Shadowing Practice: My Entire Job Search Process: Software Engineer Resume & Interviews - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hi everyone, I'm Sarah and welcome back to my channel and today we are going to be job searching.

Amazon this year alone has laid off 30,000 employees and that's terrifying.

I feel like any day I could wake up

and get like a horrible HR email and my day would be ruined and everything sucks.

So I think starting this job searching process is definitely going to help me take back this control

and feel a lot more prepared for the future.

I am just wildly unprepared and we're going to change that today.

All right, keep watching because today I'm going to show you everything.

How I update my resume, prepare for my job interviews, I'm going to show you my LeetCode Notion board that I've been using for like the last five years.

And also recently I set up an automated job board

so I can see all the job applications from a bunch of websites in one central database.

And thank you to Notion for sponsoring today's video.

Let's get into it.

All right, so I haven't updated my resume since I was applying for new grad roles.

It is like super out of date so we definitely need to do that right now.

One thing I will say is that this process will be so much easier if you keep a work summary.

I've been keeping a work summary since I started working at Amazon even as an intern

and basically what it is is everything that I've been working on every day.

Say I learned a new language or I worked on my project or the impact that I had, I just write it down.

At the end of the day, your manager isn't going to remember all this information for you.

You got to do it for yourself.

When you leave your job, this is all you have of it basically.

You can't take any of the code.

You can't take your laptop.

You just can keep track of what you've been doing.

So I'm going to show you how I've been keeping track of all my work

and how I'm going to use this to update my resume really quickly.

This is a Notion page that I've created

and I keep track of like every single week what I've been working on at Amazon.

This is like a weekly update I did.

I update with my one-on-ones, what I talk about, the tasks I worked on, things I did like that.

So this is my work summary.

I highly recommend keeping one and I'm going to update my resume now with this information.

All right so let's do a little resume review on what I can improve and what I'm already doing pretty well.

Obviously I'm using Jake's resume as my template.

It's a really wonderful one.

It's classic, it's easy to read, and it's scannable by the ATS scanner.

I start off with my experience, go into my projects, education, technical skills.

I think what's good about it is that in my bullet points I show the quantitative impact that I had.

I say 90% reduction in manual efforts or solve 40 plus bugs.

This is a good way to show recruiters like what you're actually doing.

What I definitely need to work on is my project section.

This is a really old project from 2021.

I definitely think I'm going to just replace this one.

It's good to include a full stack project

but this one's just not very interesting and I definitely have done some cooler ones since then.

I just added this new section here for my work at Amazon as a new grad.

I'm going to take this resume to the road and actually submit some job applications with it.

Alright, I made it to my favorite cafe

and I just need to switch up my environment because I'm going to start sending out some applications.

When I was applying for my very first internship, I was sending out applications every single for about a month with hearing absolutely nothing back.

And when I say nothing, I mean rejection emails.

I sent out around 80 applications total and maybe got five interviews from all of that.

At the time, I didn't know if I was just doing something wrong or it was just the market.

I actually emailed my co-op coordinator at the time asking

if I should just give up and if there's something wrong with me and he said something along the lines of, you're doing great, keep going.

The truth is, sometimes it really is just timing and luck.

Getting a job in tech right now is genuinely harder than it has ever been.

So if you're in a stretch where you're applying every single day and it feels like you're shouting into a void, I want you to know that it's really a normal experience

and it doesn't mean your applications are bad or that something is wrong with you.

You just have to keep going.

My favorite websites to use are LinkedIn, SwedeList, Simplified GitHub repo, WellFound, and YC job postings.

I used to check each of these websites individually every day, but this is just so time consuming.

So what I set up is a combined job database in Notion that updates every day using Notion Custom Agent.

It populates each job as a row in your Notion database with the application link, the date it was posted, the company name, the location, and the compensation if it's listed.

Honestly, you never know which application will be the one to get you through to the job offer, so be consistent and frequent.

I definitely have a strong love-hate relationship with LeetCode.

Actually, it's mostly hate.

I get so nervous.

It feels like an exam, but even worse because it's like you're the only person taking this exam and everything is like on you.

This is how every software company does their interview testing and it's just how it is.

So I would really recommend doing NeetCode 150.

And the way you're going to remember these problems is using a method called space repetition.

So space repetition is actually a scientifically proven way to get you to remember things.

It's a way of studying where you review information right before you're about to forget it instead of cramming all at once.

So let me give you an example.

Let's say you're learning a brand new problem.

You're doing two-sum for the very first time.

On day one, you do two-sum.

Day two, you do it again.

Then you wait a couple days.

Each time you remember it, your brain holds onto it a little bit longer.

So you keep increasing the gaps before the next time you do the problem.

I'm going to show you my LeetCode system that I've been doing with Notion.

And this is how I actually practice on my technical questions and stay on top of it, stay organized.

So I'm not just doing like random questions all the time.

This is my LeetCode database.

This is my baby.

And you can see from this question, I solved it September 17th, then September 18th, then September 19th.

