12 Steps to Land a Junior Developer Job
This is the story all about how I got my first software developer job. I had no prior experience, no academic degree and very few connections in the industry, but I knew it can be done. I had to get creative to show what I can do.
In this post I will layout my plan and conclusions from my job hunt towards the right job. Of course, this is all from my own personal experience so feel free to take what you think works best for you. Some of these steps are aimed to building your network and some are technological things you can do to gain experience.
The first assumption we have to establish is that sending out your resume is just not enough, you need to create proven examples of your dedication, passion and commitment. Recruits are looking for people who are willing to work and thrive, so believe in yourself and always push forward.
1. Focus — Determine your vision
It’s mandatory to know where you’re heading. It will make it easier for you to set your goals if you know what you are trying to reach.
Clear about 2 hours of your schedule. Go ahead and find yourself a quite space, grab a notebook/laptop, whatever works for you, and dedicate the first hour to write down the key elements of your dream job, every small detail. YES, every detail.
Here are some guiding questions to get you started:
What kind of atmosphere is there? What is the pace you‘re working at?
How many people are you working closely with? When do you get to work? When do you leave? How many context switch do you need to do a day?
What are your responsibilities in the team? How many platforms are you working on? In what field of expertise you are the Go-To person?
Now, you have a destination. let’s get practical.
2. Commit — Strategise a Plan
Take the second hour to build your strategic plan. First, set big milestones like: 3 projects, 500 Linkedin connections, 2 hackathons. Then, break it down to quantifiable, small, achievable tasks. Block daily/weekly time to invest in this. It’s a lot to handle so take it piece by piece.
Get ready to work at getting a job. Having a stable and sealed time for tasks will help you maintain a routine, feel progress along the way and sometime it will even help overcome a shitty interview. Just pick up where you left off and keep your head high.
3. Polish — Start with your Linkedin profile
Your online representation is critical because this is where recruiters will be looking at you. Linkedin is the most popular business networking sites when it comes to the tech industry. If you looking for a tech job, you have to be on LinkedIn. 94% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates, yet only 36% of job seekers are active on LinkedIn. So you have to make sure you have an active, polished profile to get hired.
But how exactly should you boost up your LinkedIn profile to get attention? what should you put there as a software developer? check out my article about 10 Ways to Boost Your LinkedIn Profile To Get Hired!
4. Code — build your own projects
To showcase your abilities, get real projects running. You don’t need to invent the next big thing, your purpose is to work on a small scale project and get it out there. Remember — the main focus is you code, not the subject of the project. I personally like to work on games as side projects, just because it’s fun to work on and different from the day-to-day occupation.
Open a GitHub account to share your code (read #8 to learn more about git) and attach the links of you projects in your cover letter / resume.
Make it so that it will aim to your dream job, as we already defined (#1). Every aspect of the project should be influenced by your goal, such as technology and coding language. For example: if you want to get a job as an Android developer, working on AI in healthcare — make exactly that kind of app, in a small scale. Create a taste of what you want to do for a living.
Treat your projects like real clients, with real demands and deadlines.
Create your programming experience. Don’t wait for it.
5. Hack — attend a Hackathon
Hackathon is a 24–48 hours coding marathon and your chance to practice your team-player skill and get more projects to showcase. Check this article to get a deeper knowledge of what is a hackathon. For one who attended several hackathons and fell in love with it, I can honestly say it’s a great and clear business opportunity. During the hackathons, you might get approached by mentors and other individuals, asking about what we’re working on, possibly sniffing around to see what you can do and how you communicate it. If you feel the person in impressed, leverage these talks and mention you’re looking for a job.
6. Contribute — find an open source project
You probably wonder what can you, as a junior developer, contribute to the project but in fact the whole beauty of an open source project is that anyone can contribute. When I first joined a project, I had my doubts but I actually gained a lot from it. First of all, it will give you a sense of community and that’s so essential when most of your time hunting a job is usually solo.
