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?"
Apply (Score:5, Insightful)
And stop expecting a big salary shiny salary to do what is essentially the work of a computer janitor.
As soon as you lower your expectations to reality you'll find 'entry level' jobs are almost as common as now-hiring signs at McDonalds.
show off your programming skills (Score:5, Insightful)
apply for the google summer of code project. looks great on the resume.
also, do virtually anything public programming related. write a small open source utility. or a new feature in an existing open source app. or a free app for a cell phone. (100k downloads isn't that hard, and looks good to business folk)
i've been on the hiring side of fresh meat devs several times now. literally anything that shows you can code in a reasonable, organized fashion will put you at the top of the list.
btw, i hope the html link reference was a joke. =P
Common Sense and Finished Examples: (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, show examples of your programming experience. Doesn't have to be used somewhere in industry, just have working, finished examples of your code available either online (if applicable) or somehow available for them to see. Be the candidate that they interview that might not have experience working in a firm, but can still finish projects.
I can't stress just how much those two simple points will help?
Manners are somewhat lacking (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the best thing you can do is while searching try and get involved in some open source project. It's probably not going to put food on the table, but it will likely land you access to opportunities that you might not otherwise get. And give you something to put on your CV while maintaining your skills.
But just realize that the manners of people doing the hiring are typically lousy and remember that if you get turned down that you're likely not interested in working for a company that represents itself in such an embarrassing way.
Re:show off your programming skills (Score:4, Insightful)
This. DO LOTS OF OPEN SOURCE. It proves your ability to code something that someone else will actually accept into their project. And starts building that all-important professional network!
The economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad economy+no practical experience+little school no one has heard of=hard to get a job. Particularly if your college can't get together a real job fair. Applying to internet postings works more if you have experience on your resume, its a difficult way to get a first job. Especially since in this economy an experienced but out of work programmer may apply for a position normally below him. It was that way after the .com crash too.
I'd suggest using any people you know already in the industry or in companies that hire programmers. And consider taking an IT position if you can't get anything else- I know a lot of programmers from small schools that started out that way and then switched over. If nothing else it will pay the bills for a while.
Here's The Problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in broadcast engineering, which includes some programming, but is not programming-specific. I'll let some of those folks address your concerns directly. But speaking in general and in no particular order:
1. Maybe you should have gone to a different school, even if it meant relocating. An internship would have given you some valuable experience, and if you're really good, would probably have resulted in permanent employment afterward.
2. Look at small companies instead of the big ones. Offer to work for beans and rice until you can demonstrate that you know what you're doing. It'll pay off in the long run.
3. While you look for a job, work on an open-source project. Having a recommendation from a well-known F/OSS guru can't hurt. :)
4. Once you get the chance, I can't emphasize this strongly enough: PROVE TO ME THAT YOU REALLY WANT THE JOB. Think outside the box. Be willing to go the extra mile. Don't sit in your chair playing Solitaire waiting for me to tell you what to do next. Show initiative.
Back when I was a teenager, I got my first job in radio by hanging around the station constantly. I took out the trash. I annoyed the engineer and asked a thousand questions. I was willing to do anything to prove that I wanted the job.
I'm not boasting; that's just common sense. But contrast that with an intern who tried out with me a couple of years ago. Unless I stayed on him, he did indeed sit and play Solitaire. When the HVAC went out in the studios, he got up from his job as a call screener for one of our talk shows and said, "it's just too hot. I'll be back tomorrow" -- which left us scrambling for someone to cover his slot.
He still calls from time to time and is amazed that we won't hire him. No, I'm not kidding.
It's not about what you know... (Score:3, Insightful)
...but about who you know. Referrals from friends are the best way to get your foot in the door for entry-level positions, then experience will get you in the door for future jobs.
Find your roadblock and get around it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are only applying to big companies, that could be your problem. There are lots of smaller companies around, and they are usually the ones that have trouble finding good programmers. If you really are good, then keep tweaking your presentation until the people where you are applying can actually see that you are good. If you are not actually good, then your roadblock is that you are not good, and you should fix that.
Re:Apply (Score:5, Insightful)
Self reply but I have to ...
No, you can throw code at a computer and get it to produce something you want. Thats not impressive. The first thing your first job is going to do is break down all the bullshit you got fed in school and introduce you to the realities of real world programming.
Yes, you aren't talented. You're not special. You are just like every other graduate thats had a few programming classes. Sorry, but thats just reality.
You are not going to get a 'good job' because there are FAR FAR FAR more people out there looking for those jobs right now with years of 'experience' on paper that you don't have.
The lack of experience puts you at the bottom of the food chain, you have to compete with me, and my 20 years of writing software, and the thousands of others like me.
My wife recently graduated Vet school and is upset because she couldn't go get the perfect cushie job fresh out and had to work a shitty job for a few months. Thats just reality. You went to school just to get on a level playing field with all the other people who went to school. Look at how many people graduated with you that want to do exactly what you do. Did your school produce more programmers than your locality can consume? If so, how do you expect to get a job at all if your school is producing more people to do a job than there are job slots to fill.
First step in joining the business world: Businesses lie. They aren't looking for talented developers RIGHT NOW, but if you happen to be completely kick ass and submit a resume at the right time, they might pick you up anyway. Every companies website lists job offerings, 99% of the time they have no real intention of filling them.
They are looking for experienced programmers they can hire at the rate of a entry level programmer. If they find it, they'll hire them, but they'll just turn you down unless you have something really impressive that stands out.
