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Recent Grads and Experience Beyond the Desktop?
over_exposed asks: "I'm a recent college grad (B.S. in C.S.) and have been on the job hunt for about 6 months. I've been playing around with tech toys as long as I can remember, but it all focuses around the desktop environment. Desktop-grade routers, switches and wireless as well as any/all desktop PC (and some Mac) hardware is what I could get my hands on with my limited budget. After looking through hundreds if not thousands of job postings, everyone is looking for 3+ years of network admin experience or 5+ years of C++ experience even for an entry level position. How is one expected to gain that kind of experience when no one will hire you without the experience? What kind of (part-time) work can you get as a college student to gain experience (Cisco, Exchange, SQL, etc) that will be marketable in the real world? Any suggestions from the Slashdot community will be of great benefit to myself and thousands of others who will enter the 'real world' in the next few years."
What kind of (part-time) work can you get as a college student to gain experience
Aside from simply applying for such positions, I would suggest you attend a Linux User's Group in your area. Along with expanding your knowlege and skills, a LUG connects you with relationships that might be helpful in finding part-time work. You'll also get a better feel for the local job market.
Sigs cause cancer.
Internships are a great way to get practical work experience while you're still in school. They look great on a resume, and they can also be an excellent venue for you to get practical work experience after you get your degree. The theory being, you're already a known quantity to them and so they'd be much more willing to bring you on full-time after school.
Lie...
What could possibly go wrong?
I think it is time we all faced the facts. The times when one could walk out of University with nothing more than a shiny new diploma and into a well paying job are gone. They probably aren't comming back. I particularily don't understand this mentality in CS when there are so many ways to get involved. Open Source software is more than a great way to use great software for free, it is also a great way to get your name out there. Attach it to some projects, big or small and actually contribute. No it isnt regular office experiance, but it is coding, and will seperate you from the rest of your classmates who have dont nothing more than school projects. Pick any project you use, phpBB, Apache, PHP, *nuke, whatever and get involved and get noticed. Even helping out with documentation shows some initive, and can help you stand out from the crowd.
paul reinheimer
Seriously. Many of those requirements are written by people who have no idea what they're talking about. Now, in many companies, your resume will just get thrown out because you don't match some HR monkey's checklist -- but with luck, at a few places, your resume will get to someone with some technical knowledge who is willing to at least give you a chance in an interview.
I mean, apply everywhere. Any job you think you might possibly be able to do. If you get one nibble for every hundred resumes -- well, these days, in the post-.bomb world, that's not bad.
Also, I don't know if you're still eligible for this since you've graduated, but most schools' CS departments do have lists of available interniships. The money usually isn't great, but it's real experience, and can lead to a full-time position. (Mine did, though I didn't get it through the school.) They may have some formal job placement services for grads, too.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You're looking for an internship. Preferably paid.
Lots of companies have internships available because it's a good way for them to get cheap labor that will do grunt work and for the intern to get their foot in the door. After so much time if they like you they hire you.
Find a company you want to work for and call them up and ask if they have internships availablable. These are the kinds of jobs that college students are expected to take as a way to get started in their career.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
helping you (and "thousands of others") out with advice is, in my opinion, just as bad
Your attitude displays an astonishing lack of maturity--if you are good at your job, you will want mentor others and pass along your knowledge and skills.
If you are weak, perhaps that explains your concern about being replaced?
Sigs cause cancer.
When I graduated from college, there was no way I'd get a job in my particular field. Competition was on the lines of one opening for every 40-50 applicants, and if I had to put in the effort it would've taken to land that job, it would've made my life suck completely. So I did something else. I kept working at a bicycle shop and was fortunate to get enough of a raise to keep going... and earlier this year I got a career started with a distributor. Result? I make a bit less money than I would otherwise, but weekends piss me off because I like being at work so much. I've got an IRA, good health/dental/vision, and I pay about a third to half of what folks on the street do for bike parts, which makes me grin. Expand your horizons a bit, maybe make a hobby into a career - it worked for me!
Oh, and everyone else will say this, but most of the jobs I've gotten (from ice cream scooper at Baskin' Robbins to the current one), it wasn't what I knew but who I knew. The right references, and the right person speaking up for you when someone mentions an opening, make all the difference. If you aren't outgoing, then at least be pleasant towards those around you whenever possible.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
Mod parent up, this is very true. Take a job at a small company for less money; you get:
1) opportunity to grow - at a small company everyone does some of everything. You get network, DBA, desktop and coding experience all rolled in to one.
2) you're efforts get noticed and you see results.
3) small companies tend to have close relationships with a few customers. You can get to know and impress your customers and maybe create a new opportunity with one of them.
4) small company may be purchased and you get to join a large company (or lose your job).
Also think about jobs that might not be tech specific. For example, did you minor in econ? Maybe look at business analyst positions or marketing for a tech company. Are you really good at explaining technology to non-tech people? Think about technical sales rep jobs.
If you have any skills and experience outside of the technology world leverage that to find positions you didn't consider before. I'd much rather have a software sales rep that knows technology than one who doesn't.
Best of luck to OP and everyone else looking.
