DEV Community

Cover image for How To Find A Developer Job In 2023 (With Little Or No Experience) 🔥

How To Find A Developer Job In 2023 (With Little Or No Experience) 🔥

Dragos Nedelcu on October 27, 2023

Do you want to know a little secret? You can get a highly paid developer job without tons of experience in 2023. Now, before you call me crazy, l...
Collapse
 
diek007 profile image
diek

It took me a long time to learn that life is not fair, and the current debacle in finding a programming job is a big reminder of this concept. The "Current Situation..." one key to the problem goes down to greed imo, e.g. LinkedIn just scored record profits, and growth and what did they do, lay off hundreds of employees. I am not certain how we combat greed.

I truly appreciated your screen captures from Reddit. To say looking for a programming job right now would be 'soul crushing' would be an understatement.

I had three of the best programmers I know critique my CV, and I did a complete rewrite. I like that you are trying to help but saying "If you are not getting interviews there is something wrong with your CV." is not helpful. When I read the job needs Java, Python, and 3 others it tells me no one on the programming side of the house vetted the job post. I relate to that reddit post in the screen capture, that he or she has no idea wtf they want, even though they actually have a job posting. Even before this chaos the programming world was littered with stories of moronic job postings with HR people asking for X years of experience in program Y, when program Y is not even X years old. Should it really be this complex to find a job, of course not, order is needed...

Collapse
 
italoborges profile image
Italo • Edited

Hey @diek007! I think this video will summarize the current situation. It's not greed, it's capitalism. We are just a bunch of numbers.

Gurner Group founder Tim Gurner tells the Financial Review Property Summit workers have become "arrogant" since COVID and "We've got to kill that attitude."

Btw, the company I was working in Barcelona received last year a round of investments of 130 millions. What did they do? Lay off.

Hope it gets better for you!

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Interesting @italoborges, I will take a look

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Hey @diek007 thanks for sharing. I will make a separate post on how exactly to write the CV and provide some proven templates we used that get you to to the next stage

Collapse
 
lexiebkm profile image
Alexander B.K.

"Get Good At Live Coding Interviews"
This is like the ultimate condition, so everyone has to be prepared with it.
I have gone through it once, with unsatisfying result, i.e "unsatisfying" was the word the recruiter said to me as the response. The test was initially supposed to complete within 30 minutes; but for some reasons, they allowed me to finish it and send the code the next day. I thought I did quite well, the app ran as I expected, although I admitted I could have improved it. But, according to the recruiter, it was still unsatisfying, yet.
Well, probably, other applicants did better than me.
Alright, that was an experience of live coding interview, a kind of interview which we cannot avoid let alone hate.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Feeback from interviews(if any) is quite useless, unfortunately. The thing with coding interviews is that 1 in 3 you will get the bad luck with interviews with ppl who have no social skills. They can be very patronizing, not collaborative, and basically set you up for failure. It happens at any level, junior, senior, and beyond. No matter how good you are, you will always "fail" some interviews because the people interviewing you don't want you to succeed. This is a dynamic no one talks about, but sometimes they might perceive you as a future competitor for a promotion and try to prevent that or just want to show they can do more. And rejection always stings. Trust me, I have done dozens of coding interviews(just for sport nowadays) and it still stings when I get a no. This is why you always need to focus on the next thing, we call it "interview and forget" at theSeniorDev. Spend no time dwelling on it, just move on to the next thing.

Collapse
 
lexiebkm profile image
Alexander B.K.

I want to ask about skills mentioned on our LinkedIn profile. We know that LinkedIn provides assessment for each skills we list on our profile. If we pass the assessment, then we have a badge for corresponding skill.
I myself have several badges for certain skills after taking and passing the assessments on my profile. If you have gone through the assessment, I think you know and can give the opinion about the assessment : easy, difficult, etc, for certain skills.
I myself, think, the assessment is like a theoretical test that is part of the hiring process in certain companies.
So, based on the the assessment, do you think it gives us some benefit when we have badges on certain skills, esp ones that are relevant to the job requirements ?

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu • Edited

Hey @lexiebkm from my experience there is some margin benefit of having the "Verified" badge next to the skill but very little. The questions in the assessment are quite off - far away from what you get in interviews and recruiters see it only if they dig in your profile. Is one of those things that does help, but not a game changer on the responses you get or the invites to interviews.
If you are just starting out, and have the time, I would do the main ones for your skill set like JavaScript and so on but don't sweat on it too much. It has what they call "diminishing returns" on the investment of your time.

Collapse
 
snorchy profile image
Irian

Thanks for taking the time on writing all your advices. It's been a very useful read! And it would really be cool if you could write about how to complete take homes fast because my time is precious and I'm not taking 30 hours to do each of them... How can I do them fast?