How are you showing them your skills? A resume? I've hired a few developers in my time, I assure you the only people that care about your resume is HR. When a potential employer asks you what you've done, are you just going to point out class projects where you were essentially spoon fed every step of the process? Thats not going to win you any points. You need something to show them you are worth hiring and nothing on a resume is going to do it.
Regardless of everything I've said above, be it right or wrong, you have one serious disadvantage. You're looking for a job at the worst possible time. For the last 10-12 years schools have been pumping out 'developers' who are just random people that signed up for CS because they thought they could get rich quick. Now you're coming into the job market, 15 years too late, with an education that was out of date before you graduated from highschool, during an economy were all the other mediocre but far more experienced 'developers' out there are looking for jobs as well.
You're only hope is to get a job from a friend of a friend of a friend. So make so friend in the right places, work some crappy job in the interim and put some effort into making a portfolio of sorts and wait for a better time to find a job or some luck.
Who ya know (Score:3, Insightful)
I find that jobs are handed out in this order.
1) Kickback (If I Hire X will I be compensated?)
----
a) |----- Family (Am I related to individual [Small form of kickback, sometimes hiring children of political people falls under this catagorey, nothing cuts through red tape like]
b) |--------- Figurehead ( I've seen where people are hired just to be a figurehead ( Astronauts, Politicians, Former CEO's ect )
2) Circle of Friends (Nothing makes them feel better than hiring someone from their Alma mater, charity, ect.)
----
3) Indentured Servitude (Can I pay this kid to do the job what I spent filling up my yacht for my weekend getaway?)
----
4) The Shiny Turd ( I've got a double MBNA Frum Havard. I am Job. )
----
Lying lips sound the sweetest but when their kissing your ass its even better.
5) Needle In the Haystack ( This is you and me )
-----
you missed a few obvious things already (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 1: When carping about not being able to find a job on slashdot, remember to tell people what programming languages you know.
Step 2: Make sure the name attached to your post links to something besides a couple of pages that haven't been updated in 2 years
Step 3: When fixing the above - start writing essays or blog entries on technology stuff that you know, so that when the quasi-decent HR rep googles your name, he'll be impressed with what he finds. In this day and age, that's one of the few ways you can "submit" a sample of your code.
Good advice was already stated about volunteering for OSS. Even if it doesn't help get you in the door somewhere, it'll at least hone your chops, which will help once you do get a job.
Networking (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting a professional job isn't as simple as having the knowledge and certifications that make you eligible. Building a social network is equally important, if not more important. Having a professional that's already in the industry being able to vouch for you is a huge plus when it comes to finding jobs. Often, this can completely bypass HR and get you in touch with the management involved where your targeted position is.
HR is kinda stupid. Getting around them is the best way to get in, and doing that requires knowing the right people.
This is how I got my engineering job. I have no degrees, but I have substantial real world experience and knowledge, and was introduced to my job through a friend and former coworker who convinced my current manager to interview me. No HR was involved until hiring.
Confused (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, what are you graduating from (high school, technical college, university)? With what kind of degree?
To directly address your question, most entry level positions require two years experience. You need to figure out how to get that experience!
I graduated right before September 11, 2001 and wound up taking an IT support job where they needed some programing done as well. It was a long haul (almost eight years of more and more development), however I just started my first senior developer position. Everyone has to start somewhere!
lack of programmers? (Score:1, Insightful)
When I hear about the lack of programmers, I can't help but think that the definition of "lack" is: "the candidate pool isn't 100,000x times the job pool, we still have to pay the bastards a fair wage".
No ivory backscratcher for you this week, Mr Burns.
Re:Missing something (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears that you missed some level of social networking during school. I volunteered to work for the sysadmin at the community college I go to...I graduate in may and will go to uni in the fall, in the meantime, he put in a good word for me and it helped me get an internship at a sizeable area hospital that will look *great* on my resume (if they dont hire me when i finish uni)
Why is the parent modded +5 insightful? Let me translate this from 'holier art than thou' to English
Way to be helpful, might as well utter that old adage, "You should have thought about it before."
Also (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you Indian?
Are you willing to move to India? Are you willing to accept local Indian renumeration levels?
If you can say yes to the above, I see a great future for you.
Re:Apply (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, some of us just give up in that field and start our own businesses using all the skills we acquired during those 20 years of bullshit.
Re:Call the boss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apply (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, that said, the OP lamented how he can't get an interview. Maybe he does need to improve his resume.
I fervently disagree with this sentiment. I'm also a soon to graduate developer and have received offers from almost every company that I applied to.
Re:Missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
That posting was two years ago, and he says he's a student. The fact that a student was making elementary errors in C++ two years ago hardly means that's incompetent for an entry-level position now.
Try working for the government. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the private sector wont hire, maybe the government will?
Re:The sad fact is... (Score:3, Insightful)
The sad fact is GPA and the school you went to really matter a lot when getting past HR.
Not really. A good GPA will help you, but a mediocre GPA won't hurt you if you write your resume well.
The key to getting past HR is to have a resume that gets HR's attention in the first sentence. Usually large job postings are whittled down by keyword searches, so if you are looking for a programming job make sure you actually mention things relevant to programming in your resume. After that point, the HR screener just skims the resumes, looking for the ones that grab his attention. This is likely where the GP is having a problem. Open up the resume, look at the first sentence, and if there isn't anything that screams "Hey! I'm Special!" in the first half of the sentence, you're probably going to be rejected. If the HR guy doesn't have too many to sift through, he may bother to read the whole sentence. He definitely won't read your whole resume at this point.