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
Well, no shit, it's fucking hard, asshole.
"hamburger+softdrink=happymeal"
Even harder than your letting on, apparently.
By my calculation you just fucking jipped me an order of fries and a toy. I bet you'd whine to customers that its always just some "mundane detail" infecting the code, huh?
You can just call me Mike.
The father of my freshman year roommate was a professor at the University I went to. He was a mathmatician and he had written a C program to do mathmatical modeling. My roommate told me he was looking for someome to make some modifications to the program. I worked on modifying the program to run under both UNIX and windows. I got some good experience from it, and I was able to help the professor. I also got paid some for the work, so it worked out pretty well for everyone.
If I hadn't ended up traveling the China to study abroad, the professor was also planning to give me a system admin job for the department he managed.
The main thing is to keep your eyes open and talk to people. Talk to some professors you know and like, ask them if they could hire you to do some work (paid work looks better than volunteer on a resume I think, because it shows that the work you were doing was really valuable to someone.) Or if they don't have the money or need, ask them if any of their coworkers do. Don't just ask the comp. sci. department either, talk to all of your professors.
If no one you know needs help, go talk to your schools job search assistance center. They can help you look for something on campus that will help you fill out your resume before you graduate.
And of course, look for something that you will like, that is really important. If you are interested in the work, you will do better work, and then when your first post-graduation employer calls for a reference you will be remembered as a happy active employee.
--David
Get a crappy help desk job and work your way up.
While not unrealistic in the current IT market, "crappy help desk job" has nothing to do with becoming a software or network engineer.
For an analogy, a helpdesk job at an IT firm compares well to a secretary at a law firm. The secretary does not "climb the ladder" to full fledged lawyer, and the helpdesk guy does not eventually become a real engineer (not to say it never happens, but it when it does, it will involve some circumstances beyond "working up the corporate ladder"). Totally different jobs, one geared toward MCSEs and assorted other college dropouts, the other to people with a 4-year degree and good coding skills (which do not automatically come with any degree... You have to get those skills on your own through years of practice, which fortunately can start long before college).
No, a recent college grad shouldn't expect a six-figure salary. But they shouldn't take a $7.50/hr helpdesk job thinking it gives them any sort of "skills" beyond "new ways to insult users without them noticing".
Now, I did mention that the current market may require such work... Not because it has any relevance to the desired "real" job, but rather, because of what so many others have pointed out - You don't get a job by sending out resumes, you get a job because you know Bill, and Bill knows Fred, and Fred's sister works in HR at BlobCo, where they need a new entry-level code-monkey. From that position (which, if you tried to get it from a job posting, would still mention 5+ years of a dozen languages, as well as intimate familiarity with every type of networking hardware ever created, even though they just want someone to do VB scripting to access their customer mailing list running on Oracle 7 on an ancient Sparc with a fully redundant backup - Which you can later call "3.5 years of experience with Oracle in a mission-critical clustered environment" for the HR drones), you can work your way up to a real engineer. But the work at a helpdesk in the interim just kept you fed until you met the people needed to actually get a real job.
Now, the above may sound a tad elitist, but I don't mean it as such - I really do appreciate those who can work a helpdesk. But don't delude yourselves into considering that as any sort of entry-level position for a software engineering job.
To all those of you who have yet to go to college or are still in it, let this guy's mistakes be your guide. If you do not work (for a real company, doing real work associated with your desired job placement), you will have EXTREME DIFFICULTY getting a job later on. Really, the only way to avoid the Catch-22 associated with getting your foot in the door is to work during school. School is only a part of your education. Do not be one of the people who thinks it's the only part. You will regret it. Fortunately, I took my own advice, and when I graduate, I will actually be able to honestly say I have 5+ years experience with stuff most small time network admins only dream of touching (Cisco 12000, Cisco 6500, Cisco 6000, etc.).
Now, it's not easy to find the right place to work. You need somewhere that's going to be willing to let you learn AND give you responsibility. I started off the summer before freshman year of high school working for a company doing fairly simple database stuff. That quickly progressed into a demanding database programming and design position from which I was able to gain much experience and client contacts I have used as references. That job morphed into networking, implementing things in very specific ways where there was a lot of on the job learning. I spent a solid four years there doing all of this. By the time I left there, my resume was so long that when I applied for another job, my age was actually questioned due to the wide variety of skills mentioned on my resume. And no, they didn't think I was lying on my resume, as they questioned me about the things on it and hired me.
Moral of the story: Work, work, work. It's just as, if not more, important as your formal school education.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I've graduated a year ago, and I hope my experience can help you and other recent graduates, even a little bit, in this tough market.
I got my Bachelor's in CS in May 2003. I didn't graduate a Top 10 Ivy League school, or have a particularly good GPA, so I knew it was going to be very hard. I looked around for jobs for a while, went on a few interviews, but I had no clue on how to pass interviews, or how to write a resume. So, money was very scarce and I needed some kind of job.
So I got a job - I don't even want to say what it was, it wasn't programming for sure. I worked there for 8 hours a day, and then I went to my friend's office to help him set up his business - both software and hardware, and then I came home, practiced programming and sent out resumes. I read programming books on the train everywhere, as well.