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

@snorchy will do. There are ways you can bring that down to 5 to 6 hours and still get passed to the next stage

Collapse
 
shawn2208 profile image
Shawn2208

Unfortunately this sort of work is hard to get into that’s my opinion anyway I’ve had 3 interviews in a month 3 interviews but 2 rejections and 1 I’m currently waiting for a reject or accept 😂 I’m trying to get into a state of mind not to take it personally and think but if u owned a business would you hire someone like me (only 7 months of experience and a portfolio that’s okay but could be better) and I always think no cause there is better out there! But on the other hand I have this project at the moment if it succeeds it will poo all over Wordpress and wix and that’s my goal so I don’t particularly care if I get the job or not. It’s hard don’t get me wrong but just don’t take it personal and master something you know your skill is and apply for jobs that are bottom of food chain at first and then work your way in a foot in the door as they say!

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Best of success there @shawn2208

Collapse
 
chukwuma1976 profile image
Chukwuma Anyadike

This was a good read. I especially agree with the part about mindset. I think knowing who you are and embracing your tech identity is crucial. Getting and doing well on interviews is also critical. In my personal experience I found that networking enhanced my chances as well.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thanks @chukwuma1976

Collapse
 
khoaxuantu profile image
khoaxuantu • Edited

The Focus catches my attention a lot. I remember having a hard time throughout the past ~6-month period seeking a job, telling myself to focus only on coding and technical interviews instead of distributing my time to temporary redundant frameworks or languages. Somehow, interesting new things could attract me to be out of the wheel that much.

I'm glad I have gotten through that period. Thanks for the detailed article.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

@khoaxuantu thank you for the feedback. Glad you made it, and thx for sharing your experience

Collapse
 
shavjw profile image
shavjw

This article was really insightful! It really changed my whole perspective on how to land a job in tech.

I think side projects/open source projects are still useful for getting experience if your an absolute beginner. It's one thing to know how to code but I feel like you still have to know how to write code in the context of building an application(knowing design patterns, scalability, optimization, etc) and collaborating with other developers.

Again, fantastic article.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thanks for the feedback @shavjw

Collapse
 
sqru profile image
szymonkrupa

Really great inside with pragmatic approach. Finally some valuable article that does not feel like another one AI generated or mass produced. 👍🔥

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thank you so much, gald it helped :)

Collapse
 
westernal profile image
Ali Navidi

Great post, it feels like a complete book about job searching.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thank you @westernal! Glad it help, best of success there

Collapse
 
matkwa profile image
Mat Kwa

Great read.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Glad you enjoyed it @matkwa

Collapse
 
prvn1998 profile image
Praveen Mandal

I recently completed my frontend development course, and struggling to get a fresher job, now I will follow this artist.
Thank you so much,❤ it is very helpful for me.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Best of success @prvn1998

Collapse
 
piyusharmap profile image
Piyush Sharma

Very insightful, helped me to realize my mistakes and now I will surely work on them.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Happy to hear that @_b1ngus! Wish you all the best there

Collapse
 
kevindev0110 profile image
Kevin Rowland

Wow. One of great article I've ever seen over the course of career.
I do have 10+ years of experience in software engineering, did various work mostly focused on the front end and experienced in all parts of SDLC.
Recently, I finished my last company and start to looking for a new job.
And this article is really great help for me to hunt my next awesome job.
But I am not sure if my current CV is good or bad.
So it would be great for me if you have a chance to review my CV and give me some feedback.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

@kevindev0110 Make sure you join us in the free dev community I linked in the article, and we take it from there :)

Collapse
 
codeguage profile image
Codeguage

A great piece of advice for job hunters. 👌

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thanks @codeguage

Collapse
 
morphzg profile image
MorphZG

I must say huge thanks to you. Thank you for every single post you write. I see you put effort. I can see you like what you do. Keep doing it because someone cares.

Collapse
 
chriisduran profile image
Christopher Duran

Whatever it takes

whatever it takes

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

+1

Collapse
 
aloksdiptim profile image
alokz diptim!

Thanks for this...

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

You are welcome!

Collapse
 
shubhadip_bhowmik profile image
Shubhadip Bhowmik

Awesome

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu
Collapse
 
sorenblank profile image
Soren Blank

Just awesome. Loved the blog. Everything was so on to the point.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thank you @Siyam Afroz

Collapse
 
flowzai profile image
Flowzai

Pure guideline, great post

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Thank you @flowzai

Collapse
 
letyjaime profile image
Leticia Jaime

Please, write a full article about how to solve a take-home challenge. Thanks

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Will do @letyjaime

Collapse
 
skreddysasi profile image
S K Reddy Sasi

Thank you for sharing 🚀, you've provided very insightful information.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

You are welcome @S K Reddy

Collapse
 
stefanmoore profile image
Stefan Moore

Not a coder, but I'll take this and use it as my roadmap for applying to jobs in the cloud.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Great to hear @stefanmoore . Best of success!

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

You are welcome @matinmollapur01

Collapse
 
the_kray_twins profile image
KraysDevs

I am one of the oltimers: GET INTO BLOCKCHAIN. CDBC are being developed and its not that hard and extremely exciting!

Collapse
 
karim_balla profile image
MohamedKarimBalla

This is helpful, thank you.

Collapse
 
dragosnedelcu profile image
Dragos Nedelcu

Glad to hear that @karim_balla!

Collapse
 
silwiueduard profile image
SilwiuEduard

Thank you for the power energy.

Collapse
 
zeynabjafari2002 profile image
Zeynab

thank you