What was it that helped you land your first job as a junior dev?
Maybe it was open source, or a portfolio of side projects, or pinging someone on LinkedIn?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
What was it that helped you land your first job as a junior dev?
Maybe it was open source, or a portfolio of side projects, or pinging someone on LinkedIn?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Latest comments (54)
After burning out in fintech customer support after 6 years, I quit and spent around a year with Colt Steele's web dev bootcamp and then learning via Youtube tutorials. Made a few static websites and started desperately applying for junior positions armed with only vanilla CSS/JS/jQuery.
I don't even have a degree in anything, it was a fool's dream! From the refused applications and tech tasks I realised quite soon that knowing at least one of the Front End frameworks is necessary as well before even being considered. But just as I was ready to throw in the towel, one startup invited me for an interview since in my pleading cover letter I mentioned wanting to be even just an intern, if possible, for the possibility of learning. As soon as I met the team, it clicked immediately. They made me a 6-month contract and I went to the office to learn Vue+Vuetify from scratch. Now, 3 months later I am actively involved in coding not 1, but 2 projects, and next week we'll settle down on the permanent contract details since they told me they'd love to keep me <3
Stubborness and stupid enthusiasm over tiny wins (yay this button has a hover effect!) got me here!
Link to my posts describing the journey a bit more if interested :)
Story of a self-taught web developer: humble beginnings #2
Anzelika γ» May 9 γ» 4 min read
This is so inspiring, Anzelika! You're a great example of how switching careers works with a lot of determination and hard work. Keep it up, inspire others that may be in the same position you were months ago, and enjoy coding! :D
Right, luck plays a big part. I think most of it is also resilience and grinding. You were doing postgrad and working on your Java skills. It was a matter of time to receive the good things :D
I think the best approach it to prepare portfolio, high-quality cv, motivation letter and later apply for as many position as possible via. i.e. LinkedIn.
Yeah definitely. What kind of portfolio do you recommend a junior should build? like open source projects? or a youtube channel talking about dev?
Create github repository and create few basic projects in it. For Frontend/Fullstack position create apps like:
i.e. for Junior Frontend/React dev it would be nice to show (using those projects) that you know/can use:
Wise words, I'll pass on this advice, thanks Tomasz!
Funny story: My best friend worked at the company and gave me a referral. I nailed the phone interview. When it was time for the development test....I was stuck. I realized that I didn't know as much about HTML and CSS that I thought I did. I called him like 5 times in a one hour block. Finally, he decided to "alley-oop" me the full developed site.
When it was time for me to develop my first site, it was HORRIBLE. It was for a cleaning company. I took a picture of a broom, used it to separate the header and body, put a name in the top left corner, three links to the right of that, and a big block of content under the broom. BOOM! It was a masterpiece. My boss looked at me like I was crazy and stuck me on banner ads only for 2-3 months.
I spent that time reading, learning, practicing, inspecting website's code, bugging my friends and new coworkers and just consuming a lot of development stuff. By the end of my time at that company, I was one of the best web designers (yeah, we were called web designers back then) on the team. I left there and two companies-7 years later, I became a beast that still reads, learns, practices, inspects website's code, bugs developer friends and new coworkers and overall consumes a lot of development stuff.
I love how you just plunged into the unknown and worked up to the top of your craft. Practice makes better, you're the living example.
Thank you! Yeah, that's all it takes. Time and dedication. A very cliche statement but it's true.
and "Attitude"
At 20 - nearly 20 years ago - I was working in a supermarket and desperate to get into the tech industry. My (then girlfriend) wife applied for a receptionist/admin assistant role at a small, local IT company and upon returning from the interview said "you should apply there, you'd love it, wait until you see the office it's lovely". They had no jobs being advertised, so with her blessing I applied for the same job she'd just interviewed for, believing that even if I could get the admin assistant role, it was a "foot in the door" and I could show them what I could do and move up from there.
I was called for an interview, spent it discussing sport, life, and everything except the role, only to be told that they'd filled the admin position and weren't planning on recruiting further - however, would I like a job?
I spent 12 years there and left as IT Manager.
Loving this story and how your wife was pivotal for your success. You can only get so far alone. Thanks for sharing!
I always aimed for product based companies like Google Microsoft dell etc etc.
And what they require most is knowledge of algorithms and system design.
Me and my friend started preparing together for like 2 months.(fyi he is not on Dev).
Finally I landed a job at Dell and my friend Landed job at Microsoft.
Now what helped us was geeksforgeeks.org and nlogn.in to prepare for algorithms and system design interview.
Awesome! you went the algorithms route which is a great one, IMO. Thanks for sharing what worked for you! would you mind telling us how you got your resumes on the door of those big companies?
Actually we are students of NIT and in India NIT's and IIT's are the most reputed colleges and top notch companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon directly comes for on-campus recruitment.
I was still at High School, but had been coding for almost 4 years (at the time) in Open Source projects, and was looking to apply for a Remote Game Developer position at a specific company.
I sent an improvised CV, listing my Open Source projects related to the main goal of the business.
Luckily, the lead developer of the company knew my work and followed the development of one of my projects during its initial release. They replied to my email in the following 2 hours, looking to have a call with the Manager and the Lead developer next day in the morning.
That same day in the afternoon after our first call, I was being introduced to the whole team.
I canβt still thank enough my 13 yβold self for starting in the Open Source community before anywhere else.
Wow you started doing open source at 13? what a beast! :D This is yet a great real-life example of how open source can open a lot of unexpected doors, even more when you have no professional experience. Thanks for sharing, Jorge!
Went to an interview to one of the top IT consulting companies in my country right after finishing college. I did the interview without any hopes of getting hired because of that. Weeks later I get a call from them that they wanted to hire me. What it helped me was that I took some Java classes on college.
Awesome. Can you recall what you were asked in this interview? I'm curious :D
It was more than 14 years ago, so I don't remember a lot. But it wasn't too technical, they knew I was just getting out of college and they wanted a recent graduate, since it's more easier to manage and mold than a experienced one.
My dad read in the paper about a local startup, so I emailed them saying I'd just graduated and would be interested in joining them as an intern or something. After an interview, they brought me on as a contractor, then hired me as the 7th employee.
Amazing how dads can be so helpful in one's career. Would be awesome to see how that email looked like!
It was most of a decade ago and I can't find it in my email archives, but I'm pretty sure that was about it. "I read about your startup in the county paper, I just graduated, are you hiring for an intern or something?" Nothing fancy, I didn't have any family connections to play on, just "Hello, are you hiring?"