Best Way To Land Entry-Level Job? 441
chemicaldave writes "I'm graduating this May and have been seeking a programming position for months. It seems that the biggest hurdle to landing an interview is getting past the doorman that is HR. After reading this entry from Coding Horror describing the lack of programming candidates who can actually program, I can't help but scratch my head. I can program! (See how I put that link in?) If I can't land an interview, then even a short online evaluation of my coding skills would suffice. I just want a chance to prove myself. Alas, sending resumes to companies has rarely led to anything but an auto-confirmation email of my submission. I understand that sending resumes online is not the best method to landing an interview, but I come from a small rural school so job fairs rarely offer anything more than IT support positions let alone a programming position. It seems to me that developers are always looking for talented young programmers. We're out here looking for you too. Am I missing something?"
Call the boss (Score:1, Informative)
Find a company you want to work with, even if they are not advertising positions. Call your prospective boss, tell him you want to work with him. Done!
The sad fact is... (Score:4, Informative)
The sad fact is GPA and the school you went to really matter a lot when getting past HR. If you have a sub 3.0-3.2 GPA and/or went to a low ranked school you should try to bypass HR.
I would consider traveling to another University's job fair if you don't have good local ones. Here, you can talk directly to engineers/programmers who can gauge your skills far more precisely than HR can glean from your resume.
Re:Apply (Score:5, Informative)
A bit cynical... but mostly true.
I am still in college, and I was hired last week for a full-time position. I was lucky (or prudent) to gain programming experience through a 3 year internship in college. If you don't have any relevant experience, as the parent post points out, you are really going to need to put together some demo code. I wouldn't consider anything less than 500 lines, which if you really can program, should only take you day or two. Try to make it as original and non-trivial as possible... Be sure to document the code well using whatever documentation tools there are for the language you are using.
Also, are you getting the basics right? Do you have a good resume? You should get some feedback from professionals if possible on it. Are you writing cover letters that explain what YOU can do for the company? Be sure to tailor your resume/cover-letter to the job description; expect to spend 2-3 hours on each.
If you would like me to offer some feedback on your resume/cover-letter, I could do so. I've been able to help friends land interviews by doing this before.
Good luck, keep your chin up, expand you skills, and realize that you don't know jack.
Re:Apply (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Missing something (Score:3, Informative)
You can't beat being really good at what you do for getting jobs. It's almost magic!
Also, it helps if you're not a dick and you don't smell bad. People don't like hiring or working with dicks or people who reek.
Does your resume convey coding ability? (Score:2, Informative)
Being a fresh graduate isn't as hard as people make it sound - if you've coded before, and you're good at it, you've got a way to sell yourself.
Sheesh (Score:3, Informative)
I hope you don't pay to much attention to this guy. The world is not nearly as dark as he's proclaiming.
I'm going to tell you a fact that you may or not find comforting.
9 out of 10 programmers who are applying for jobs suck. I'm probably being too generous here, but whatever. I've interviewed people at Microsoft, and I've interviewed people at small start ups. Doesn't matter, most interviewee's are just terrible. I don't blame this guy for being jaded. If you had to interview crappy programmer after crappy programmer, you would be too.
BUT if you're the 1 out of 10 who's actually good, than you have a very bright future ahead of you. Companies are always hiring, and if you're truely talented, they'll often hire you even if they weren't planning on it. No good company lets a great programmer get away when they find one.
Entry level jobs have a lot of advantages, in that you're still new, and have no idea what you're actually worth. People are inheritantly loyal to the first company they work for, so they tend to stick around for a lot longer. Plus you get to train them to your style of programming.
Now in terms of actually getting those jobs...
Luckily for you, HR is ridiculously easy to get around. They don't know technology, and you can use that to your advantage. School, GPA, hobbies, cover letter, prior non programming work experience, awards... none of that matters. The only thing they care about is the programming buzzwords you have in there.
Right now, the big one is FLEX, or AS3. Learn that. Put it on your resume. There's a big shortage there, because most people who learn Flash are graphic designers with a minimal programming skill set. If you're a programmer with a minimal graphic design skill set, they'll love you.
Find out what else is "hot" but becareful not to confuse programmer trendy, with what's actually in demand. (Nobody in HR cares about Ruby on Rails).
Just pretend HR is nothing but a search engine that scans your resumes for keywords, and you'll be fine.
Now as far as experience goes. Work on an open source project. There's really no excuse not to. Just think about all the programs you use that are open source, find something that you'd like to change, and than go about learning how to change it. Don't "apply" and ask "what can I do to help". Just jump in and have at it. It's way easier to work on a project when you're doing something you want done anyway.
Good luck!