The best thing is that you will have to deal with a LOT of code, legacy code. That is something you’ll face in your first job so you can practice that skill of investigating, understanding and even critiquing complex code. Along the way you’ll learn some best practices about software architecture, dealing with version control and working in a team.
7. Practice — Solve problems daily
The best way to improve your coding skills is by participating in coding challenges. They can help you improve logical thinking and eventually lead you to have an advantage in job interviews.
Here are two that I can personally recommend:
- Hackerrank — The largest community to learn and practice programming online with over 1 million programmers. It has coding challenges mainly divided into 3 difficulty levels easy, medium and hard. It has challenges in Algorithms, For beginners in programming, it has a special course called “30 days of code”.
- Codewars —An awesome community based challenges website. Once you complete the challenge you can view all of the submitted solutions so this is a great way to not only learn by doing, but learn from others.
8. Git — Learn how to git
As a new developer it’s best if you pick up good habits which will help you a near future and will make your adapt faster in your next job.
Git is a distributed version control software used to track changes in the code and also keep it backed up and maintained.
Even if you are the only person working on the code, it can serve you as a helpful way to monitor your progress.
Check out Git Useful Know-how to get started.
9. Present — Perfect Your Elevator Pitch
Talking about yourself, your achievements and what you have to offer might not feel like the most intuitive and natural thing to do. From my first experiences presenting myself, It feels like you are trying to sell something and that’s not always part of our skills set as tech specialist but this is a skill you must completely own. This will serve you in job interviews, build strong connections in the industry, in business opportunities and in general — Know how to present yourself.
Where can you practice?
- Conferences and Meet-ups: set a goal for every event you attend to introduce yourself to 3 new individuals. it will also help you build your network.
- Recruiters & HR: find 5 recruiters (best to connect on Linkedin) and have a brief introduction talk over the phone. Keep it short and concise.
- Friends / professional mentors: ask to do a simulation of the first 3 minutes of a job interview. Apositive first impression can be set in the first 60 seconds of meeting you so you need to be able to talk with confidence.
Most important thing you can do while practicing is to read the signs from their body language or tone to perfect your pitch.
What are people most excited to hear? make sure to emphasis it.
What makes people look board or unimpressed? brief over it.
10. Meet — Expand your professional network
Building a wide professional network is the key to unlocking word-to-mouth job offers and business opportunities. You’ll have more and more people spreading the word out for you in your job hunt. Find networking tech events that can be relevant in your field and attend ~3 events a week to establish your professional network. Also, if like me, you’re more effective in a working focused environment - find yourself some working buddies and schedule time to sit together and get more done.
Embrace your reality and send the right message — You’re a potential, all you need is the right guidance to become a superstar.
11. Communicate — Explain how you code
Following up on #5, a big part of creating a project is to also presenting it. Learn and practice how to explain what you did, what process have you gone thought. By doing so, you establish that you can deal with creating project from the ground up, including designing the architecture and solving problems along the way.
I recommend to prepare:
- A short one line sentence about the project and what is it’s main goal
- Some technical terms regarding the architecture, the design pattern you applied, the framework, the language, the libraries you used etc
- Couple of challenges that you had along the way and what was your course of actions to solve them
In a era were everything can be found online, you want to show you understand what and how about your project.
12. Reach out — Hunt for internship opportunities
The importance of #1 determining a destination is that you can do a research of companies you want to work for, that fall in line with your expectations. Reach out to them via email and try to reach their CTOs or team leaders. Tell them about yourself and what you have accomplished so far and emphasise what you can contribute as a passionate junior developer.
Worst case scenario? they won’t reply back or gently dismiss you, but they will however remember you.
I also encourage you to reach out to start-ups, they are more flexible when it comes to hiring unexperienced developers. A friend of mine interned in a startup and she learned so much from working on a real product and accomplished a lot more than 1 month pay check.
I hope these tips will help you along the way. Remember to stay focused and make sure you’re presenting yourself in the best way you can.
Follow me on Medium to learn more about how to break into the tech industry and how to improve your software development skills.
Connect with me on Linkedin and let me know if this post helped you in any way :)