Another thing to realize, is that most jobs don't follow the "post, interview, then hire" format. For the majority of jobs, a person is found, the company (or department, or whatever) realizes they could use that person in a position, and the person is offered a job. If jobs are posted at all in this case, it's only to satisfy some company policy or a legal requirement, and the person who will get the job has already been chosen. Easily half or more of jobs are gained this way, and you won't stand a chance getting it unless you are spectacularly better than the person they have already chosen. In that case, they'll at least look at you. These jobs are generally much better than publicly posted jobs too. The only way you'll get one is to network. Go find companies you'd like to work for, and start to find out about the company and the people who work there. If the company is big enough, you can just hang out and talk to the receptionist (as long as they aren't very busy) for a portion of the day. There's a good chance you'll get to know someone who has the ability to hire you, and you just might be able to interest them in your services.
If all you really want, though, is an entry level position, you can always sign up through a contracting service. The jobs tend to suck, but are also often a way companies like to feel out potential new employees who have little or no work experience - it's a lot easier to go through 10 temps until you find a good one worth hiring than it is to hire and fire 10 employees.
Re:Missing something (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. I don't know if lalena came out of the womb writing immaculate C++ code or something, but obviously (s)he does not understand the concept of "Education". Everyone has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is usually really basic stuff that years later you cannot believe you ever had a problem with.
If I was hiring for an entry level position and I saw that, I'd think "Hey, this guy knows how to go get answers when he doesn't know what to do." Yeah, sounds lame, but it is unbelievable how many IT guys/programmers that I have run into who don't seem to understand how to use the web (Search, Forums, etc.) to find answers. If they don't know an answer they ask a coworker. If the coworker doesn't know the answer the call a consultant or try some shitty workaround. After seeing this waaaay too often I consider knowing how to use resources to be a pretty decent "Soft Skill".
Re:It is not a great time (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it fair?
It's absolutely fair. It may be a little unfortunate, but it is certainly fair. Think of it from the perspective of the guy who has a stellar track record but lost his job when the company folded, and has been out of work for the last 6 months because of it. Not choosing him even though he is the most qualified applicant would be unfair.
It's just that we tend to have a hard time looking at it from someone elses perspective when we lose, but fair isn't always nice. In fact it's rarely nice to everybody.
My solution.... if you are still in school... get a fricking internship.
Bingo. Work a second job for money (preferably one that doesn't require thinking, or you'll be drained) and intern for free if you have to, anything to get a foot in the door. If you've got free time after both jobs, help out some FOSS projects. Anything you can do to pump your resume, do it. It probably won't be more than a year before you're able to land something that actually pays. Chances are it will be with the company you're interning for too.
Re:Call the boss (Score:4, Insightful)
It still boggles the mind how we receive null and void experience resume's from guys that seem more jaded than people with 10 years in the field. If you don't show a positive as to why a company should hire you, guess where your resume will be filed? Right in the circular filing cabinet.
Re:Missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to be helpful, might as well utter that old adage, "You should have thought about it before."
That doesn't alter the fact that however the point was presented, or however unintentionally up-his-own-arse the person making the point may have seemed to take the more negative stance, it is a very valid point. Networking can help a lot in may cases.
Maybe it is the Sunday evening pub meal and drinks talking (as I'm not usually one to give the benefit of the doubt!) but I didn't read the post you replied to as "this is what I did but you are too late nyar nyar n nyar nyar", but more as "this is what I did and this is how it helped my plans". The OP could still try the technique - there may be opportunities locally for some sort of technical volunteer work that could be used as the same sort of "CV fodder" spring-board and/or to gain a good reference for future applications for paid work. While the relatively easy-to-access college volunteer work option has gone for the OP there are likely to be opportunities to look for at this later stage. There may well be departments/organisations related to the University or its student bodies or local charities that could use some technical help but can ill afford a trained/accredited resource. If you can get in contact with someone like that at an appropriate time it can be a win/win situation: they get the temporary technical help they need but can't actually afford and the OP gets some CV fodder and/or a useful reference, or at least some experience that could be talked about at interview. Having some real world "dealing with users" / "dealing with customers" / "dealing with management" / "real-world problem solving" experience to talk about critically in an interview can make a massive difference to your chances once you get as far as the interview - it can indicate to the interviewer that not only do you know some facts/techniques but you are also capable of applying them outside academic situations and are capable of dealing with the real people in the real world at the same time. (by "talk about critically" I don't mean just "having a go" about the things that were/went wrong, I mean "what went well and why, what could have been done better, how would you approach the same task again if you had the power of hindsight, how were other people/resources helpful or not" and so on - constructive critique of your progress and experience)
Ever if you don't even manage any of that the exposure, through volunteering, to work outside an academic environment might teach you some useful stuff - even if only "I don't actually like X" or "I more enjoy Y and I'm more proficient in it than Z" or "hmmm, I didn't realise I would need A so much, maybe evidence of reading around / practising / otherwise persuing that area will help me jump from the CV stage to the interview stage more easily".
If you have time and can find volunteer work it will rarely be a disadvantage to you - especially if you are otherwise completely unemployed because it isn't like there would be a lot else practical to fill your time with. This in itself helps a CV/application look more attractive - which would you rather interview from the choice of people who graduated six months ago: those who have sat on their hands for six months doing nothing more than scanning jobs adverts and similar, or the people who have done, or tried to do, something practical with some of the time they had available?
To cut a long story short: as pointed out by the responder above both networking and volunteering can help and the two techniques can be mutually supportive of each other. And if you are not lucky enough to find any good opportunities, what have you lost by trying?