I am a recruiter.... (Score:1, Informative)
I'm sure that part will get me flamed but what I do for a living is get people jobs. The most important thing you have to realize is it doesn't matter how great your skills are if people don't see your resume. Your resume is a marketing document. It is a tool to get you an interview. And just like all other marketing document it needs to be seen by as many relevant people as possible. Stop applying for jobs and start applying to companies. Emails get auto-responded to at almost all companies. Letters don't. It will cost you some postage but posting your CV to companies will get a lot further than email it ever will.
That said sending your CV around isn't the best way to go about getting a job. The best thing you can do is sit down and make a list of every single company you can think of that you think your skills would suit and then pick up the phone. Call every one of those companies and say "Could I speak to the person that looks after your IT department please?" - "Hello Mr IT Manager, My name is Job Blogs, I am a recent CS graduate with a major in java development and slashdot posting and Digg reading. I am currently seeking a role and I was wondering whether you would have a use with someone of my skills at the moment?" If yes WOOHOO. If no "Do you think you would use someone of my skills in the future? And would you know anyone who is looking for someone of my background at the moment?"
This is extremely hard to do. It takes a lot of self discipline and a strong mind to get past all the no you will receive. But this method is 100% the best way of landing yourself a job.
How good you are plays a part in getting a job, but FAR more important is making sure enough people know you are looking.
Good Luck.
Re:Find your roadblock and get around it (Score:4, Informative)
I'll second the resume suggestion and I'll comment a bit more on this, as this hasn't been discussed much so far. This might indeed be his main problem (besides the fact that the economy is just starting to recover and lots of companies have hiring freezes) if he's not getting any responses at all.
The shittyness of some resumes can be simply staggering, and the OP's might be one of these. It's not that you need embossed print or watermarked paper, but following some basic rules of typography and design helps immensely. I'm not a designer myself, but I think just sticking to one font (maybe a different one for the name/heading is ok too) and keeping the layout as clear and as consistent as possible can make a huge difference.
The content itself is of course very important. Even as a fresh graduate, you don't want your resume to look like this:
*-paraphrasing, but this is an actual line I saw somebody write on their resume.
Obviously, make sure there aren't any spelling or grammar problems, or just awkward phrasing anywhere. I'm not going to say what exactly you should write to guarantee a job because I don't know that myself, but in my opinion (well also in the opinion of people vastly more experienced than I am) the most important thing here is to show how you are different and better that others who would be applying for the same job. Unless there are more jobs that possible candidates, you are going to compete with them. Sure you can code in C, but so can I, and I've never went through a fancy CS program.
So, think about how you are better than others, like those who will be graduating with you. If you can't think of anything, well, that's your problem. Do something about it ASAP before you graduate and become unemployed.
It's possible to argue that skills required for making a nice resume don't overlap much with those required from a code monkey, but if the resume looks like it was designed and written by a thirteen year old, I think the HR drones are more then justified in tossing it in the bin. At the very least, a nice resume shows the employers that you care about finding a job, put in the effort to do it right, and that you could also pick up the skills which were necessary for the task, even if they weren't your area of expertise originally.
OP, if you're reading this (and I hope you are, I didn't type all this for my own amusement!), why don't you post your CV so we can critique it for you?
PS. the cover letters can be just as important.
Re:Missing something (Score:3, Informative)
Rude? No. It's the simple (if perhaps unpleasant) truth. The single most important thing that can happen during your course of study is your internships. When you graduate with your shiny new CompSci degree, you should already have experience. Your competition will.
I didn't do the all important social networking part while in college, and that set my career back by at least 3 years. You see, no one explained to me that the internships were the important thing. I was busy trying to learn what the professors were trying to teach (all of which is nearly irrelevent to getting a job), instead of getting work experience, and building a network of friends who would recommend me.
To answer the question from TFS: just about the only way to get your first job out of college is with the recommendation of someone already working for the hiring manager. Otherwise, you'll be playing HR roulette indefinitely.
Re:Apply (Score:3, Informative)
I worked in a tech staffing office for about 7 years and I know the industry pretty well. There is what seems like a large markup at first, but you have to take a few things into consideration. When you work direct at a company, there's a lot of hidden fees that you don't see that come with your employment. There's overhead, computers and office equipment, holidays, administration, etc. As with all businesses, they're going to make money off of you; however, you have to realize that professional staffing agencies (not "temp agencies") are there to build a working relationship with the client. In addition, they want to build a good working relationship with you as well. If your job doesn't go temp to perm, they want to be able to place you somewhere else to keep that source of revenue. There's good agencies and bad agencies, yes...but when you find a good agency it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship.
As far as the agency taking a percentage of your pay, this is 100% inaccurate. You negotiate your compensation with the agency, then the agency decides markup based on your compensation and presents it to the client...so at no time is anything being taken from you. In addition, if you take a temp position through a staffing agency, 95% of the time you should be looking to make MORE than you would if you were working a direct/perm job in your field. These companies pay top dollar after your salary and agency markup because its cheaper for them to pay more for a short term job everytime the short term job pops up than it is to bring someone on staff. Insurance, 401K, etc. is a large part of this. This is why you see so many professional contractors out there. I can work contract positions 9 months out of the year and make roughly the same as I would working a salaried position. The only downside is job security.
