DEV Community: Allison Seboldt

3 Ways New Devs can Get Experience for Their Resume

Allison Seboldt — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:39:45 +0000

Trying to get your first job as a developer? Perhaps you've noticed many junior and entry level positions ask for 1 - 3 years of previous experience.

Um, what? That makes no sense. If you're applying for an entry level position, why should you need previous experience? And how can you get your first job as a developer if it requires you already had such a job?

It's a conundrum that makes many junior developers feel defeated right out the gate. But don't let this nonsense stop you from getting your foot in the door. Here are three ways new devs can get experience before their first hire:

Build tools for your existing job

One of the great things about being a developer is having skills that can benefit any industry. Programming is especially great for automating processes, facilitating communication, and making important information more accessible. No doubt your current employer would love to see improvement in one if not all of these spaces. Under the guise of being a star employee, look for areas of your current job that could be improved with a little code.

Work with a lot of spreadsheets? Build formulas and programs that automate tedious data entry and create elaborate dashboards for easy analysis. Having difficulty remembering you and your co-workers' schedules? Build an application everyone can use for managing and tracking their shift. Is on-boarding new employees a struggle? Go all out creating a beautiful website that guides them through all the documents, resources, and info they need to get up to speed.

From this point on, consider your current job a transitional position. It's purpose is to ease you into programming full time. Current and future employers should be thrilled to see you taking such initiative, and you can highlight this as programming experience in your work history.

Contribute to open source

For the uninitiated, open source refers to software that is developed in public. Through websites like github, volunteers publicly contribute bug fixes and feature enhancements to a code base. Many of the frameworks and libraries you use are open source such as jQuery, React, Express.js, Ruby on Rails, Django, and even the Linux operating system.

Open source is a huge part of today's technological ecosystem, and supporting these projects with code contributions is looked upon favorably. But more importantly, it's a low barrier of entry to working on a professional code base. Employers want proof that you can write production level code. Contributing to open source proves your code is worthy, at least in the eyes of your peers, of being put in front of users. It also demonstrates you understand some of the process around developing software, such as setting up a development environment, interpreting requirements, receiving feedback, and working alongside other developers.

As a newbie, getting started with open source can be daunting. Check out these guides by FreeCodeCamp.org and Digital Ocean for help on getting started. But just like programming, the best way to learn is by doing. Look for small projects on github in need of contributions and jump in. Be sure to highlight the projects you contribute to on your resume!

Build something for real people

No doubt you've heard having a portfolio of past projects is crucial for impressing potential employers. But often, I've noticed junior portfolio projects feel incomplete and overly simple, like a school project or something made from a tutorial. It's okay to use such projects as part of your portfolio, but there's a difference in the level of quality that's okay for learning, and the quality necessary for production level apps.

Consider taking your portfolio projects to the next level by making them publicly available and getting real people to use them. This will force you to consider pieces of software development that are often overlooked in tutorials and school, such as vulnerabilities, data integrity, UI design, user experience, managing multiple environments, and deployment. Getting real people to use your software will also help you build necessary troubleshooting and support skills that can't be taught in an online guide or classroom.

Great places to share your projects and get potential users are Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Beta List. Be sure to highlight interesting metrics with potential employers such as how many users you currently support or how many visitors you get per month. Developing a project people are using in the real world will impress potential employers and prove you understand the entire software lifecycle.

Final thoughts

Experience is valuable in technical positions because there are many skills that can't be taught in a classroom. You have to learn them on the job. Luckily, many of the skills it takes to be a developer you can practice outside of a professional environment, just by building for others.

Looking for more help breaking into tech? Check out my resource GetADevJob.io for beginner focused career stories, tips, and tricks.

Tips for Getting Hired as a Junior Dev Using Job Boards

Allison Seboldt — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 16:47:50 +0000

If you’re coming into tech from a different industry, or fresh out of college, the process of finding your first job can be painful and frustrating. I’ve seen a lot of new devs struggle with the application process. So, I put together a little guide for using one of the most easily accessible hiring resources: job boards!

Think Indeed, Monster, Career Builder, etc... You’re likely familiar with these kinds of websites and have maybe used them before. They typically consist of creating a profile, then using keywords to search for open positions. There are lots of different kinds of job boards out there for developers. Some are specific to tech (Stack Overflow, Cyber Coders, Dice), certain languages (Vue Jobs, Ruby Jobs), lifestyle (We Work Remotely, Jobspresso), and even values (Diversify Tech). These websites are incredibly helpful because they make applying for many jobs in a short amount of time easy. And because getting an interview is essentially a numbers game, that’s a huge advantage.

