then introduce a change to (whilst collaborating with those on the call).

I feel like having some quiet time to read / reflect on the problem before starting the exercise would have made a significant improvement to the process (e.g. the interviewers drop off the call for the first 10 minutes, or send out the material 15 minutes before the call). That way, I have a mental model of the problem and can collaborate much better with the interviewers.

Final Thoughts

Overall it has been a very interesting process, and one I’ve not had before. I’m super grateful to all the friends and colleagues I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years. Now it’s time for me to enjoy some more time off before a new exciting role at the end of June!

I hope you enjoyed this post. There’s a bunch of things I didn’t talk about too, like:

• How I organised myself and prepared for each interview
• How I made notes on each company and stage
• Specifics around each stage

So feel free to let me know any thoughts or questions! You can find the LinkedIn post here.