As others said, companies only care about themselves. Nevertheless, it's not impossible to trick the "tech interview process" and get a decent job these days (I

As others said, companies only care about themselves. Nevertheless, it's not impossible to trick the "tech interview process" and get a decent job these days (I'm not talking about FAANG-style companies). IMHO, you could do the following: 1. You may need around 1-2 months of preparation, depending on how much time you are able to put (e.g., if your current administrative tech job doesn't demand too much from you, use your working hours to prepare for the tech interview) 2. What do you need to prepare? Based solely in the description you provided, it seems that you were doing some kind of backend engineering job, right? (Writing queries, code, dealing with deployments). If you have more than 5 years of experience (total) in the IT industry, I would call myself "Senior software engineer" and apply for such jobs. In this case, chances are you'll likely will have to deal with the so-called "design systems interview" (there are many good books out there like [1]. Read a few examples and get used to the way they are solved). If you need to prepare for coding tests, then google "cracking the coding interview". Don't go crazy, just learn the way these exercises are done. 3. Fake it till you make it. Watch a few YouTube videos about demoing tech interviews. Imitate the way people explain things and the like. One needs to gain some extra confidence in oneself when doing interviews. 4. Iterate, but don't go crazy. Find a company, investigate it a little bit (e.g., read their website, blog, social media, linkedin employees). Tailor your CV to what they are asking for in their job ads and apply. I cannot say anything about referrals because I never had one. 5. Relax. You have a job. It would be harder if you were jobless and trying to find a job (like many engineers are right now) [1]: https://github.com/G33kzD3n/Catalogue/blob/master/System%20Design%20Interview%20An%20Insider%E2%80%99s%20Guide%20by%20Alex%20Xu%20(z-lib.org).pdf https://github.com/G33kzD3n/Catalogue/blob/master/System%20D...