How I Received 18 Job Draft Offers and a 1.6x Salary Increase: A Story of How the Same Skills Led to Both Rejections and Hires

0. Introduction

In just one month since I began job hunting on Job Draft, I achieved the following:

• Received 18 scouting offers
• Secured a job offer with an annual salary of approximately 8 million JPY

Initially, I started my job search with a goal of 6 million JPY or more, but I ended up with an offer that was 1.6 times my previous salary.

While I benefited significantly from Job Draft, there were some points of caution I noticed, and I would like to document those as well.

Specifically, I will focus on technical testing strategies, how I conducted my job search, and insights I gained through interviews regarding how one is evaluated. I hope this will be helpful for those who are considering changing jobs.

Note: This article is a submission for the Job Draft Scout Experience Story Campaign.

1. Self-Introduction

1-1 Profile

My career began in sales, followed by a role as a network engineer for my second company, and from my third company onwards, I became a Web engineer.
Here is my profile:

• 3 years of practical experience (Web development)
• Technical Stack:
  • Frontend: React, TypeScript, Next.js
  • Backend: Java Spring Boot, Ruby On Rails
  • Infrastructure: AWS, GCP (Operations only, no building experience)
• This job change marks my 5th company
• Experience as both a team member and a leader in my previous position
• Current company size: Approx. 200 employees (nearly 30 engineers)

1-2 Two Notable Points

The two points worth noting here are my "number of job changes" and "leadership experience."

• On the Number of Job Changes
  At 29 years old, I was concerned that having multiple job changes might work against me.
  In reality, some companies rejected me because of it, while others dug deeper and evaluated me based on my skills, making it a polarizing factor.

• On Leadership Experience
  The seemingly positive "leadership experience" was also a source of anxiety for me.
  In reality, my role focused mostly on dealing with local rules and acting as a troubleshooter, so I lacked confidence in whether I had gained the experience typically expected of a leader.

  As expected, I was sometimes grilled about "management experience" during interviews, making it another polarizing factor for my evaluation.

2. Why I Decided to Change Jobs

The reason for this job change was that I wanted to make "listening directly to users and taking consistent responsibility from planning to implementation and operation" my primary battleground.

In the AI era, I felt that where I could demonstrate my abilities best was in creating and delivering services that both parties are satisfied with while working closely alongside users.

I was partially able to do this at my previous job, but in an environment where short-term numbers took priority, it became increasingly difficult in terms of role design to take responsibility for "delivering value to users," including medium- to long-term quality improvements (investments in technical debt and security) on a continuous basis.

Although my tenure was short at just one year, I judged it reasonable to change environments to make this my primary battleground for the next year or two.

This time, assuming I would settle down for the long term, I carefully aligned roles and expectations before joining.

3. Job Search Criteria and Service Comparison

3-1. Job Search Criteria

Since I was changing jobs after only one year, I was very conscious of cultural fit throughout my search.
Below are the details of my criteria:

Flat Organizational Culture

This is also a culture-focused item. Unless I can experience a flat or bottom-up environment where I can move the business myself, the work will be boring. I sought an environment where I could commit to everything as if it were my own. Furthermore, psychological safety is indispensable for this.

To be able to express candid opinions as if it were my own business, the company's employees must be mature.

Company Growth Potential

Since I am focusing on culture, a company is a place where if the main business is not generating sufficient revenue and there is no hope for the future, the atmosphere inside the company will become strained. I chose companies where I could feel the growth in sales and my own future.

Ability to Work Across Job Functions

This cannot be removed as it is also the reason for changing jobs. It is personally important to be able to fully commit to the product and deliver value from a position close to the user.

Annual Salary of 7 million JPY or More

Initially, as mentioned at the beginning, my goal was 6 million JPY or more, but because I received so many scouting offers on Job Draft, the number of casual interviews also swelled significantly, so I had to set a filter somewhere.

In my case, I was also having multiple casual interviews and undergoing selection processes via Findy and agents, so this task was essential.

Future Career

I had a strong desire to acquire technical skills at a tech lead level within the next five years, so it was important to know what kind of experience I could gain. I had a very strong desire to gain knowledge in complex systems such as finance or medicine.

Stability

Considering all of the above, if it is too much of a startup, the possibility of staying for a long time if something happens decreases. Risks such as bankruptcy, supervisors who don't match, or organizational structure problems. I felt I wanted to work for a relatively long time considering risk hedging because I wouldn't be able to move easily.

3-2. Services Used and Their Roles

I used multiple services in combination depending on my goals. I have organized their roles below.

Job Draft: The Main Service Used

This service became the axis of my job search. Because the mechanisms of resume screening and the drafting system were optimal for visualizing my market value, I built my activities around this.
I will write about my specific experience in the next section.

