There are some myths surrounding job postings today. Maybe you came across Entry Level Developer job postings that required two years of experience and wondered, “What’s all this about?”
Good job postings versus bad job postings
To perform well in a job, candidates must possess the right skill set, which is listed in the job description, and the requirements of the job posting.
Applicants must have the right skill set to be successful in a job, which is outlined in the job description and requirements. This position is still an entry-level position, so the candidate needs to learn a lot. So, you might feel intimidated by that. Why does this happen?
Behind the scenes (Journey of Good job postings & bad job postings)
Job postings are fresh. They are written by hiring managers for whom you will work, and they organize the job posting and make sure as much information as possible is included about the role. And they are then passed to recruiters. Now, the recruiter puts it onto the careers page and job portals. So, that's the journey of a good job posting!
If you post a job that does not get the right response, the hiring manager is likely to find themselves searching for a couple of coders for a given position, which needs to be filled in the company. So, they give a call to the recruiter, in the HR department and say “Hey, I'm busy right now. So, I couldn't prepare a job posting. But you know what, use the job posting that we posted a couple of weeks ago. It has most of the things that we need.”
So, the recruiter will take that previous job posting that was for another job and use it for the current one. Later, when it's published on the job portals, the hiring manager may say that the recruiter needs to add certain skills required for the current job. So, the recruiter just mentions these skills under the tag named “must-have. And they kind of combine these different technologies and keep dumping them onto the job posting.
That's why the job postings end up with this huge list of things, which are sometimes unrelated to the position that you're going to be applying for. This loop keeps on going and then it gets worse. That's a bad job posting!
Now, this practice of not taking good care of the job postings will result in other problems like entry-level jobs that require two years of experience.
Keeping this in mind, remember that if you're an entry-level person that has developed a couple of applications, learned the basics of software development, and has a couple of tech skills under your belt. Go ahead and apply to these entry-level positions, even if it says two years of experience. Doesn't matter. Apply. Even if you don't have that experience.
It is important to remember that not all job postings are perfect.
Two types of Candidates (A and B)
A candidate who reads such a poor job description will generally fall into two categories: Candidate A and Candidate B. Unfortunately, this is the way things work.
Candidate A is going to look at this entry-level bad job posting that requires two years of experience. They're going to look at that job description and think to themselves:
“Should I apply?”,
“Oh my god. There are a lot of technologies and it requires two years of experience.”
“I don't have two years of world real-world experience. So I don't think I will get the interview.”,
“If I get the interview, I get to the job, I may just get fired.”
“So, I'm not even going to apply.”
That's Candidate A, a self-doubter.
Candidate B will rather react like this:
“Okay, in this job posting there are a lot of technologies. But I know a couple of these.
And this is an entry-level position, so they'll probably ask me about data structures and algorithms or databases. I can do well on these topics in an interview so I’m still going to go ahead and apply.”
“I have a portfolio that I’ve been working on. I’ve built a couple of applications.
I’ve got a GitHub profile. I’ve got all these projects and coding experiences that I can showcase. So, yeah I’m going to go ahead and apply.”
“How can I hack myself into this position? I don't have two years of real-world experience but I’ve built some cool stuff here. So, you know what let me just create a profile on freelancing websites and start getting freelance jobs there and start working on more things to show for it.
So, yeah I deserve this job. I deserve to apply to this position”.
Ideas to oversell yourself
As you can see, even if Candidate A is more knowledgeable about the subject matter, because of their shyness or their fear, they might not apply. Whereas, Candidate B finds a more creative way to fit themselves into the job posting. So, you should be more like Candidate B. The one who is an open-minded person and a go-getter. That’s Candidate B.
So, what you can do is be aggressive in your approach because you're going to be competing with your peers who are fresh graduates. And the aggressive ones are the ones that are gonna catch the opportunities.
If you get the interview and you pass the interview. You are qualified. So, don't be afraid to go to that interview. And if you pass the interview, you show up to work the next day. That's when you can prove to everyone how hard-working you are. That's where you have to work the weekends or nights and that's how you take off a career, all right.
So don't undersell yourself. Oversell yourself if you have to. It's better to oversell yourself than to undersell yourself and not even have the opportunity. So definitely be more like Candidate B!
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About the Author
Imtiaz Ahmad is an award-winning Udemy Instructor who is highly experienced in big data technologies and enterprise software architectures. Imtiaz has spent a considerable amount of time building financial software on Wall St. and worked with companies like S&P, Goldman Sachs, AOL and JP Morgan along with helping various startups solve mission-critical software problems. In his 13+ years of experience, Imtiaz has also taught software development in programming languages like Java, C++, Python, PL/SQL, Ruby and JavaScript. He’s the founder of Job Ready Programmer — an online programming school that prepares students of all backgrounds to become professional job-ready software developers through real-world programming courses.
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