TLDR; I did freelance before my first job so do I have 2.8 years of experience or 6 years?
I am from India and way it works here is most of the student go to high-school, then an engineering college and then get a job.
The problem is I fell in love with programming when I started high-school and while I was going through the studies and college, I used to write code and learn things.
Fast-Forward to college:
when I found out that I can make money by writing code or creating websites, so I've created websites for local businesses, plugins and themes for WordPress, SAAS software products and whatnot. This is what I consider as my experience working long nights daily and continuously delivering projects for 4 years.
During my college, I've also started an e-commerce store for technical books and ran that company for 2 years.
During the last year of my college, I got very involved in helping my college with technical solutions like websites, hackathons, and android apps. This helped me convince the faculties to allow me to work full time as a software developer in a legit company before graduating. (not an internship, but an actual job where I was expected to perform similar to people with 2 years of experience)
I have been working for the last 2.8 years and I graduated from my college 2 years ago.
The reason I am writing all this is that I am actively looking for a job and want to ask your help on how to respond for the look on recruiter's face saying "numbers don't add up".
Whenever I am put with junior developers I feel I can do a lot better but every time I am out looking for a job, it becomes very hard to explain how I actually have the skills that I claim.
Every time I fill a form and write 2-3 years as experience, I feel a bit sad.
Ending Note:
I strongly believe that during freelance I did not only gain the skills of software development but I also learned end to end delivery of products and even some business skills. People paid me to build software for them, how is that not a legit experience?
I've been coding for more than 6 years now and still have to write that I only have 2-3 years of experience, does that feel right to you?
What can I do to explain this better? Should I just say I am 2.8 years experienced?
PS. I don't like writing 2.8 for 2 yrs and 8 months as mathematically it means 80% of a year is passed but in reality, it's only around 66-67%. But that is a topic for another discussion as of now let's leave it to Numbers don't add up.
Top comments (3)
Yeah it all counts :) you would have learned a lot from your freelancing including many skills that you might not have learned in a ‘regular’ job. In terms of ‘numbers adding up’ why not be up front and explain? Any legitimate employer will see the freelance experience as a positive especially if you highlight what you learnt from it etc...
When interviewing with a big company I usually don't get much time to explain why I've listed my experience as 5years and I mentioned only 2 real companies that total to 2 years.
The real question was should I write 5 years and try to explain or 2.8 years and then surprise them with skill.
It's great to know that you consider freelance an experience.
If I were interviewing and saw a mismatch I would ask about it and definitely make time to discuss it - which is a great time for you to show them / tell them the skills from your time freelancing! I guess once you’ve been doing it a few more years it will become less important :) All the best!