Honest Advice (Score:1, Insightful)
I've been involved with hiring a lot of hi-tech companies, including Google & Yahoo, as well as smaller shops. The general advice I have you is: be exceptional.
The most common way to do that is to attend an exceptional school. That is, a place like Stanford, MIT, Caltech, etc. This isn't going to guarantee you a job, but it will greatly increase your chances of getting an interview because prior employees from good schools have done well on the job. The background they teach also increases your chances of getting through the interview process.
By definition, not everyone goes to an exceptional school, so a lot of people will resent this advice. Fine, but it's not going to change anything. For a new grad, this is probably one of the single most important factors. (If you've worked a while, it quickly falls in importance as you have real experience & skills that can be evaluated.)
Okay, so you didn't go to a top school. Now what?
Well, you're not screwed. Not by any means. A lot of the best engineers I know didn't go a top school.
But I'm going to be a lot less willing to take on as much risk. So help me (as the theoretical hiring manager) by mitigating it another way. That is, show me your awesome: contribute significantly to an open source project. That shows me you can write real code. It shows me you can get stuff done. It shows you can work with others. It shows initiative.
Last piece of advice, although you didn't ask about this: For you first few jobs, forget about money. Your goal is not to make the most money right now, but over the long haul of your career. Find a gig where there are experienced and better developers than you, ones you'll be able to learn from.
If you walk into a place & you're the hotshot with 1-3 years under your belt, leave. Find a place you grow & develop more, even if they back up the money truck. In ten years, you'll be very glad you did (and you'll laugh at what you considered the "big money" 10 years back).
Networking, experience (Score:3, Insightful)
For anyone starting out, coming from a veteran of job searching.
1) Experience. I have said this before, if you have to do some volunteer work for a non-controversial non-profit. E.g. doing websites and donor databases for your local no kill animal shelter. There are plenty of volunteer orgs. that need help. Find one that overlaps your interests and seems a high quality organization. You can get both experience and good references from this.
In addition, if you show up to help with fundraisers you will probably get to meet local business owners. One of which could give you an internship or entry level job to see how you work out. This is also the networking aspect.
2) More references and networking. Get a reference from instructors you "click" with. They may even have leads on potential employers, sometimes former students or colleagues of their. It helps if you have an interest and good grades, but if you show a keen interest that helps to offset any academic struggles.
3) Networking with peers. Form study groups, interests groups, or join one. People who graduated before you could give you leads or advice. Depending on the situation, you may end up doing business with a classmate or two for the rest of your life.
4) See if you can get a student position at your school's IT dept. or help desk. More opportunities for references and networking.
5) Put up adds on Craigs List etc. and do a little consulting on the side while in school. It beats washing dishes. Just make sure you know how the taxes work. More opportun ity for networking. Nothing speaks volume like satisfied customers.
In this economy if all you have done take classes, you are hosed. You lack both experience and social contacts, and will be starting from zero when you graduate which is when you need to money the most.
Testing is a bad path (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who's hired a lot of developers, I can tell you now that going down the Testing path is a terrible idea.
As all good Software Engineers go, Developers Make Bad Testers(tm), and the same goes for the reciprocal. Testing and developing require two completely different mindsets. When we advertise developer positions, we get swarms of testers applying. Unless they've got something else to show for it, their application goes straight in the bin.
The best advice I can give you: contribute to an open source project.
This tells us three things: You actually can cut code, you're motivated enough to see something through, and money isn't your primary motivator.
Re:Missing something (Score:2, Insightful)
Applying for jobs sucks and in many ways is a numbers game.
Making up some numbers, for any given job there will be 20 people who apply and think they have a chance. Three of those will be interviewed and one hired. So you have a 15% chance of getting an interview and a 5% chance of getting the job.
You can increase the odds of getting a perfect job by using two different tactics. If you see a job where you think "I could do that", do the selection criteria, fire in your CV and check it off the list. If you see a job where you think "I really want to do that" go the extra mile, call them, talk to anyone you know in a related field, do the selection criteria, rewrite your CV, call them again, rewrite the selection criteria etc. Going the extra mile will take a few days but it really helps for those truely awesome jobs, it's too much work to do every time though and you need those applications working through the system.
Looking for work should be considered a full time job. You would normally work over seven hours a day, try to use at least five hours a day to apply for jobs. Some time also needs to be devoted to remaining positive to try and fend of depression
Proof that our economy is fundamentally broken (Score:4, Insightful)
"As a manager, I posted for an entry level position "
"I ended up getting the best candidate -- over twelve years of experience pertinent to my business, glowing reviews from previous employers and excellent interpersonal skills."
"Is it fair? Maybe not."
There, right there, is why I don't teach. I cannot, in good conscience, tell some poor kid to work hard, stay in school, study like a madman, fight for good grades, and work 80 hours a week to put himself through school like I did, knowing that there won't be a job for him.
We all know this economy HAS NO entry-level jobs. The same people who so cavalierly smirk "life ain't fair" will be the same people whining and gibbering the loudest when the young we've screwed over pass the "Mandatory Euthanasia/Nutrition Enhancement Act of 2025."
As the next generation straps me and the whiners into the gurneys so we can watch the pretty movie while the drugs start dripping down our IVs, I look forward to finding the fattest, loudest schmucks bawling the like Glenn Beck and telling them, "It's OK. Life ain't fair," before it all goes black.
Re:It is not a great time (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble with what you did is that the the guy with 12yrs experience and glowing reviews was surely not looking for an entry level position... he only applied and accepted because he needed a paycheck and had obviously not found a job at his real experience/salary level. I'd be AMAZED if he doesn't keep looking and quit your job as soon as he has found a better one.