And then I waited a little bit and solved it on October 12th.

That is the spaced repetition method that I used to solve it.

And now with Notion Custom Agents, I connected it to this database.

And I send myself a reminder every single day of three

to five questions using the spaced repetition method of what I should work on.

And your custom agent is so easy to set up.

You just need to send me an email reminder every morning

and I just hit send and it will create a custom agent to do this for me.

So this is the email that it sent me.

It sent me a question a day and it also updates my database with this new question that I did.

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So when I was searching for my very first internship, I genuinely did not know that LeetCode was a thing.

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I took a data structures and algorithms class in university and I treated it exactly the way you're not supposed to, which is to learn everything right before the final, pass the exam, and then immediately forget all of it.

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I didn't realize it was literally what I was can be tested on in every single interview.

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So I sent in about 80 applications, got around 5 interviews, and walked into them completely unprepared for technical questions.

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My most embarrassing interview was with SAP.

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They asked me to implement a stack using two cues, and I knew what a stack was, and that was basically it.

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I sat there for 40 minutes completely blanking while the two interviewers just stared at me.

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It was so bad.

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One thing that helped me a lot was practicing out loud.

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It sounds weird, but it trains you to explain your thinking in an interview

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when someone's watching you and when your brain goes blank.

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I also keep notes on every question I do, what the pattern was, what I got wrong, and how I could come back to it instead of moving on and forgetting.

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So if you're early in your leak code journey and feeling completely lost, I totally get it.

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I was the person who didn't even know what a stack was in a live interview.

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You will get better.

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Just do it consistently and practice your questions out loud.

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Imagine getting to this point of the interview

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and then you just blank on your interview stories because you didn't have any prepared.

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In my Amazon interview, I think I talked to the person 20 minutes over my interview time

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because I was just like so excited to talk and I like loved yapping.

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So I think I'm actually like not too bad at the behavioral part.

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Amazon has these 16 core values called leadership principles and there's things like bias for action,

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ownership, customer obsession, and you need to answer your behavioral questions in a way that addresses each of these leadership principles.

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Some quick tips are to use the STAR method to answer your questions which is situation, task, action, result.

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This will help frame your answers in a way

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that is very clear for them to understand and knows your impact right away.

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So it's really important to build a story bank of like five

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or six stories that you can just reuse for a bunch of questions.

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For example, if someone asks you tell me about a conflict or tell me about a time you failed, you can definitely use the same story for each of those questions.

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So let me show you my Notion behavioral template which I am also sharing down below.

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Trust me, this notion behavioral template works and if you can answer all these questions, you're going to be set.

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So this is my job search portfolio with my work summary, but on the bottom here, I also have the behavioral questions that you should probably answer.

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These are popular questions that a lot of companies will ask and I've prepared answers for each of them.

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Why do you want to work at XYZ company?

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You need to be able to answer that.

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Another question people have asked is have you disagreed with someone for a project and how did you go about solving this?

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Name a time where you're working on something

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and you had to convince them to work on a solution you might think was better.

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Tell me about a time you made a bold and difficult decision.

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Tell me about a time you solved the pain point for customers.

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These are very popular questions that a lot of companies will ask.

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My problem is all my answers for these questions are very outdated.

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They're from an older story bank.

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So all I'm gonna do is ask Notion to update the

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answers in the behavioral questions table using the content that's been saved in my work summary.

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And this will help me generate new story bank that I can use to practice my behavioral interview questions with.

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I really like to get in front of a mirror

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and then answer all these questions like talking to myself

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or talking to a camera just so that I'm prepared to recite like these stories.

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And what's cool is my custom agent can be updated on a trigger.

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Every time I update my work summary I can add new story bank answers.

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So I'm going to take a look at the answers it generated, polish them up, and then I'll be done my behavioral section.

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So when I was first preparing for behavioral interviews, I really struggled because I didn't know what stories were worth telling.

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I kept thinking, is this even impressive enough to bring up?

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I would think of something I did at school

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or a previous internship and immediately talk myself out of it because it felt too small or obvious.

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But here's the thing I had to learn.

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You are almost always more critical of yourself than anyone else's.

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The story you think is okay probably sounds really solid to someone who's never heard it.

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This is your time to show who you are and what you've done, nobody in that interview is going to do it for you.

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One thing I also recommend is keeping track of all the

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questions you were asked during interviews in a Notion doc as well.

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Even if the interview doesn't go well, write down the questions they asked and the answers that you gave.

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It sounds tedious but it builds up this bank of answers you can draw from over time and refine.

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And one more thing, the questions you ask at the end of the interview actually matter a lot too.

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I always ask something like, what does a successful intern or new hire actually look like on a team, Or what is the one thing that people on your team find most challenging?

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And also, this is the perfect time for you to interview the company

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and figure out if this is actually somewhere you'd like to work.

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And now we're on to the more personal project section of the job searching process.

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This is the final layer of the full job searching process, and it's also the most fun for me.

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Now, when it comes to your resume, if you're not getting enough responses, it's probably because you don't have enough experience.