Now, some people may be thinking, “I'd be competing against hundreds of applicants for every job. Why on earth would they pick a junior like me?” You’re not wrong. The amount of applicants for a position posted on a job board will be high. You’ll need to be pretty picky to break through the noise. But it’s doable.

Here's the approach that got me, and others I mentored, interviews from job boards: Refine your search so that you always have jobs to apply to, but not wide enough that there are endless pages. When I started out, I aimed to apply for three jobs a day. So my search was typically wide enough to return only a couple pages of results. I would apply to the top three most relevant to my experience. The next day, I'd apply to the remaining jobs if better positions hadn’t shown up.

Because of this, I was regularly applying to jobs I didn't feel qualified for. Junior positions aren't always easy to come by on these websites. Often I was throwing my hat in the ring for postings that asked for 3 - 5 years of experience, and many of these did not result in a call back. But every once in a while, I did get an interview. There are a myriad of reasons for why this worked, but the TL;DR is: Job postings are not a perfect representation of what an employer needs.

Why is narrowing your search helpful? Let's demonstrate with an example. Most career switchers transition into front-end development by first learning HTML > CSS > JavaScript. If you search for these keywords on a job board, you're going to get a lot of results. This is because these keywords represent generic technology used across the entire industry. It's equivalent to searching for a restaurant and typing "sandwich" in the search input. You're going to get endless pages of options, from fancy restaurants to diners. How many actually reflect what you want? If you're getting four or more pages returned from your search on a single job board, your keywords are too generic. One to three is what you should aim for.

So how does one "refine" their search?

The easiest way to refine your search is by picking a niche technology as your "specialty". Perhaps you've heard this advice before. Picking a library or framework to specialize in will help you stand out from the crowd. Job boards are actually a great place to discover which niches are the most viable. The niche I chose when applying was Wordpress since I had studied PHP and saw several PHP positions that involved Wordpress. This approach will likely require some additional learning, but in my opinion, focusing on a niche is the fastest path to breaking into tech as a new dev.

You can also refine the search based on your previous, non-tech work experience. Yep, that's right: your previous experience as a teacher, nurse, classical musician, or whatever can help your transition into tech. Certain industries, most notably finance and healthcare, actually prefer hiring someone from within the industry over outsiders. Having insider knowledge about regulations, lingo, or processes relevant to the company is a great way to break through noise and one that you can easily promote in a cover letter and resume. Employers will be thrilled to see someone they can easily communicate with and spend less time training.

Of course, results may vary depending on the type of job board you are using. Some are more popular than others. But a job board that has less search results might have less people applying on it. The main take away here is that you don't want to spread yourself too thin. Throwing yourself at every opportunity will leave you exhausted and defeated. Instead, narrow your focus so you can act with pin point precision.

Applying and interviewing in tech can be a whole skill in and of itself. If you’re looking for help, check out my resource GetADevJob.io for beginner focused career stories, tips, and tricks.

What hosting do you use?

Allison Seboldt — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 18:27:13 +0000

From orchestrating containers to "serverless" to doing it all yourself with an ansible script and a $5 DO droplet, the options for hosting websites and apps have changed considerably in the past decade.

What method do you use for putting stuff on the internet? Am I "old school" for thinking I still need to install and configure a server myself?

How to Know You’re Ready to Apply for a Dev Job

Allison Seboldt — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 14:36:04 +0000

When I first started applying for developer roles, I did not feel ready. My knowledge of programming and understanding of the industry felt horribly incomplete. But tutorials weren’t teaching me anything anymore. I was stuck in limbo. So, without a clear picture of what I should do next, I took a stab at getting what I truly wanted: my first dev job.

I applied on some job boards thinking it was a shot in the dark. Lo and behold, I got some responses. In a couple of months I started getting interviews. And not long after that, my first job.

So often I see self taught developers ask “How do I know when I’m ready to start applying for jobs?”. Odds are, by the time you start asking that question, you’re ready. But you likely won’t feel ready. As a result, I’ve watched brilliant self taught devs and bootcamp grads continue to waste time at jobs they hate or give up on their dream altogether.

This question of “How do I know I’m ready?” is so prevalent, I want to give it an answer. This is NOT an end all be all measurement of someone’s skill. Rather, a guide to point people in the right direction when the path forward is unclear.