If you'd hired a fresh grad or someone with a year or two's experience they could have grown with the position and maybe ended up making a long term career at your company.
Re:Apply (Score:1, Insightful)
The first thing your first job is going to do is break down all the bullshit you got fed in school and introduce you to the realities of real world programming.
Which are the bad coding/design practices of people who have stopped questioning their method.
I've seen this line of reasoning far too many times, and I can confirm it's just concealed arrogance coming from a supposedly authoritative source.
The people with dozens of years of experience in the field who bash on "school stuff" usually are simply bad engineers. Not being able to normalize a database, not being able to distinguish between the architectural layers of an application, or just not having been able to grok object oriented programming after years of "experience in the field" _does_ make you a bad programmer, even with 100 years of expertise (all examples coming from the real world).
Also, these people are the least likely to accept and incorporate new technologies. And when I say new i mean new for them: I knew a guy who thought version control systems were "unusable".
Yes, he had 20+ years of experience.
Purported efficiency is the second most common excuse I've heard for these abominations. Number one is, you guessed it: "I've got XP".
move (Score:3, Insightful)
Move to a city with a lot of IT. Take ANY job, even if it's Geek Squad. Start networking like crazy, join a LUG, attend conferences and talks, put yourself out there. The vast majority of all jobs are not given to a resume on a stack. Meet people.
Re:Missing something (Score:2, Insightful)
Make a virtual portfolio (Score:1, Insightful)
I would suggest because you are not seeing people face to face, send out cd's that contain your portfolio, including resume, cover letter, work samples and demo's and any certificates, awards you have. At least having something you created on the cd, you have something to show the company that proves you have skills in the area they are looking for
You don't get jobs by sending a resume to HR (Score:1, Insightful)
This is where you are showing your inexperience. In this economy, HR gets thousands of resumes for any opening, and yours will not be the best one. (You have no experience. That's something that HR will filter on, since they don't know who is "good").
It's about who you know. If you don't know many people, start working on it.
First, tell everyone you know you are looking for a job. Ask them to keep their eyes out for you. Ask them to ask their friends. Post it on facebook. Many people don't tell their friends/family when they are hunting for a job. The technical term for this kind of behavior is "unemployed".
Second, increase the number of people you know in your chosen field. Hit meetup.com, local ACM chapter, criagslist, local event site, etc, for any programming/tech related groups in your area. Go to them. Talk to people. I've gotten more jobs by this method, than all others combined.
Third, spend your time well. Work on an open source project, develop your own website. Hell, launch a commercial product. This is so you have something technical to talk about when you interview.
Fourth, have an interesting life, outside of programming. This is something else to talk about in the interview, and at the tech groups. Be interesting, and people will remember you and want to talk to you
If you get an interview:
Show your interests. If they ask what you like doing, tell them. I don't mean tell them who you vote for, or where you go to church, I mean technical areas you like playing in. Even if it doesn't match the job saying "I like physics simulations", beats the hell out of "anything, I don't care". Even if the job is accounting software.
Do research. You should know what the company does
Ask questions. No one wants to hire a lump. (Ok, some people do, but you don't want to work there. And they are in a minority)
Re:Call the boss (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or... get a 'real' major... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you for posting links to your code along with your response, it makes it abundantly clear that you have no real programming experience aside from simple, non-OO PHP. Yes, you can program, but you are by no means a software developer. The comparison that you are drawing is like a shade-tree mechanic considering himself automotive engineer.
A developer creates non-trivial software; the code is modular, documented, and extensively tested. It often makes use of various APIs, and integrates with other systems like DBMSs. The software may be responsible for human lives or millions of dollars. Furthermore it may be a very, very large codebase with dozens of developers, making collaboration essential.
You are correct in that programming is useful in virtually any scientific/engineering job; but realize that college doesn't teach you shit about programming, that your programming experience would better be called scripting experience, and that the majority of these "I need a job" posts are people who are in the lowest 5% of software development food-chain.
Re:Call the boss (Score:3, Insightful)
BAD IDEA.
From my experience working for a large company, people who start off in test have a very hard time getting out of it.
Re:Apply (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of everything I've said above, be it right or wrong, you have one serious disadvantage. You're looking for a job at the worst possible time. For the last 10-12 years schools have been pumping out 'developers' who are just random people that signed up for CS because they thought they could get rich quick. Now you're coming into the job market, 15 years too late, with an education that was out of date before you graduated from highschool, during an economy were all the other mediocre but far more experienced 'developers' out there are looking for jobs as well.
As a CS graduate in the UK, I wouldn't entirely agree with this. Yes, the economy is a little bit shit right now but technology jobs are still out there. In fact, I recently visited my uni for a few drinks and the students in tech related subjects seemed quite a bit less worried than everyone else. In my own experience, the biggest obstacle to getting a job was that I believed the newspapers and got demotivated. As soon as I started looking, I started getting interviews.
I cant compare the situation to previous years because I wasn't looking then but the job market is hardly terrible for developers. Obviously, the situation will vary depending on where you are.
Re:Apply (Score:1, Insightful)
Really?
You're wrong, unless you're speaking of junior-level positions.
The differences between an entry level developer and one with 20 years of experience are something tha only experience can give you: the good judgement that comes with experience, and the intimate knowledge of the application(s) we are responsible for.
I don't get paid three times as much as an entry level programmer because I program better - in all likelyhood, I don't. I get paid more because I'm responsible for designing and coding complex systems fom the ground up, and because I know enough about those systems to locate and fix defects quickly when my juniors can't.
