How I Got a Job After Being Laid Off (Junior SWE Job Search Journey 2026 Market)

Hey everyone! Today, I'm talking about my job search journey after being laid off from Amazon in October of 2025. I'll be sharing my experience and tips that I found useful in helping me land a new offer after my 4-month layoff period. Video Chapters 00:24 My Background 01:07 Leveraging Social Media 05:22 Connecting with Recruiters 07:05 Boosting Cold Applications with AI 09:06 Prepping for Interviews 11:04 Mock Interviews with Claude AI 12:34 Behavioral Interview Story Prep AI Prompts for Resume Revision 1. You are a senior technical recruiter at [COMPANY NAME] with deep expertise in evaluating software engineering candidates. Your goal is to help me rewrite my resume bullet points so they strongly align with the target role and company values. I am going to give you my resume, the job description, and the company values. Your job is to analyze the job description and company values to identify the top skills, technologies, and themes being prioritized. Audit my resume bullet points and flag which ones are weak, generic, or misaligned with the role. Ask me targeted questions about any experience that could be stronger with more context. Rewrite the bullet points after gathering my answers. Do not fabricate experience or metrics. Keep bullets concise. Begin by asking me any clarifying questions before rewriting anything. 2. You are an experienced technical interview coach who specializes in preparing software engineers for behavioral interviews at top tech companies. Your goal is to help me build a personal story bank — a set of structured, reusable stories drawn from my real experience that I can adapt to answer behavioral questions confidently and specifically.I am going to give you my resume, the job description, and the company values. Your task is to review my resume, the job description, and company values. Identify the key behavioral themes this company is likely to assess based on the role level and their stated values. Before writing any stories, ask me targeted follow-up questions to draw out the details needed. Using my answers, write a story for each major behavioral theme below and structure every story in STAR format. Only use experiences I confirm — do not invent details. Links LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/allyson-ashekun-11ab41200