I have a degree in Computer Science and recently finished a 9 month software development Boot Camp. Been sending out resume and applications to quite a few postings off of LinkedIn but so far getting very little response. I have an interview tomorrow but not sure how legit it is, outside of that I haven’t been called up for any interviews yet. Comrades in the software industry please help me out with any advice you can. I’m willing to relocate to pretty much anywhere as long as I can get employment in this field that will lead to good experience and development.
I played the numbers game
195 apps
5 interviews
2 offers
i did this, i landed an interview but the company tried to ghost me after that so i showed up on their doorstep
ended up getting the job but it was kind of a shitty company so eeeeh
Work on a pet project or two and put it on GitHub. Practice coding exams with something like LeetCode, HackerRank, etc.
I always wish I had better advice for this, papa emeritus had solid advice. I get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn when I’ve had my profile set to looking for a job or whatever.
I’d look into state and federal, if you’re American. I’ve seen them have internships that are specifically for recent grads. I’ve worked federal and found the interview much more reasonable there. Any friends from college are a great resource, if they’re in industry. I had a guy I did a project with in school message me, and because I know the hiring managers I got him an internship no problem.
I never had to have a public repo, but I may have just been lucky. If you’re into remote work, I’d expand my search and apply to rural areas. I know some programmers down here in the sticks that find it very difficult to hire. Even if not listed remote, you could ask.
For my first internship, I found a junior developer at the company and spoke with them to get a feel about what the interview would be like, blah, blah. Much better than speaking with a recruiter.
Edit just to say development and experience is a crapshoot. I’d honestly get my foot in the door somewhere. You could transfer teams or something afterwards if you find a good one you think would be good mentors.
I’ve been working in the industry for a few years now and had recently been acting as the hiring manager for an open engineer position. YMMV, but here’s my experience:
- 80% of the people that get past the initial screening are from a referral, 15% of the people are scouted on LinkedIn, and only about 5% make it who have submitted a resume without a reference. If you’re on the other side of that, then you should expect to hear back about ~5% of the time when submitting a resume to open postings with no reference.
- Get someone to look over your resume, but it’s not the most important thing. Your portfolio and github accounts even less so. Once you get past the initial screening, pretty much no one interviewing you will have looked at any of that.
- Soft skills are VERY important. During the interview, you will be judged by how much the team wants to work with you. Practice, practice, practice. Be empathetic, show that you have a growth mindset, are willing to work with others, solve disputes in healthy and productive ways. Don’t be cocky, don’t ramble, don’t box yourself into decision making based only on personal preferences.
- Casually mention to everyone that you’re looking for a software engineering role. Your family, friends, friends of friends. Mention it to people you volunteer with, play sports with. You can make it known that this is what you’re interested in without being pushy about it. People are generally happy to help and take them up on it when they do!
- Joining your local meetup groups can be a great way to get your foot in the door. Look out for hackathons, weekly web dev meetings, women in tech, or any sort of community gathering of tech people. The more people you know and are friendly with in the industry, the more opportunities you have.
- Nothing is stopping you from applying to literally hundreds of remote and local jobs. You can write up a generic cover letter and spam your resume to a bunch of companies. Find any sort of job posting aggregators: LinkedIn, StackOverflow Jobs, Glassdoor, Indeed. Go wild if you want.
- Take care of yourself. Get plenty of sleep. Exercise. Socialize with friends. This process sucks, but it’s much more manageable when you’re healthy and have the energy.
- It’s easier after you have one job. And it gets much easier after having a few. If the gig is shitty, know that you can just start applying again whenever you want. The average tenure for a software engineer at a company is anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. It’s valuable for employers to hire engineers with a breadth of knowledge working at different organizations, and you end up getting better working conditions and better pay the more often you jump around.
The entire process to the first job can be draining and defeating, so make sure to cut yourself plenty of slack. Opportunities will open up over time, and eventually you’ll get a callback that turns into an offer, or a friend of a friend lands a tech job and helps you get an interview. Good luck out there and keep your head up!
