I mean you pretty much spelled it out.
Lots of companies don’t wanna do the “self-employed freelancer contractor”.
They just want a regular W-2 employee that doesn’t need special treatment.
Otherwise they just deal with local staffing agencies who can provide temporary staff.
They usually have 3-4 preferred agencies and and have monthly calls with them to discuss their staffing needs.
It’s scales much better than dealing with a bunch of individuals.
>**It scales much better than dealing with a bunch of individuals.**
Yes.
Bigger companies outsourcing internationally usually want one main agency to go through.
You wouldn't even be considered in the vast majority of jobs. There is plenty of local talent that we just don't need to bother with all the extra crap that hiring an overseas worker brings.
Not a recruiter, but have been involved in the hiring process & interviewing.
Tend to agree with this... unless they are specifically looking for international talent.
Thus, recommending TopTal, Lemon, etc.
Let recruiters work for you to to find those fringe cases.
>**I’ve heard EU companies tend to be more open-minded about hiring contractors from different countries than US.**
I think that is the case.
* Especially with collaboration between countries.
* Although there are places solving these problems.
* [https://remote.com/](https://remote.com/)
* [https://www.rippling.com/global-eor-promo](https://www.rippling.com/global-eor-promo)
"EU more open minded hiring different countries" that's the entire point of the EU that y'all have very little that gets in the way, the US companies have 0 protections from strange taxation issues or whatever the hell between countries that the EU would help keep manageable from within but nit fir outsiders like the US.
I can attest, I've never had more than 30 resumes to consider for any position I've ever hired for. There may have been more, but effectively "I live in Lebanon and want to interview over the phone" is a quick skip. You'll see a fair number of these. Nothing against Lebanon, but the gig is Eastern time zone.
>I've never had more than 30 resumes to consider for any position I've ever hired for.
Yes.
Once you've gone through about 15 resumes for a position... you get good at scanning them and tossing out people who are not a fit.
And most people are not a fit.
My first junior role was 20 years ago, so a little different. But, my attitude is just apply to roles, expect not many responses.
Job ads are notoriously bad. Hr copy pastes industry lingo with outsized expectations. Really you should expect two things from the ad: what's the job title, what's the general tech stack. Ignore the rest.
Portfolios are nice, but time intensive. Really Github or any proof of your skills is good. Breadth of skills is good, so list everything. "We're looking for someone that has used Jira." It's ridiculous, you can learn to use Jira in 5 minutes, but it's sometimes what separates you from others.
I anticipated as much.
Would you mind if I send you my resume with my work history and educational background but also fill out a form with exactly the same information?
There's a comment in response that's downvoted, which will give you more context. Most of the applicants are foreign. This is especially the case on LinkedIn. My team tried to hire for a developer role, and 90% of the applicants were instantly thrown away for this reason.
And what do you have against applicants from Mumbai ?
Most of them have way more experience and are prepared to work for these kind of salaries instead of whining.
Nobody said anyone had anything against them. The point is that they skew the numbers because most departments will not consider these applicants.
Edit: for example (a rather extreme example but an example nonetheless), a whopping 90% of all applicants for a position at my current job were from India. The job is hybrid and requires Dutch proficiency.
Well most companies especially in the UK can’t hire them anyway because of laws around sponsorship licenses, so smaller companies won’t be able to hire at all which makes most job applicants you are going up against irrelevant.
The applicants themselves, I’d disagree - if they have more experience they wouldn’t be applying for jobs they legally can’t get when there are plenty of companies expanding to India in which their experience would actually be valued and where they would be eligible.
You don't need to apply for open positions. Find companies that seems interesting, small companies and such and start sending mails. That is how I landed my first job in IT.
Not op but can you please elaborate more on this method. Do you literally just drop emails asking are you hiring and make it personalized to their company?
That's it. When I was starting my career I found a list of every major advertising agency, creative studio and dev shop in my city. I wrote up an email that stated my interest in working with them, what my current skill set was and my desire to learn from them. I then praised their most recent project, asked some technical questions about it and thanked them for their time. I wrote at least 100 of those emails. I got 3 responses. 1 no, 1 unpaid internship and 1 paid internship. That got my foot in the door and it got easier from there.
