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Best Way To Land Entry-Level Job?
chemicaldave writes "I'm graduating this May and have been seeking a programming position for months. It seems that the biggest hurdle to landing an interview is getting past the doorman that is HR. After reading this entry from Coding Horror describing the lack of programming candidates who can actually program, I can't help but scratch my head. I can program! (See how I put that link in?) If I can't land an interview, then even a short online evaluation of my coding skills would suffice. I just want a chance to prove myself. Alas, sending resumes to companies has rarely led to anything but an auto-confirmation email of my submission. I understand that sending resumes online is not the best method to landing an interview, but I come from a small rural school so job fairs rarely offer anything more than IT support positions let alone a programming position. It seems to me that developers are always looking for talented young programmers. We're out here looking for you too. Am I missing something?"
Exactly. Many companies get their talent through temp agencies, so submitter should consult the area temp agencies - they'll do much of the legwork for you and bolster your visibility if you don't have any existing connections. It's not as prestigious as waltzing into IBM's offices and walking out with a job offer, but we have to accept the reality that all new workers are basically temps anyway. You were lied to if you were told that you'd walk out of college with a 50K job offer. You may have to work for chump change in a lower-level position for a while just to prove your mettle to the company. In that case, it'll be up to you to take initiative and demonstrate that you can do more. Company bosses aren't going to magically see all of your skills and pick you out for promotion. You need to go above and beyond the job description. Examine whatever you can and reccomend bug fixes, or create programs that serve a purpose.
As an example, I wrote a small program to detect duplicate serial number entries so that nobody could print the same serial number for 2 machines without a warning. I also wrote a Rube Goldberg proof-of concept GUI program, based on the Java robot(in before noob, java sux), that simplified and made for safer data entry. Everybody on the floor thought that I was some kind of guru, and I'm only a lowly repair tech.
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Right now is a really hard time to try to get your foot in the door. As a manager, I posted for an entry level position and ended up with a ton of candidates with a strong background. I don't believe in the whole "overqualified" paradigm, so I ended up getting the best candidate -- over twelve years of experience pertinent to my business, glowing reviews from previous employers and excellent interpersonal skills.
I got a ton of resumes from college students. Several sounded promising, and I would have loved to give them a chance. But when I have someone with a proven track record who I KNOW will not require only minimal supervision and will bring more to the table... why should I waste my time and money?
Is it fair? Maybe not. When I was in this position almost 15 years ago it sucked. But with 10%+ unemployment it is very hard for the entry level candidate to get his foot in the door.
My solution.... if you are still in school... get a fricking internship. It may not put you at the same level as those I did end up interviewing... but it will help/
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Have you asked your friends and family. And families friends...and so on.
That's were most of the jobs are. Which is a bit sad.
And remember, don't take just any job. You have a degree and you've spent a lot of money on it. The salary of your new job should reflect this.In Norway for instance starting salary for an uneducated is about 280'000,- kr. The cost of 5 years of study is 333000 in loans. 20 years from now your education will have cost you 1'400'000 (5 years of lost income) + 999'000 in down payments = 2'399'000. So if you are planning on paying that down you need to make close to 400'000,- kr a year.
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
If your experience with programming is having a CS degree, you aren't a developer. You are, well, a computer scientist. The same thing you say? Not hardly. While both deal with programming, it is from different aspects. Computer Science is a theoretical field. It is based around the research of computers and algorithms, around the theory of how to program, how to make them better. Fine, but that isn't what most companies are hiring. They are hiring developers, which is the practical side. They are hiring people who will be told to solve real world problem X and do it quickly. They want people with practical knowledge of how to develop apps on today's systems, not theoretical knowledge of computers over all.
So if all you experience is in computer science, that's a disadvantage. Don't get me wrong, having a strong theory background can help, but it isn't what companies are after. If you feel a bit cheated by your university, well, ya, kinda happens that way.
The problem derives from the history of universities. They have historically been high level, theoretical institutions. Time was, that was really the only reason you went there. When Harvard first started, then called Oxford after the English school, you had to know Latin and Greek just to get admitted. It wasn't a place where you got practical training for a job, it was just the polish to an already fine education that included many purely academic pursuits. Few people got those sorts of degrees.
Ok well our current universities get their heritage from that system. So while we now have more complex jobs that want more training than high school gives, students still by and large go to theoretical institutions. The universities are trying to present more practical training, but aren't doing a great job over all.
Now please note, I say this as someone who works at a university. It is just something you need to be realistic about. Your degree can be helpful, but you need to get practical experience outside of it. The only time you tend to see an "All degree," field is if you are seeking to become a PhD and teach/research at a university. Anything else, you need to get practical experience as well as the degree.
The purpose of the HR department is to come up with bizarre and absurd reasons why mid-level supervisors can't get the human resources that they need to keep their division profitable.
All the other functions of a 'human resources' department could be done by computer or out-sourced to some distant third-world country. So the alleged humans in the HR department need to constantly come up with reasons to justify their salaries. So they specialize in coming up with weird and irrelevant reasons to prevent YOU from being hired.
My last job interview had a 22-year old ask me to explain a job termination that happened to me before she (always a she) was even born! How do you answer something like that?