Wanted to share my story since it feels very unique. For context, this is for a software engineering role.

I applied to this company in 2022, when the software engineering market was booming so hard that I took another job that sent me an offer after just a recruiter screen. I left it open ended and told them I would reach out if things changed (and they did, I got laid off).

I responded to what is now a four year old email chain back in November. Got to the hiring manager round and fumbled super hard. Then got lucky and got feedback from the recruiter. Only one other recruiter had ever done that for me in my job search. I deliberately made a project that mirrored their tech stack, while still applying for other jobs (almost 200), and reapplied when that same role opened up a few months later. One of the biggest reasons I used their tech stack was the popularity - I came from a job that used Ruby on Rails and Vue, which is way more rare than something like Python, Java Spring, React, and Angular.

Anyways, I found out the guy they hired left just a few months in for some big company and was clearly using it as a “bridge” to pay the bills and find a role doing devops when I got to the hiring round again. I wasn’t allowed to meet with the person I met with before and I was interviewing for a position at the same team, so it felt appropriate to ask. I just knew that if I went all in on the rest of the process, I’d probably get it. Felt very prepared at that point already, since I got feedback, and that helped a lot. In the next round, I told them I want to be there for years, stalked a manager on LinkedIn and brought up that I envisioned myself in a position like his, especially because he started in my position.

On paper, not a job I want. But I took a hard look on glassdoor and they were the highest rated company I’ve ever interviewed for as far as I know (4.3). Took a paycut and I have a decent commute. I just knew this will be a place I can grow so I was fine with that risk, since they had no other positions open at the time. I had many other interviews the same week after not getting any for almost two months! I didn’t care about the other ones and just had a good feeling that if I practiced specifically for this one, I’d make it in. So, put all my eggs in one basket and got an offer.

TL;DR
Responded to an old email, interviewed there last Fall, applied a few months later after building a project in their stack, went all in on it and got it.