Findy: A Sparring Partner for Job Search Criteria and Concerns

I have the impression that I used this more for utilizing user success interviews rather than looking at job postings. Specifically, I used it as a sparring partner for "organizing my job search criteria," "aligning with market rates," and "consulting on concerns regarding changing jobs."
It was good to receive objective advice even on job openings not handled by them. Also, receiving detailed feedback on selection results when proceeding through Findy was helpful.

Agents (Mid-to-High Class): For Finding Companies Outside My Field of Vision

If I search by myself, my options will inevitably narrow.
I used agents for the purpose of broadening my perspective, as they propose "high-level technical companies that I wouldn't have thought to apply to on my own."

Also, agents are overwhelmingly easy to work with, and if used well, they become powerful supporters:

• Depending on the representative, you may be able to skip the standard selection flow.
• You can receive detailed feedback on selection results.
• They may even assist with interview preparation.

However, there are points to be careful about when using them:

• There are hits and misses depending on the representative.
• They tend to be slow to respond during busy periods.
• The more good-natured they are, the more they will push strongly by saying "This company is recommended for you" (Be careful if you are easily influenced).

Additionally, from another important perspective, I felt that some people are not suited to use agents.
Specifically, this refers to the pattern of having your job search criteria undecided and leaving everything to the agent. Without a clear axis, there is a risk of being swept along by the proposed companies and "joining a company that is completely different from what you intended."
This applies to those aiming to change jobs as an engineer from a non-engineering background, but if you cannot verbalize to some extent "what a good company is for you," you cannot fully utilize the strengths of an agent.

Lappras: Registration Only

I registered, but I practically did not use it during my activities.

4. Results of Using Job Draft

4-1. It Became the Service I Used the Most

While using multiple services in combination, Job Draft was the service where my activities were most concentrated.

When I first decided to use it, my primary motivation was to "know which points are valued in the market." Beyond that, the following three points were what I found specifically attractive:

• Visualization of annual income: Since the offered annual income from companies is disclosed at the drafting stage, not just my desired income, it is easy to grasp the market rate.
• Receiving advice through resume screening: I could get third-party feedback on how my resume appears to companies.
• Interviews based on career history: Since companies read the resume before entering casual interviews, there is no need to introduce myself from scratch every time, reducing the risk of being unable to convey everything verbally.

In particular, the final point of "starting the conversation based on career history" felt like a structural advantage that is hard to obtain through other services.
I have provided my resume to other services as well, so they should have been looking at it, but for some reason, there were many times I was unable to convey it well. I believe that because Job Draft presents a monetary amount upfront, recruiters are looking at the resume more carefully than usual.

As a result, in terms of drafts, casual interviews, and the selection process, my actions on Job Draft were the most frequent.

4-2. Resume Creation and Screening

Job Draft has a system called resume screening.

This is a system where the Job Draft screening team checks the resume content and provides feedback before it is displayed to companies as a drafting candidate.

You cannot proceed to the drafting phase unless you pass the screening.

Since I had experience using Job Draft in the past, I spent about 1 hour updating it, for a total of approximately 4 hours.

What I struggled with was the point: "I don't know what kind of information will resonate with recruiters." I filled it in by referring to the following:

• Reviewing and taking inventory of my own professional background
• Thoroughly reading official examples and explanatory articles
• Actually reading the public resumes of those who have received drafts

For the screening, I went through a cycle of 3 to 4 revisions and re-applications.

The screening team gives concrete advice in a warm tone.

The feedback that left a particularly strong impression is as follows:

• Write business content in the order of "Issue → Effort → Result"
• For technologies used, delve into "in what situation and how it was used"
• Include two or more projects (even personal development is okay)
• Clearly state team size, your own role, and actions within the team
• Activities outside of work (OSS, study sessions, speaking, etc.) can also be promotional material

In particular, the "Issue → Effort → Result" frame was a perspective with such high versatility that I could use it as the axis of my own way of speaking in subsequent casual interviews and interviews.

The screening team doesn't seem to be acting as a judge to pass or fail, but rather as a support role to help finish the resume so you can receive drafts.
Rather than just a screening to pass, they return specific improvement points based on the company's perspective every time, so it was an opportunity to learn the evaluator's perspective while writing.

Even when actually receiving technical interviews from companies or being asked deep questions about my resume, I was often asked, "Why did you do that?" "What other choices were there?" and "What was the reason you chose that option among them?"

If I was following the industry de facto standards or proceeding as proposed by AI, it was a surprisingly difficult question to re-verbalize "why I chose it." However, since I believe these are the essence of doing work, it was a great learning experience to be able to face them.

4-3. Drafting Phase

Job Draft has a "drafting period," during which you can receive drafts from companies.