The inexperienced guy right out of university can't do those things.
Re:To that I'll add (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a prof., and I can attest to everything the parent said.
I can also attest to everything the OP said. I know, because I, like the submitter, screwed it all up. I thought my friends who were "working for free" at internships were crazy. They all got jobs--usually the same job they were doing for free--immediately after graduating. Me? No. I did not. I graduated in the top 10% of my class and am bilingual, but I couldn't get a job. This went on for years (I was working crap jobs), until I figured out that, although I think the business world is lazy as shit in that they refuse to train people anymore (I live in Japan; the companies here hire smart kids and turn them into whatever they need), that's the way it is. The problem was me, not them.
So I looked at my academic record and realized that the only people who cared about it were other academics, and that the way out was through. I went back to school, and here I am: a prof. at a very prestigious university. But I got here by paying a lot of money and working for free for years and years. --I just don't think there is any way around that anymore. The "entry level position" is a myth.
I tell all my students to get internships now. I tell them how I ended up standing before them. I like my job, don't get me wrong, but I ended up here because I didn't do the things I needed to do to go anywhere else.
There is a fundamental lie that we tell young people: Go to college and you will get a good job. That just is not true. I have a close friend who dropped out of high school and is a very successful developer. He's very, very smart, and wears that lack of even a diploma as a badge of honor. But he got where he is today by working a lot of terrible jobs--starting by building PCs at a Mom & Pop white box shop in a strip mall--and honing his skills. It took a long time. It always takes a long time.
I'd like to add something to the parent's point, though. The "go to college, get a good job" is a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (i.e. correlation does not imply causation). In the old days, only the idle rich could go to university, and they were largely finishing schools. That's why we still have total bullshit like literature degrees at 4 year institutions (I like books, but getting a 4-year degree in book reports is nuts). So those people didn't need jobs, or might be installed at the family business as some titular boss when they finished. However, if you were a really smart cookie from the lower classes, you might be able to go to university on scholarship. You might earn your way in. Once in, you were suddenly rubbing elbows with the ruling class, and one of your mates was virtually guaranteed to talk his dad into hiring you. Even if that didn't happen, when you graduated, someone would hire you because, "OMG you have a degree???" This is because they were rare. They are not rare anymore. It would be different if you went to an Ivy League school--that would at least get you an interview--but you didn't (that's the other thing I've learned since being "in the industry"--name value is everything; there's almost no point in going to a school that is not well-known--I work with a complete moron, but he went to the same Ivy League school as our boss, so he's in).
So here's what you're looking at: You have no experience, no name value, and you don't know anyone. You have a random bachelor's just like everybody else. You are not getting a "real" job anytime soon. You're not. It's not going to happen. The sooner you make peace with that, the better. You need to get some experience, and that is going to mean doing it for free, probably. I'm sorry, but it's true.
Good luck.
You laugh, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is addressed to people at least a year away from looking for a job:
Use /. and other technical and even non-technical internet presences as if they were your portfolio.
Think carefully about everything you post, everywhere. What you did 2 years ago may not hurt you but technical mistakes or off-putting comments made in the last few months may hurt you.
Have a "main" web site that's about yourself that includes links to the sites you want your employer to look at along with your handles on each site. Use the same handle if you can, and make is a reasonably professional one. Include links to work you've done that is relevant to the jobs you are seeking.
Then, when you meet recruiters at job fairs include a sample of your portfolio along with the URL or URL-shortener-shrunk URL on your resume. If you've had a few insightful /. posts that are relevant to the work you are looking for or better yet to the particular job the person is hiring for and others have made positive comments about them, include one of them along with your resume and cover letter. If you've ever had a Wikipedia article promoted to Featured status or spearheaded getting one promoted, consider mentioning this, just be aware that it will give your employer a reason to look at your entire Wikipedia history, so this could work in your favor or against you. What other people have said about open-source projects is good, but this also carries over to writing how-tos, explaining things to other programmers or to users, and generally anything that lets you shine as a person and as someone with relevant skills.
Now, having said all of that, don't overdo it. For a college grad, your cover letter should be one page, your resume should be 1 page, maybe two if there is something extraordinary on it, and your initial "portfolio" for programming jobs should be no more than a page or two unless there is something super about it, such as letters of recommendation from industry or other super-heavyweights or a project that won national industry recognition. Recommendations from The President of the United States or the CEO or CIO of a Fortune-50 company won't count against you no matter how many pages they take up. Everything else should go on your web site, not as part of the initial portfolio. For 99% of college grads, the recruiter probably won't spend more than 60 seconds looking at it, if you are lucky, and that's once he's made the decision to even look at it. In today's economy, most won't even get that far even if you hand them to the recruiter in person at a job fair.
Re:Testing is a bad path (Score:5, Insightful)
"money isn't your primary motivator"...or in other words, "we can manipulate/trick/persuade you into working 80 hours weeks for nothing"
It's not what you know... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's who you know.
The *best* way to get an entry-level job is have a friend on the inside that can recommend you for an opening.
The *best* way to get an executive-level job is to have an uncle on the inside that needs a yes man. Ask your parents why they're not looking out for you!
Good luck kid, and feel free to drop my name during an interview. Chances are they've heard from me.
Re:It is not a great time (Score:3, Insightful)
Please rent a clue.
Ah, I see you ignored where I pointed out that the hiring managers like yourself are demanding 5+ years experience for an entry level position. Then there's the fact that the salary offered is significantly less than it was pre-recession as well. That would be called "taking advantage of the bad economy". Is it illegal? No. Should it be illegal? Again, no. However, it is reprehensible behavior.
