6 steps to land an IT job in 2019

If you are someone who wants to build a career in Information Technology, read on. In this article, we focus on 6 steps to achieve your dream of an IT job.

1.Setting the path (Is this the right thing for me)?

Work is going to fill a lot of your time for the next 10–15 years at least, so it’s important to decide whether this field suits you best. You could analyze that by:

1. Talking to your friends, seniors or relatives who are currently working for a tech company and understand their typical day, pros & cons, financial feasibility, culture in the company, etc.
2. You should talk to at least 5 people at various career stages to get a better picture.
3. You can use LinkedIn’s People search feature to identify and connect with these people easier if you don’t know enough people in the industry.

I know the reason why you have decided to read this article is that you are already interested in IT and might know a great deal about it, but then it’s always best to have a realistic expectation of the industry. For that, this step helps.

2.You v/s Industry expectations

Once you have decided that you want to take the plunge, the next step is to understand the exact expectations that the IT industry has for a recent graduate. For this, you need to go through various recruiting and professional networking platforms and read through the job descriptions. You could search using the following tags #SoftwareEngineering #Freshers. You can also use the following websites to get job postings — LinkedIn Jobs & Angel.co Now that we know what the industry is looking for, open up your existing resume/CV and see how you fare against these.

**Bonus tip: You can use Jobscan for analyzing the match rate of your resume and job description. Following which, you would clearly understand the requirements of the industry and the gap you have in your skill-set.

Yet another bonus tip: You could also use industry surveys like Stackoverflow Survey to understand the jobs and skills that are in demand and align your learning path accordingly.

3.Building the right skill-set

Now that you know what skill-set is needed for starting a career in IT, congratulations, your journey to the first job is 30% complete. The most crucial part, starts here, building those skills. For that, you can either:

1. Self-learning: Joining online courses (Coursera, Udacity, Udemy), tutorials which teach these skills and build your portfolio.
2. Join coding Boot camp programs like LamdaSchool, SkillEnhance which teaches you full-stack web development skills with the help of experienced mentors in just 2 months!

4.Finding opportunities & Portfolio creation

Once you garnered the skills, you need to showcase your skill-set you built to convince the potential employers. Having the following would help you catch the eyes of recruiters:

• Updated CV and cover letter.
• LinkedIn profile.
• Blog / Portfolio.
• Active Github profile which contains the code you wrote.
• Pro-tip: An active Stackoverflow account.

Bonus tip: If you could actively leverage the above tools while building skill-set that would help you boost your chances. For instance, blogging actively about your learning, maintaining an activity streak on Github and answering questions in Stackoverflow, etc while you were in step 3.

5.Apply

Now that you have the skills and the portfolio, the next step is to apply! The key here is applying to job profiles which match our profile. Once you have updated your LinkedIn and Angel.co profiles, it would automatically recommend you jobs based on the skills you have added. Never mind if you don’t get a response for your first few attempts, keep applying until you get a positive response.

Bonus tip: You could use tools like CVCompiler which analyzes your resume and gives your recommendations for improving the same.

Another bonus tip: Don’t reject yourselves — Even if the job description clearly says they are looking for candidates with 1–2 years of experience, don’t hesitate to apply. Confidently apply with your portfolio and leave the decision for recruiters! 🙂

6.Interview process

Once your profile is shortlisted by the companies, you would have a thorough interview process to get to know as an individual as well as to assess your technical skills. Even the process varies from company to company most would involve a technical round as well as an HR round.

HR rounds would mainly serve as a tool to understand you would be culturally fit to be a part of the company. It would have questions on how you are as a person and as a team player as mostly you will be working in a team. The technical round would be about your technical prowess and has technical questions and might include a coding challenge as well. What you need to keep in mind is that interviews are not just a 1-way communication where the interviewer asks you questions and you answer, it’s a two-way communication where you get to know more about the role and recruiter gets to know about you and whether you are fit for the same.

Bonus tip: You could use platforms like Hackerrank, Hackerearth to familiarize yourself with the programming challenges and also refresh your concepts on Data Structures & Algorithms to come out good in technical rounds.

Another bonus tip: After interviews, don’t forget to send a ‘thank-you’ mail to your recruiter thanking their time.

1. If the interview didn’t go well, please politely ask the interviewer whether they can give feedback on what went wrong, understand it, rectify and repeat from step 3.
2. If the interview result is positive, Woohoo! Give yourself a pat on the back, because you deserve it. Good luck with an amazing career you have in the industry!