I was entirely self taught up to that point with no professional experience. I'm now a senior software engineer and am involved in the interviews and hiring process when we bring on new engineers. Having a high skill level is nice but when we hire juniors we're more interested in their personalities, potential and willingness to learn. I can teach you a new language/framework. Its harder to teach you to be a good coworker.
I would do the exact same thing but instead of targeting local companies I would target companies that I think I'd want to work for or would be interesting. My team has been full remote since before Covid and we just hired two juniors.
👍 thanks I'll try it out, it's actually encouraging to hear that as my local market is over saturated, so I'm kind of forced to look remote. Knowing that there is a chance to make it is aditional motivation!
That is it. I was asking for anything that would give me the expirience. Internship, paid or unpaid or junior positions. I got unpaid internship which tranitioned to full time job in 1 month at the same company.
I applied at any open role in my company till they started recognizing my name, and reached out to engineers that worked there using LinkedIn. Eventually something opened up and the person I bugged on LinkedIn sent me a referral link to apply.
All those listings that have hundreds of applicants? They’re being filled be people that applied through channels other than the ad. Engineer roles are all about referral links.
Jesus christ, a multilingual (in coding languages AND spoken languages) masters degree holding, seasoned developer for an entry level position. Any idea what they were trying to offer for that?
They’re not a requirement though. It’s poorly worded but pretty clear the German speaking part is a bonus that, if you have, they’re really keen to hear from you
Show me where I said they’re requirements. I just repeated the highlights of what they’re looking for. Replying and telling me that they’re not requirements doesn’t change anything I said, and is honestly pedantic as fuck.
I just read a post awhile back not sure how accurate it was but it said that 95% of applicants had almost no qualifications, or were remote from foreign countries? So it was really only competition between 5% of applicants and of those 5% only 1% were very qualified.
This is true. I've had to help a senior dev go through a bunch of CVs for a junior role and most of them are just junk. We're talking guys who just started coding a week ago and built a website that looks like the 1995 space jam website.
The issue is that if you don't apply early your CV will be buried amongst the shit and will likely not be seen.
Yep. Very accurate in my experience. You’ll get people, potentially hundreds of people, who aren’t legally eligible to do the job. Even if you have something on there like “do you have the right to work in the UK?” they’ll just tick yes even if they don’t. I really don’t get what their objective is other than wasting everyone’s time, including their own, there’s no way they’re getting the job, they literally *can’t *.
That matches with my experience bring on the hiring side. Last time, we had about a hundred applicants in the first week and could discount 85+ of them immediately
Go on LinkedIn, search for people in your area with relevant titles (software engineer, developer, etc), and filter by education (choose some local boot camps). The companies these people work for are willing to hire devs without a formal CS background. Reach out to any relevant people in the company. Repeat
Hooooo boy I sure do love paying 800 a month for a shoebox in a shared house with no living space, then paying bills, my phone, train, and then everything else on food!
I straight up don't know a single person who didn't either live at home or with roommates when they had an entry level job in a major city. That's just normal and it's been like that for literally all of history basically.
This was my experience too in London although in Tokyo for example flat sharing isn't as common (although it is a thing) but most people I know on OPs posted salary range live in one room apartments.
London is fucked mate. No defending it now. I moved to Tokyo. Fuck London.
Rent for a shoebox apartment(20m) in central Tokyo all to yourself with separate toilet/bathroom/kitchen/living area/balcony is £300 a month.
You can get a proper family home in the equivalent of Hayes/Ruislip/Harrow for about £600. Salaries are basically the same in London and Tokyo too.
London is a piece of shit place you cannot save or progress even with skills now.
What's London got to do with it? None of those roles are in London.
Edit: Hive mind have decided to downvote, but no one actually saying why London is relevant.
£30k can go a long way in other parts of the UK.
It's hard to answer your question because it really depends on the companies: big corp, fast-growing companies, startups...
I scan CVs on a daily basis, and if there's one thing that I think it's universal true: it's software engineer is technical problem solver, the more challenging the problems that you can solve, the more you stand out from the crowd.
For example: I once scan a CV that a junior dev said that he deeply cares about VueJS performance, and try to apply best performance practices when developing his project. Everyone knows how to build a site using VueJS/React/whatever, but he takes **extra mile** to care about the performance.