I ran the interviews. That is part of what you find out. No, you don't just look at a resume and presume what iy says is accurate. You probe to find out what you need to know.
Really? Did you actually bring in everyone who sent in a resume? Also, interviews don't tell everything either (as shown by the many overqualified people who get turned down for superficial reasons) - I know several people who are hiring managers at their companies and they openly advise people to BS their way through an interview. They even flat out advise people to lie and say they have experience with anything the interviewer asks about. They're well aware that people can easily BS their way through an interview - if you're not aware of that, then you should definitely not be in charge of hiring.
If you have someone with more experience why in the hell WOULDN'T you hire him? If I do, then I would have someone else bitching about me not hiring people because they are overqualified.
Did you pay them more for having way more experience than is necessary? If you did, then there's nothing wrong with that. See, that's the thing about inexperienced workers - you can justify paying them less because they lack experience. Paying someone with 12 years experience what you would normally pay someone with 0 years of experience is not only screwing over the experienced person, but it's screwing over the inexperienced person by taking away their only advantage in the job market (costing companies less money). Also, it's fairly normal to not hire insanely overqualified people because they will leave the second they get a chance at a better job, which means that the company will just have to take time and money to find another employee to fill that spot.
Frankly as clueless as you are, I can see why you didn't survive the budget cut.
Just because I call you out for poor business ethics doesn't make me clueless. Also, the VP of the company tried very hard to keep me on because they were so impressed with my work, but since it was a consulting firm and all their clients were cutting their budget, they had no choice but to let a few people go - since I only had 2 years experience they couldn't justify keeping me on full time while they had more experience people who they could only contract out part time, so they split my work up among them - then that same VP makes a point of regularly contacting me to update me on how things are going there because as soon as they get another client, they'll be able to afford to hire me back. I know you don't understand what it's like to really work hard and impress your boss to the point where they really want to keep you working for that company, but some of us actually do have that good of a work ethic.
Re:show off your programming skills (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or... get a 'real' major... (Score:1, Insightful)
So I'm not sure why you're shooting off like that.
Re:Missing something (Score:3, Insightful)
"I think employers trawling old web forums to dig up any dirt they can find is just peachy keen, and anyone who doesn't go along with the status quo by constant paranoid identity-hopping is an idiot!"
I'm not an employer, but personally I'd rather work with someone who will own up to their past mistakes rather than hide from them, especially if I'm in a situation where the cost of hiring is high.
"Oops. I added a huge bug to the last release, and it's going to need an emergency patch. I'll just quit, claim it's a family problem, and hope nobody notices before I get a new job."
An identity carries reputation. Sometimes, even a slightly-tarnished history is better than none at all. The employers are already taking a risk by hiring someone in the first place. Having less guesswork about the employee's history is a good thing.
Re:Missing something (Score:3, Insightful)
He's graduating now, so that means at the end of his second year he couldn't figure out why a string named string was a problem, ...
If you reject based on this, you will have carefully selected, at great expense to your company, a workforce consisting entirely of people who hide all their sophomore homework assignments.
A recruiting manager who inflicted this on me would not get a favorable performance review. In fact, I would consider it career limiting. You might as well measure how well they glued macaroni to construction paper at age 8.
I agree with others who state that they only hire the best people they can find.
In which case you will select people based on reliable, major positive measures of skills (loops, pointers, recursion), and ignore unreliable, minor negative measures of problems.
The challenge is to find the 0.5% of applicants who can solve the FizzBuzz problem at all. That means 200 applicants to consider per position on average (and a pool of 600 resumes if you need a guaranteed high-quality hire). If you weed out the half of applicants that don't have a squeaky clean Google image, you'll have weeded out about half of the most skilled, which means an extra 200 applicants (1200 resumes total for guaranteed hire). Either you pay horrifically inflated costs, or you are forced to compromise on quality -- probably by self-delusion.
Re:To that I'll add (Score:3, Insightful)
I never did get my masters, my graduate grades where poor (did half of a masters and got excellent grades there though). I have never had problems landing jobs, 28 years old and earning over $100k.
Having a diploma shows you know how to read, it shows you know how to learn - these are important aspects of a company. Having experience working is also great, but fact is, every time you switch job you are in for a period of relearning - everything they do will be different from whatever you have done earlier.
First problem anyone needs to get past is being sorted out before interviews, writing resumes is a science, but it isn't that hard, there are excellent resources on how to do this, but in my experience, have a generic CV you attach to a personalized e-mail. In the e-mail write why you think you are good for them, but also very important, why you should work for them in terms of what you expect. Keep the CV short and to the point, I've been through hiring people and christ some people attach a lot of meaningless shit.
When you have landed the interview, be prepared! There are a lot of standard questions you will be asked:
http://datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/docs/25mdq.html [fi.upm.es]
those 25 suggestions have served me well through my short career. Never lie during the interview, if you have shortcommings, mention them, tell them how you are aware of them and work on them. Show them you are aware of how business works.
Oh, and make sure you look clean. I know a lot of nerds thinks suits are evil, you don't necessarily have to wear a suit, check up on the dresscode at the company - but looking clean is important, if in doubt a nice shirt worn casually with jeans should be nice and neutral.
Also, Office Space while being exaggerated, does have a few points. Hiding in a cubicle will get you fired, showing you have balls and a meaning will often get you promoted - provided you use them at the right time.
use your network! (Score:3, Insightful)
You already know people connected to the industry -- talk to them! Ask your profs if they know anybody in the industry. Ask your jobful friends to pass your resume along. Is there a famous prof at your uni? Did you take a class with them? Bring your chutzpah to their office and ask for a rec.