So, without further ado, below is a checklist for determining if you are ready to start applying for your first job as a developer:

Step One: You can come up with something, and make it all on your own.
This can be as simple as “a website” or as complicated as “my own blogging platform”. The key here is doing it all on your own, sans tutorial. To be clear, that does not mean avoiding Google. In the real world, you won’t be expected to know everything. This is an exercise in problem solving and learning how to figure things out on your own.

Step Two: You can put it on the internet (or app store, or wherever users would be expected to interact with it).
The end game of most technology is to create something others can use. You created a tip calculator? Great! But if I can’t access it in a restaurant, what good is it? Hiring managers want people they know can deliver. Additionally, the life of a developer is more than writing code. You will have to manage deployments, testing, chasing down bugs in production, and other skills you are unlikely to learn in a tutorial. Best to start practicing these now as they only get more complicated on the job.

Step Three: Rinse and Repeat the above steps at least 2 more times.
To expand your learning, each project should be significantly different than the last. I suggest starting small and working your way up to more complex projects. Say your first project was a website with HTML and CSS. Create another website for your second project, but write your CSS using SASS. Was your first project a blogging platform? Perhaps make your second project a discussion board.

At this point, you’ve created and delivered a minimum of three projects. You’ve learned the basics and practiced them in the real world. By owning projects from start to launch, you have knowledge of the project lifecycle. Your foundation is solid and your education is well rounded.

Now is the time to start applying.

You may think the more portfolio projects the better. But once you reach five, your learning will plateau. Still feel like you’re missing something? Honestly, that knowledge only comes from on the job experience. The only path to “leveling up” at this stage is practicing your skills in a real production environment.

Go forth and apply. You’ll likely be surprised by how much more you learn just by interviewing.

Speaking of which, applying and interviewing in tech can be a whole skill in and of itself. If you’re looking for help, check out my resource GetADevJob.io for beginner focused career stories, tips, and tricks.

How do you like to learn?

Allison Seboldt — Sat, 17 Nov 2018 14:44:15 +0000

Wondering if I should incorporate some new tactics into my mentoring. And if so, what those would be.

I recently created GetADevJob.com to help answer common questions I get when mentoring people in the midst of a career switch. Things like "Can I teach myself to code and get a job?", "What do I need to do to get hired without a degree?" and most of all, "How did you/others do it?”. When I first started applying to jobs I was a total mess. Tip lists and checklists were good, but I got the most value out of someone sharing their personal experience. It helped me see the big picture and gave purpose to my actions. This is what I created GetADevJob.com around, but I realize not everyone is like me.

I'm wondering if I should use some new tactics in my mentoring and the new site. So, when you learn something new, do you prefer having a guide that tells you to do X-Y-Z or do you prefer more of an observational approach? Perhaps watching someone do it first and then giving it a shot yourself?

How do you organize your CSS?

Allison Seboldt — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 15:11:37 +0000

My CSS is a mess. I always start off with good intentions but once things ramp up my system falls apart.

I've primarily tried using BEM in the past but have had difficulty sticking to this formula. It's too rigid. I'm looking for something simpler. Something that sets me up to create reusable widgets but also incorporates custom styling in a way that is easy to read and find what I'm looking for. I want equal parts structure and flexibility. But I know that's a tall and basically impossible order.

Do you have a CSS system you love? How do you keep your styling organized in a way that you can look at your html and know exactly where to go to make changes?

*edit: I write my CSS in SCSS. I'm looking for help in organizing the SCSS files and classes.

Sports draft app: How to consistently broadcast timer to multiple clients?

Allison Seboldt — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 20:02:27 +0000

When creating my fantasy sports spinoff, Fantasy Congress, I thought it was important to offer a live draft. I implemented this, but it needs to be improved upon.

One of the biggest problems I am having is broadcasting a consistent count down timer to all of the clients. Each person has one minute during their turn of the draft to make a pick. All of the connected clients need to know how much time is remaining for each turn.

The current app uses websockets (via socket.io). Every second an update to the timer is broadcasted to all the connected clients. However, sometimes the timer might pause and then suddenly jump 10 seconds ahead of where it was. My assumption is that this happens when someone has a slow connection.

I was considering running individual timers in each browser to avoid this jumping around. But turn changes will still have to be communicated somehow. Assuming the best way to do this would still be via websocket, some might receive the turn change before others. This means they might think it's still their turn when it's not, or that it was someone else's turn when in reality it is 5 seconds into their turn.

How would you tackle something like this?