How did you kickstart your career?

#discuss

Hello fellow devs, I come to you in time of a great need.
I have no idea how to start my career, I took my cs degree, I love what I'm doing but I feel like I'm running around like a headless chicken.
It's hard to get to interviews without experience, also working on my personal projects is really fun but it doesn't pay the bills.
I know I sound like I'm just making excuses and probably I am, but I'm wondering how you guys got your first job?

Top comments (10)

Oleksandr Gamanyuk • Jan 8 '20

Try to land a job using tarta.ai/. It's a bot that monitors vacancies for you and matches you with the best ones. Then the tarta.ai bot makes a warm introduction and schedules an interview directly with a recruiter.

Amine • Jan 10 '20

I've tried your service, the interaction with the bot went smooth. That's really impressive.

Oleksandr Gamanyuk • Jan 10 '20

Thanks!

Zaynaib (Ola) Giwa • Jan 4 '20

Congrats on getting your CS degree! It might take several months before you get an interview. My suggestion is to network, network, and network. The quickest way to a job interview is through a referral. You can expand your network by going to conferences, joining slack groups, blogging, and joining meetup groups. If you want a concrete plan on getting interviews checkout Cracking the Code Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell and Softskills for Software Developers by John Sonmez. Also, be specific when you are asking for help. I guess what I'm trying is have an elevator pitch ready. Hi my name is Amine, I graduated from this school and I specialize in these languages. I'm looking for a web dev job. Keep the course. I hope my advice helps.

Amine • Jan 5 '20

Thank you for your advice, I'll make sure to read the softskills book and also improve my networking skills.

krkd • Jan 8 '20

I was lucky with regards to my entrance into the field, so I won't give you my story as a piece of advice (because "get lucky" isn't really advice, it's a snarky comment). Instead I'll present you with boring stuff.

If you have personal projects that you work on, ensure that they are presentable - i.e. that they have a proper description / documentation / README.md
Ensure your CV is current, simple yet visually appealing (I personally like elipapa/markdown-cv) and includes your personal projects.
Ensure you have a couple of "pieces of text" at hand that you can use in cover / motivation letters
If you can, get your own domain for mail. My experience with hiring process shows that a personal domain stands out significantly from the masses of Outlook, GMail, ..

All those things help to make your lack of experience less noticeable. If you've done all that it's time for the most boring part: Apply. Then apply again. And then apply some more. And some more on top of that.

I know it's boring. But that's what will get you a job without relying on luck or happenstance. Good luck on your journey, I'm sure you'll fare well. If you need help with any of the above points, I'm sure the community here will be helpful!