After a while, I got really lucky - a family friend agreed to help me with my resume, and I realized how much it sucked. There's way too little space here and I don't have the time to say everything I want to say about the resume, but here's a few basic pointers.
Make it absolutely clear what kind of job you are looking for. Don't put there things that would indicate that basically, you would agree to any job in an IT field.
Put concrete things on your resume, that show that you know what the hell you're talking about. So instead of 'Programmed a Java', write 'Used Java to design and develop an inventory management application, utilizing Swing for front-end and JDBC to interact with Sybase database.' People that search through resumes on Monster.com or Dice.com don't look for 'Java', they look for Swing, JSP, JDBC - etc.
Don't lie. At least, don't flat out lie - everyone expects your resume to paint a little better picture than you actually are, but don't put blatant lies like 4 years of Unix experience while your Unix experience has been limited to checking your college mail at campus network (guilty).
Keep track of where you send your resume, what position, and what version of your resume. Nothing fancy, simple Notepad file will do. But it saves you a lot of valuale time while searching for a job.
Interviews - again, there are tomes written on this subject, but basic pointers again: SHOW YOUR ENTHUSIASM. Ask questions that show that you understend and are genuinely interested in the subject. The word "no" should NOT come out of your mouth. Of course, again, you shouldn't flat out lie - but if someone ask's you if you know skill X, instead of 'No', you should say "I've heard about it, but didn't have the opportunity to work with it professionally.. however, I'm a very fast learner and will pick up very fast"
The money question. The correct response to 'How much money do you want?' is "Money is really not that important to me, if the job is interesting and challenging, I would be happy with any reasonable offer." If they ask you to name a number, name a range. DON'T UNDERVALUE YOURSELF. If the job pays $40K and you say you'll be willing to do it for $25K, the alarm bell immediately rings in your interviewer's head - if this guy is so desperate to do this job for $25K, he must be a loser. Next!
So, in conclusion, looking for a job is a VERY HARD job in itself. You have to pay attention to every small detail and work very hard to succeed. In my case, after 10 months it finally paid off - I was offered a full time position and now happily working for a major financial company, with a salary almost twice as large as an average entry-level CS graduate.
You'd be surprised how much that doesn't work.
I recently filled 3 of 4 open positions in my section and will be interviewing people for the fourth one next week. When I go through a stack of resumes, I triage them like this:
- Yes, contact these people. They get a first interview.
- Maybe. If the best people in the Yes group have already taken jobs or othewise don't work out, this is the stand-by group. So far, we have never had to call anyone in the Maybe group.
- No. People in this group are one or more of: way over-qualified, way under-qualified, totally unqualified, way too expensive, are in some other way unqualified (sometimes we relocate people, other times we want to make a local hire, for example), or they were caught in some lie on their resumes.
Among the members of the No group for this round of hiring is a person who was pretty well qualified (possibly over-qualified, but I would have put him in the Yes group) but was caught with BS on his resume. He is in the No group not just because that one part was a lie, but because at that point I instantly lost all confidence in all of his claims of experience. Anyone who has been looking at resumes for a while can recognize the BS pretty easily. If I see BS on your resume, you go into the No group. Do us both a favor and be honest. If you're honest, the worst thing that can happen is you won't get that position, but if your resume seems OK but just wasn't right for that position, I'll hang onto it. You never know what might come up in six months. If I catch you lying, your resume goes into a file of people who will never be contacted for a job with us.
Also, we do background checks before extending job offers. If you succeeded in BS on the resume and again at the interview, but get caught in the background check, not only will you not get the offer, you will never interview with us again. If you get by all that and get an offer and get hired and it becomes obvious the you just lied really well and got hired anyway, you will be fired. So far, no one has gotten past us.
I look at all the resumes I receive. It's true, triage takes out most of them. That's just a hard fact of life that comes from the fact that there are far more applicants than there are positions. I usually wind up with two (and sometimes three) resumes in the Yes pile for each open position. We interviewed six people for the three positions filled so far, and on of the other three was referred to another section where we knew they had an opening and her skillset matched what they needed a lot better than it matched what we needed. We still interviewed her, but we invited that section's manager to the interview and that manager asked most of the questions. The applicant is now a finalist for that position. If she had given us BS on her resume or in the interview, that would never have happened.
Bottom line: honesty on your resume and throughout the interview process is really the best policy, even if it sometimes looks like BS could be a good shortcut. The best people to work with and for, at the best places to work (and I think we are pretty good in both of those respects) will hire you as much for honesty and personality fit with the team as for technical ability. So much of effective management and team-building comes from recognizing people who don't *need* to be managed and who fit in well with each other and easily form a cohesive team, that if you don't meet those criteria then we don't care about your technical skills. I want people on my team who are honest, self-motivated, get along well together, and have no "issues" that I need to deal with. If you don't meet those criteria, I have no use for you. So don't lie on your resume or in the interview.
Be honest. It won't always get you the job, sometimes it might cost you the job, but if you sling BS either on your resume or in person, I guarantee it will cost you the best jobs out there.