In my case, I received 18 drafts, and what was characteristic was that almost all of them were concentrated in the final week.
This is my personal speculation, but I feel there might be some maneuvering on the company side, such as:

• If they make a draft early, their offer amount might set a benchmark for other companies.
• It is easier to make a higher offer by waiting until the end to assess the trends of other companies.

Therefore, even if you feel uneasy thinking "I'm not getting as many as I thought" at the beginning, I think it is best to wait patiently until the final week.

Draft Content and Industry Trends

• Draft Salary Range: 7 to 9 million JPY
• Industry: Varied, with no bias toward a specific sector.

My initial target annual income was over 6 million JPY, but seeing the high number of 18 drafts, I upwardly revised my expectations, thinking "I can probably aim for over 6.5 million JPY."

However, because I was also proceeding with job hunting via agents and Findy, I judged that it would be unrealistic to handle all of them, so I set a filter to only consider companies offering over 7 million JPY.

This was a judgment I could only make because I had gathered more drafts than expected, and being able to dynamically grasp my market value through the data of draft status is a unique experience of Job Draft.

Notable Drafts

What left a particularly strong impression was a draft from an infrastructure-oriented security company.

It was an area where I did not think I would be evaluated based on my background, so it was a moment where I realized there was a gap between "the strengths I think I have" and "the strengths the market sees in me."
This realization that "how I am evaluated is different from my assumptions" was an important lesson that also connected to the interview experience I will write about in a later chapter.

4-4. From Selection to Job Offer

I had casual interviews with over 40 companies (including those via Job Draft, Findy, and agencies combined).
I did this many because I wanted to minimize cultural mismatch as much as possible.
I went to confirm the "temperature of the people inside" and the "atmosphere of the organization," which cannot be seen from documents or interviews, through direct dialogue as much as possible.

From those, I proceeded to the main selection process with 10 companies.

Job Offer and Decision

Ultimately, I received a job offer from 1 company.
When I received the offer, I declined all other companies that were in the selection process.
The reason is simple: the company that offered me the position was in the exact field I wanted to work in.
I judged that even if I continued the selection process seeking better conditions, it was unlikely that I would realistically encounter an opportunity that exceeded this one.
Since I placed "a role close to the field I want to work in" as the most important factor in my criteria, I closed my search based on this "criteria-first" decision.

Final Offer

Although I will refrain from stating specific figures, I gladly accepted the offer on conditions that were raised from 8 million JPY.
As a result of my job hunting using multiple services, I was able to realize conditions that were about 1.6 times my initial annual income.

4-5. Impressions from the Selection Experience

During the selection process, I developed several strategies and had some realizations. I have summarized the points that left the strongest impression here.

Conduct a Skills Inventory Early

The first thing I did in preparation for the selection process was to inventory my experience to date.
Being able to immediately verbalize answers to questions like "Why did you do that?", "What was the situation at that time?", and "Were there any other options?" is directly linked to the persuasiveness of an interview.

What I learned is that you cannot get by on cramming knowledge.
Even if you feel like you answered glibly, there may be a gap with the answer the other party is really looking for, or contradictions may arise with other questions.
I keenly felt that it is important to build up how well you can verbalize your own experiences on a daily basis. Also, I felt it would be good to conduct such an inventory at the end of each project.

Strategy to Avoid Coding Tests

I solved enough problems to handle basic algorithms, but generally, I operated on a policy of avoiding them as much as possible.
There are two reasons for this:

1. The time between deciding to start job hunting and actually moving was short, so the time I could invest in preparation was limited.
2. I judged that deepening my own experience would increase my selection pass rate more than spending time preparing for coding tests.

As a result, I ended my job search with an offer from a company that did not require a coding test, so this judgment worked for me.

Loop Interview Preparation with Agencies/Findy + AI

The general direction of my interview preparation was gained through discussions with agencies or Findy user success interviews.
From there, I threw potential questions at AI and diligently looped through mock Q&A sessions to polish them.

Used Two Axes for Reverse Questions

I consciously used two axes for reverse questions:
1. Culture Confirmation Axis

• Actual challenges faced and how they were resolved
• Processes for handling and preventing the recurrence of issues

-> Aiming to confirm the reality of how the organization faces challenges rather than superficial "ease of work."

2. Axis to Eliminate Misunderstandings

• "Are there any points about me that make you feel anxious based on this interview so far?"
• "What do you see as my areas for growth?"

-> Aiming to clarify gaps in understanding by directly eliciting anxiety and questions from the hiring side.
If I saw a gap, I moved to convey additional information on the spot to resolve the anxiety.

