You can try to make a website you like, dev.to, reddit, hacker news, etc. Show to this company that you know what you say, build a personal website. Maybe a tutorial and put it on GitHub, break that code. There are many ways to show experience. Clone websites are usually good.
I agree. Personal projects that you devote to go along way.
When I was first trying to break in I was basically doing full-time development on a website I was treating as if it were itself a biz opportunity with deadlines etc. Just making it as polished as possible.
But one more thing:
Interview for jobs even if you feel a bit under-qualified. You're probably not. Don't disqualify yourself. That's their job.
I second Ben here - definitely apply for jobs even if you feel you aren't experienced enough. I've hired people with almost zero prior coding experience for software developer positions, based on how the interview went. Good communication skills and interpersonal skills are much harder to train for than technical skills.
@Donald, I wish my manager can say this to me. :( I moved to dev department a year ago but only as someone who implements template design to WYSWG editor. I just had an appraisal few days back. I told my manager that I've learned Javascript, React, UI design and Node.js hoping that somehow they can see it fitting to our project, because I really wanted to become a full-time frontend developer - only to be told that being Technical (learning all these technologies) doesn't really help the business then proceeds saying that they already hired enough devs for their team. 💔
You can try to make a website you like, dev.to, reddit, hacker news, etc. Show to this company that you know what you say, build a personal website. Maybe a tutorial and put it on GitHub, break that code. There are many ways to show experience. Clone websites are usually good.
I agree. Personal projects that you devote to go along way.
When I was first trying to break in I was basically doing full-time development on a website I was treating as if it were itself a biz opportunity with deadlines etc. Just making it as polished as possible.
But one more thing:
Interview for jobs even if you feel a bit under-qualified. You're probably not. Don't disqualify yourself. That's their job.
Here's a post I wrote on this general subject:
Embrace How Random the Programming Interview Is
Ben Halpern
Thank you Ben!
I second Ben here - definitely apply for jobs even if you feel you aren't experienced enough. I've hired people with almost zero prior coding experience for software developer positions, based on how the interview went. Good communication skills and interpersonal skills are much harder to train for than technical skills.
This is good to know!! Thank you!
@Donald, I wish my manager can say this to me. :( I moved to dev department a year ago but only as someone who implements template design to WYSWG editor. I just had an appraisal few days back. I told my manager that I've learned Javascript, React, UI design and Node.js hoping that somehow they can see it fitting to our project, because I really wanted to become a full-time frontend developer - only to be told that being Technical (learning all these technologies) doesn't really help the business then proceeds saying that they already hired enough devs for their team. 💔
I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work out on your first try. I'm sure that you'll be able to apply your new tech skills somehow!