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And sometimes that might be something you can't change.

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Experience takes time, and I've only been working for two years, so it's really hard to say, like, I've worked at, like, six other companies.

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So what you can do to jazz up your resume is to add some really cool projects.

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Now, with AI, there is no excuse for a notes app on your resume.

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Don't look at my resume because I have a really lame app right now, but it's about to get a lot more fun.

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I really encourage you to use modern libraries and cool AI tools because it shows that you're young, you're current, you know what's going on, you know all the trends, and I think it should solve a problem that you have.

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This will make it more interesting to the hiring manager

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and also interesting to yourself so it gives you the motivation to keep working on it after a long day of work.

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And finally, treat your project like a real product.

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Make sure you deploy it, get some users on it, make a video about it, definitely have a really good readme because when people go click your GitHub, they can see it.

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For me right now, I'm working on Outfit Generator.

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I've been talking about it for a while.

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I have a lot of videos on it, but it's super fun and it also solves my problem of having like too many clothes

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and not knowing what to do with it.

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I just need to deploy it and add authentication so that people can actually add their own outfits and log in.

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Yeah, I'm really excited.

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It's a cute app.

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I'm really close to getting done, so I'm gonna work on that right now.

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So before we even talk about what to build, I want to say build something that genuinely interests you.

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Because that energy comes through in the code and the way you talk about it in an interview.

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For inspiration, some of my favorite places to look are X, Pinterest, and design showcase sites.

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They're always designers, engineers posting their work and it can really spark something.

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And I also think one of the most underused sources of project ideas is hackathon winners.

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Go look at the winning projects from recent hackathons and see what people are building under pressure with a tight deadline.

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I actually recently judged a hackathon and it was

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so cool to see everything that people have built

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and I felt like it really inspired me to make something of my own.

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And when someone asks you to walk you through your project in an interview, the answer should not just be what you built, it should be a series of decisions and trade-offs.

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Why this database over another one?

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Why this API design?

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Why you structured and architecture this way?

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And one more thing, if there's a specific company you really want to work at, I recommend looking at their engineering blog, open source repos, and build something in their domain using their tech stack.

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It is 10.20pm, I'm exhausted.

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I have work tomorrow which really sucks.

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So if you're job searching right now and also working, I'm feeling for you.

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It's a really tough time.

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Let's get through it together.

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It's going to be amazing at the end.

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We're going to get our dream jobs.

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It's a long journey and the market is not great, but we got to do what we got to do and stay positive.

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I'm just so happy that I used Notion four years ago

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and then now they have like updated all their stuff to the AI technologies.

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So now I can really make my job searching process more manageable and streamline everything.

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So thank you so much to Notion for sponsoring today's video.

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If you want to try out your own custom agents, check out the link in my description.

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And I've also linked there my Notion and behavioral interview templates.

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Be sure to follow me on Instagram and check out this playlist of my day in the lives.

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Bye!

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64 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 218 sentences and 3122 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:24. The speaker talks fast, about 217 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
notion noun	/ˈnoʊʃən/	Mental apprehension of whatever may be known, thought, or imagined; idea, concept.
resume verb	/ˈɹɛz.ə.meɪ/	To start (something) again that has been stopped or paused from the point at which it was stopped or paused; continue, carry on.
behavioral adjective	/bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/	Of or relating to behavior.
solve verb	/sɒlv/	To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out.
database noun	/ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/	A collection of (usually) organized information in a regular structure, usually but not necessarily in a machine-readable format accessible by a computer.
custom noun	/ˈkʌstəm/	Frequent repetition of the same behavior; way of behavior common to many; ordinary manner; habitual practice; method of doing, living or behaving.
summary noun	/ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/	An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material.
stack noun	/stæk/	A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
template noun	/ˈtɛm.plɪt/	A physical object whose shape is used as a guide to make other objects.
examination noun	/ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/	The act of examining.
blank noun	/ˈblæŋk/	The white spot in the centre of a target; hence (figuratively) the object to which anything is directed or aimed, the range of such aim.
genuinely adverb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/	In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly.
internship noun	/ˈɪntɜːnʃɪp/	A job taken by a student in order to learn a profession or trade.
suck verb	/sʌk/	To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast).
hire verb	/ˈhaɪɹ/	To obtain the services of in return for fixed payment.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
send out verb		To issue, dispatch or transmit.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
bring up verb		To mention.
build up verb		To erect; to construct.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get around verb		To move to the other side of (something, such as an obstruction) by deviating from a direct course or following a curved path.
get through verb	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	To overcome; to endure.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	I've been using · I've been keeping · I've been working
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to check · used to solve
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has laid · haven't updated · I've created
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	would be ruined · was posted · can be tested

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 79 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, hackathon /ˈhæ.kə.θɑn/, authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, internship /ˈɪntɜːnʃɪp/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, ownership /ˈoʊnɚʃɪp/
Long words — get the stress right: behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, architecture /ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like notion, resume, behavioral.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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