Feedback and Mindset

I sometimes received feedback when rejected, but there were not many items that could be improved immediately.
Since I am relatively good at interviews, the criticisms were limited to "minor details in how I talk or convey things."
However, it was painful to go through the selection process repeatedly and feel like "the selection process is starting from scratch again" after being rejected.
Even so, I had a sense that my experience was steadily accumulating, so I told myself that I was honing my interview skills to get through it.

What Made Me Happy: Interviews that Tried to "Bring Out the Best in Me"

The selection experience differed greatly depending on the company.
Among them, what left a strong impression on me were companies that had an atmosphere more like a chat than an interview, and asked questions that conveyed a perspective of "how can I bring out the best in this person?"

The interview functioned as a "place for mutual understanding" rather than a place to "judge whether or not to hire me," and I felt genuinely that I wanted to work for such a company.
And I ended up deciding on this company.

5. The Story of How the Same Ability Was Both a Reason for Rejection and a Reason for Hiring

This is the story that became the biggest learning point in this job search.
At one company, I was rejected because "this ability could not be sufficiently confirmed," and at another company, I received an offer for "evaluating that very ability."
The ability for which the evaluation was completely opposite was the same thing to me.

What Happened

Summarizing the feedback from the company that rejected me, it generally went like this:

They prioritize a way of working that involves "collaborating with customers and stakeholders to recapture issues through dialogue and translate them into solutions," and the judgment was that they could not sufficiently confirm that perspective in the scope of this interview.

In short, they decided that I could not demonstrate the "ability to accompany the resolution of issues while engaging in dialogue with users and stakeholders."

However, to me, this ability was the area I had accumulated the most through my experience with incident response and project promotion in the past.
And at the company that offered me a position, they evaluated this same ability as one of the reasons for hiring me.

About my same self and same experience, one side judged it as "insufficient," and the other side evaluated it as "one of the deciding factors." This fact remained for a while, and I could not fully chew it over.

Examining Why the Evaluation Diverged

It is sloppy to dismiss it as "compatibility with the interviewer," but I still feel that there were complex factors such as the following:

1. Differences in the Skill and Experience of the Interviewer

Interviewers who had gained a certain amount of experience tended to carefully draw out the background and context of my words.
On the other hand, when the interviewers were younger or more implementation-oriented engineers, they would stop at light, quick Q&A deep dives, and there were times when it was difficult to feel the perspective of trying to discern "whether this person truly possesses that ability."

2. Issues with How I Conveyed Things

However, I also think it is wrong to attribute this only to the interviewer's side.
Regardless of who the interviewer is, it is better to be able to convey things that make them convinced that 'I can contribute to this company.'
This remained as a challenge for me.

3. The Intersection of Complex Factors

In the end, the result of the selection is determined by the intersection of "Ability × Way of Conveying × Interviewer's Way of Determining × The Person the Company Wants Now."
I realized that if any one of these is off, the result changes significantly.

What I Learned from This

From this experience, two policies solidified within me.
A. Do not dismiss it by saying 'the interviewer was bad'
If you optimistically escape to external factors, your own growth will stop.
I will consider that there are definitely parts that can be improved by how I convey things and my pre-preparation.

B. Do not conclude that 'my ability was insufficient'
Conversely, if you take all rejections as a lack of ability, it will have a negative impact on your mental health. This might not be a problem after finishing your job search, but I think it is a wrong move in a situation where you need to improve proactively.

The fact is that even if you have ability, if it is not conveyed, it will not be evaluated.
Being able to steel myself that the only thing to do is to build up what I can do currently and improve how I convey things while balancing A and B was the greatest harvest of this job search.

And one more thing that changed significantly in practical terms.
It was that in addition to pre-preparation, I became conscious of using the movement of confirming whether things were conveyed in my reverse questions.

To Those Considering a Job Search

Honestly, I had strong concerns about looking for a new job within the short tenure of one year.
This includes concerns about retention as seen from the hiring side, and I also worried many times as my own life path: "Is this really okay?", "Shouldn't I have stayed for another year?"

Even so, as a result, I think it was good that I moved.

If you think about it positively, it can also be said that I gained a chance to challenge myself in a new environment one year earlier.
If there is anyone who feels the same hesitation about changing jobs, I recommend first speaking frankly in Findy's user success interviews or in casual interviews with several companies.

If there is a proper reason, there are many cases where the company side does not care that much.
You don't have to decide from the beginning that "it might be impossible," and I think it's okay to just start moving.
However, there is one thing that is better to do before moving.

How far have you gone in your current job, what have you been able to change, and what have you not been able to change?

This is to verbalize it yourself.
If this is clear, when you are asked "Why are you changing jobs?" in an interview, you can answer in your own words, and you yourself will not end up regretting whether it was "truly the right time to change jobs."

I would be happy if my experience this time could be of some reference.