Yesterday's discussion on Ben's post:
What’s the most frustrating thing about the process of looking for work or interviewing?", really intrigued me and I wanted to do a follow up.
After many rejection emails, how did you finally get your first dev job?
Was it through a job site, networking, a meetup or etc? Share below, with advice! :)
Oldest comments (66)
My first Dev job was a small freelancing company that I started to get some experience under my belt. I did this for a few months then applied to a large company and I had plenty to show them. I also found out that I disliked working with clients so I'm better in an engineering role. But I worked very hard and moved my way up into their R&D department and now I build very large scale web applications. Just work hard, get those projects under your belt. Under promise and way over deliver. You will kill it!
Accidentally. They asked for an Excel guy but they somehow needed more than that. I ended up doing webdev in Perl. I did not write any Excel macros during that time.
I got very lucky and was found by a recruiter, which managed to connect me to my first job.
The more common, and recommended, way was how I got my second job - networking. There was a development group in a nearby city and went to several meeting, talked with the members, showed off my skills, asked lots of questions, and contributed where I could. Eventually one person messaged me and said they had an opening they think I'd be a good fit for. A month later I'm working there and learning from lots of experienced devs.
Networking! I went to a lot of meetups for the industry I was trying to get into and made lots of friends. People saw my drive and therefore would personally recommend me to the places I applied to. It helped a ton! I think I may have applied through their site, but it was followed up with a recommendation.
So far I have been pretty lucky with my job searches. I have been 2/2 in interviews and getting the job. (First was an internship and the second is my current job).
But, my professor in college basically got me both of these. At my internship, he worked closely with them and put in a good word. At my current job, one of his older students said there were some openings. My professor recommended this job to a group of us and the majority of us got offers.
From my experience, working with your professors will pay off.
My very first programming-related job was TA-ing for my school's computer science department. The professor reached out to me about it based off of taking one of his other classes.
Then, the next one, I cold-emailed a startup whose skillset was similar to mine to see if they were looking for people -- they ended up hiring me without really interviewing me, which is kind of weird in retrospect. But I worked there for a while, so I guess it all worked out okay!
I had completed the equivalent of a bootcamp (though I don't recall us calling them that in 1999. I then decided to build a site as a demo (it was a web-based grade book for teachers back when those sorts of things were uncommon). My friend saw the demo and invited me to talk to the CEO of the startup he was working at and thus began my career.
1999 was such a different time however. It was the middle of the dotcom boom. Finding a job was relatively easy as there were too many jobs and not enough talent.
That being said, I would still say that today, having something in your portfolio to show would be hugely helpful if you're coming straight out of a bootcamp. Also, the power of networking when job hunting is huge - so I was lucky with my friend but go to meetups and any other opportunities you have to meet people in the industry.
Speculative applications!
My first dev job was a year's internship between my 2nd and 3rd year of University. I speculatively sent my CV to a number of companies asking them to take me on, had a couple of interviews and lo and behold I had my first internship! Fast forward about 2 years and I'm now halfway through completing the final year of my degree! And the company I worked for deemed the student internship scheme so successful that they continued to take on student interns for the following years!
Just apply! Meet people, get yourself out there, and get in touch with companies!
I skipped a class on university, went for a coffee with some friends and found a classmate who had just found a job. I congratulated her and she told me that her company was looking for new devs. Send her my resume and the rest is ancient history. I had my first real gig and she got a ver nice romantic weekend with her boyfriend as a reward for my recruiting ^
The year 2013. After a conference at my university, I came to the speaker and we had next short talk:
I read them in 3 days. As a result after the interview, I worked with that guy for 9 months as the iOS developer, it was a great time. :)
Recruiter.
Later found out I was the only applicant to be able to create a HTML form, submit it, validate the data, and store to a SQL database. Out of 20+ people who interviewed for the entry level developer role,I was the only one who completed the practical.
My first dev job was an internship with Faithlife, making Android apps for studying the Bible. I had been using their app for a while for personal study, and one day during my first Senior year in college I decided to see if they had an internship program, and they did!
I was working there part-time for several months after that internship and was planning on going full-time with them after I graduated. Unfortunately, I got laid off at the beginning of the following year, but it was perfect timing because I met my current employer, Credera, a consulting firm, just a couple days later at my college's career fair.
This company came to my college job fair. Weird small world.
While I'm not technically in a Dev role (my title is Marketing Director) but this job definitely requires more coding than any of my other jobs.
I got the job by being best friends with the Owner's son since Kindergarten. They needed a web/marketing guy, I hated my job at Target. I told me friend. He talked to his dad. I "interviewed" for about 15 minutes and he offered me the job.
I did have to work a couple months on the Sales Floor, just because that's what they actually needed at the time, but I quickly jumped into to updating our website and a bunch of other stuff.
A friend of a friend
After making UI tests for almost 2 years as a QA and taking online courses on my free time, two of my friends and ex coworkers recommended me to their boss and she got in touch with me.
After a few phone calls and an onsite meeting with a coding test I was contacted a few days later here we are, almost 6 months into Android development and the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know anything hahahaha. There's always new cool stuff to learn!