A referral from a trusted third party is thousands of times more likely to get your foot in the door than your resume, no matter how bloody sparkly the thing is.
Case in point, I graduated summa cum laude from an Ivy school, and no one really gave much of a shit. Until I knocked on my algo prof's door once during his office hours, asked him whether he knew someone in industry looking for a smart hard-working youngster. He gave me the name of his contact (the CEO of a tiny co). (I didn't even do that well in the Prof's class, slightly below median IIRC.)
Next thing I know the CEO's shaking my hand congratulating me on my new 50%-pay job. He's telling me "boy have you ever got a lot to learn, but Prof so-n-so says you're smart and you do seem to come off that way". Worked my arse off til it turned into a real job. And now there are *2* people out there who think I'm smart, so, you know, twice the network :)
If you don't have a network, make one. Think about doing an unpaid internship at a company that has a future. (Look into funding options from your uni for this kind of stuff.) Be careful with this one -- the network you create here must be valuable to justify the work and the resume gap.
I had the privilege once to speak with the former-CFO of Coke, and asked her (rather lamely) how one winds up being the CFO of Coke. She said, "If you really want a big-time job you gotta be aggressive and you gotta be charming."
Note that "qualified" is not a part of that sentence.
I can program!
Broken thinking. Getting hired isn't about being good at the job. It's about being good at getting hired, which is a largely orthogonal skill set.
Need new skill set = need to practice. Interviews are like first dates: they pretty much all suck, but get less nerve-wrecking with practice.
I should mention that once you have job 1, the network it creates (or doesn't create) will bear heavily on how your search for job 2 goes. So take good care of your network at job 1. I've seen a ton of smart people with amazing resumes, who are actually quite good programmers, who can't find jobs because they are huge pains in the ass. The days of the cranky-bitch-genius-programmer are limited (if not completely over), because there are plenty of pleasant-genius-programmers out there who need jobs too.
Approach your job like a pro: learn the politics and the people, be friendly, be polite but not stodgy. Choose very carefully which personal details to share with which people. Never express a negative emotion unless you've thought about it extremely thoroughly. Never write an email to/from a work account that you wouldn't want the CEO to read. Get people to like you: morally it shouldn't matter, but practically it makes a gigantic difference to how your career will go.
Finally and of course most importantly, work your ass off and get results. Nothing will make boss-man like you more than if you are generating two times the output as everyone else, with a smile and a joke handy at lunch time. It makes him look fabulous to his boss, and ten years from now when he's working at google (or whatever the "google" of 2020 will be, probably "google"), guess where you can ship an email and probably get a job.
Re:Testing is a bad path (Score:3, Insightful)
Or they just want people who love what they do.
Re:Testing is a bad path (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Testing is a bad path (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a lack of candidates who can program and who are prepared to work 16-20 hrs a day for peanuts for a corporation who will sling them out the door at zero notice.
Re:It is not a great time (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway I think the last laugh went to me because many of these more experienced guys jumped ship as soon as the economy improved. Whereas if there was room for advancement a real college student may have stuck around and worked for a few more years. Although most companies I have worked for treat IT like a disposable commodity. You can always toss out an IT worker and get another one and plug him in. Any knowledge of the company doesn't matter in IT. In that case the companies don't care about high turnover even though they should. Also many of them are quite content to hire you and keep you doing the same job year after year. And to try to keep your salary as low as possible inventing different excuses. In that case often it pays to switch companies and get another 10,000 or 15,000 dollars.
Re:Testing is a bad path (Score:1, Insightful)
Four things:
Open Source is a way for young programmers to get -experience-.
Experience working in a team setting, contributing to a project, understanding the problems -- creating solutions, etc. It's real-world, hands-on experience. And it gives you a huge list of potential references. If you're involved in an FOSS project, get a mentor / co-contributor as a reference. Let employers call that person / talk to that person.
If we have to choose between two green programmers -- one with only coursework assignments and another with coursework and FOSS on their resume, it's tipped in favor of the FOSS candidate. We can look at what they've done, without having to request code samples that have no doubt been scrubbed.
Re:To that I'll add (Score:3, Insightful)
To put it succinctly: a college degree isn't enough. It is, however, a good start.
I think the real benefit is that college gives you the time and resources to do your own thing. For example, it's easier to do an unpaid internship if you already have room and board covered through student loans or from your parents.
I got a CS degree (and Spanish, minor in Business) in the mid-90s. About the time I was graduating, I saw people get into CS because the dot-com boom showed that programming was big money. I'm sure lots of people were disappointed when the crash came along a few years later. I didn't do an internship in school, so the first job I got was one that literally nobody else wanted to do. I only got it because I called back after everyone else had turned down job offers. It was a soul-sucking job, though, working at a small company owned by a huge company and experienced the worst of both worlds.
When I was in college, I spent a lot of time working on text MUDs (predecessors to MMORPGs) while I was working on my CS assignments. I eventually got the opportunity to be a programmer ("Wizard") on a game and spent a lot of time creating and designing. It was this experience that let me get my foot in the door in the game industry. I've been working on the game industry for nearly 12 years now, first as a mook, then owning my own company, and now doing mostly consulting and contract work. I'm relatively well-known in my small niche. But,I owe a lot of it on working on MUDs. That experience got me my first job working on Meridian 59 at 3DO which lead to other opportunities.
So, take this advice: do something else while you have the time and resources in college. Internships, volunteer for a open source project, work on games, whatever. Just get something to help you stand out from the crowd.