Someone being employeed through a staffing agency will have the exact same tax situation as someone working full time at a company. You become an employee of the staffing agency and you are not a contractor in the sense that you do not deal with 1099s.
show off your skills (Score:1, Informative)
The best thing you can do is produce your own code that you can show them. Something you have spent a lot of your own time on and shows a number of different concepts. A previous commenter said contribute to an open source project which should be just as good. My brother produced his own 3D engine (a few hundred hours of work), it got him a intermediate level job at a startup game developer. He is now a senior programmer just two years later. He never went through an agency either, just go straight to the company. I managed to get a graduate position myself, I offered to show code I produced in my own time, for that I got the job and they didn't even ask to see it.
Re:Missing something (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Missing something (Score:3, Informative)
Here's my story, for what it's worth...
I graduated from U of Illinois in Spring of '90 with a CS degree. Unfortunately, I kept my head down in school, so all I had was classwork, and I spent summers working in my dad's business. Both of those added up to zero experience.
I finally got an interview in October based on a newspaper ad, and borrowed my grandma's car to go to it (I wasn't sure mine would make it the 90 miles, and hers had air conditioning - I wanted to look decent.) The interview went OK, and I ended it telling the hiring manager something like this:
"So look, I need a job. Pay me enough to live on and I'll be happy. We can talk about what you're paying me in 6 months after you decide I'm good."
Fortunately, they hired me. 9 months later they gave me a raise from $22,000 to $29,000 a year. Biggest raise, as a percent, I've ever had.
Present what you have, clearly and professionally (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apply (Score:1, Informative)
When I'm asked to take a look at some random CV at work, I jump the bullshit (I am, I want, etc) and look at the list of programming languages, operating systems, that's listed in the CV. If I'm happy there I go back to the text, and try to verify that the person actually has knowledge about those things listed. If the list contains alot, I expect to find a lot of references to work where it was used. If I can not find that, then the list is fake.
I much rather have a short short tech list, that's backedup then a long list that I expect is fake.
I take in consideration age, school, and if they can learn new stuff.
When hiring a person, this is what we look for:
1. A person that can learn new stuff
2. A person that will fit the team
3. Current technology skills
When it's time for an interview, I will ask some trick questions. I exspect good answers, even if the answers are "I dont know".
Example: If it sais Unix on the CV, I might ask what the difference is about SystemV and BSD. Not a trick question but probably something they cant answer. This is to verify how much they about the topic (Unix) know. this could result in 3 difference answers:
1. The person don't know, and actually guessing (This is the worsed case.. probably not going to hire)
2. The person don't know, and tells me so (This is fine, I hire this one: At work you grab a book or google anyway)
3. The person do know (This is great: Then we talk abit about it for fun)
Note that the questions are based on the CV, I will not ask about BOOST (C++ extension libraries) if the CV does not state C++.
So.. down to what I want to see in an CV (In order of importance):
* A true tech list, add programs, languages and operating systems, you do know.
* A detailed list of why you know those technologies (School, work, opensource etc)
* A really short "about me" introduction
Re:Sheesh (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of the students would actually pull my almost working programs out of the trash and basically copy my work. I always thought, there is no way this person is going to be able to keep their job and if they do, they are never going to go anywhere with it.
What I have found in the past 15 years is the people that get a degree that they really cannot back up with delivering results end up with jobs in operations where they sit and watch monitors all day or they move DLT tapes in and out of tape libraries and put them in boxes so Iron Mountain can come pick them up for remote storage.
If the OP is that 1 in 10 (or 1 in 8.33 as I gave as an example) he will figure out a way to get a job and from there will move up. If he's in the other group of people he'll probably struggle.
Re:To that I'll add (Score:1, Informative)
Parent posts are spot on. In my own personal experience, getting a CS degree did net me an "entry level" position, but not purely because of the degree. When I was hired, I was grilled on my way of thinking, my approaches to problems, and what my knowledge base really was. It makes no difference how many languages you can write "hello world" in, if you aren't able to answer the questions your potential employer is asking of you. Had I not had an intern-like position as a web developer (flash and html are maddening as a CS student), I wouldn't have gained any industry experience, and likely would never have been considered.
If this thread has done nothing to convince you, put yourself in the employers shoes. You need someone that can reason about the software your employer is producing, someone able to solve the problems as they come up, in the language they use, in order to please their customers. While a degree will put you a step ahead of those without one (to an extent), it won't distinguish you from all the other new degrees. However, if you have developed your own indie game (or at least attempted to and can prove it), you may stand out from the crowd for a game company job.