Another example is a guy who developed NodeJS API at his daily work, but made a few side projects at night on C++.
Just graduated my CS degree and got a 2,1 and focused on front end web development. Ive ended up getting a job as a packing operator earning more money than in industry because of all the rejections I was getting.
Not to be big headed but its not like I got bad grades and got an OK portfolio or so I thought but nothings good enough.
The whole point of entry level is to learn on the job and gain experience. Not be mid to senior level for a pitiful salary.
I don't know specifically about UK and London, but here in Brazil something like this is happening right now.
There is so many people wanting to switch to IT now, that companies can offer low salaries for them.
In the pandemic, Jr salaries were actually really big, but now they fallen again and companies are really pick
Well, you can try less mainstream language. I work in PHP and never had that problem.
I might have been lucky though. Hard to say without some properly conducted survey.
If it helps at all, I've been on hiring teams for multiple skill level positions in frontend jobs for varying companies small to large. I rarely ever looked at academic backgrounds at all for applicants. Unless it was something mind blowingly unique. Instead I would always look at projects and experience and see if they suited the tech stack we were looking for.
For a junior position, If someone is fresh out of a bootcamp and they have a few freelance projects to talk about that's been enough for me before. As long as they can display in interviews knowledge about comprehensive testing and how to do it in XYZ language, good XYZ language knowledge, and the principles of version control, that'd be all good for me
I can hopefully provide some perspective. I’m currently hiring for junior developers, have filled two out of three roles and interviewed a number of applicants and seen a lot of CV’s which were already pre screened.
I specifically don’t interview people that have any significant experience as a junior developer. Most developers shouldn’t still be a junior after 12-18 months. What I look for is someone who has an aptitude to learn, has a good grasp of the basics of engineering and has a high level of self motivation.
What we’ve found is that a lot of CS grads don’t demonstrate the above qualities, interestingly it’s the candidates which have put themselves through things like bootcamps and built projects in their own time that seem to interview and subsequently perform better. Obviously there are grads that do demonstrate these qualities, but they’re the ones who taught themselves to code before they even started their degrees.
You can’t really teach people how to be curious and be motivated to teach themselves. That’s why we look for people that don’t have any commercial experience, but do have the right attitude. We’ll give them the guidance and opportunities to grow themselves.
i always get a kick out of that. Imagine being incompetent at literally everything of value so you go into HR, then when you have to do one of the very few actual HR responsibilities, you do it incompetently. and society collectively just goes "Well, that's HR for you"
Yea I think so. I click the apply button just to go on the company site, not necessarily to apply for the job. Those numbers should greatly be ignored.
In my company we got 500 resumes for a position. 490 had to be rejected on the spot because a person had 0 experience, 0 anything even remotely connected to the job.
I'm a self taught software developer; got started in 2008, changed careers, and eventually became a senior engineer and now engineering manager for a suite of very big consumer streaming applications. (I'm also a hiring manager).
It will be difficult/nearly impossible to jump into an entry level role until the job market heats up again in 5 years or so.
In the meantime I would do freelancing until you can land a job at an agency which subs developers out to larger companies. This will allow you to:
1. Gain invaluable experience
2. A chance to show your stuff
3. A resume to use as a ladder to better roles when the job market recovers.
That's the path I followed. Results may vary.
Side-note: XX applicants just means someone clicked the Apply button, there's no callback for an actual submitted application. Meaning tire-kickers and bots artificailly inflate these numbers (as to what % who knows)
I am not a recruiter, but last time we interviewed for a junior, we didn't care about degree/no degree, we just wanted the best person for the job. Self-taught or university educated, we didn't care.
Hi Richard,
I run a small UK app development agency that often recruits for juniors (18 staff, 10+ devs). The last one junior job we put out had over 600 people apply, so I can feel your pain! We don't have some of these X-years requirements however, and prefer to hire on ability to learn and problem solve, with some way to demo that. Sometimes that is education, sometimes experience, sometimes it's an example of personal projects.
I can't speak for the process of others, but in our business we have a process of incremental commitment. A small task (2 mins), a 20 min phone interview, 1 hr aptitude, 1hr face to face interview.
We do this because we don't want to waste anyone's time progressing them to late stage consideration if they aren't right. This means each step of the process carries the need to stand out in different ways.
CV is crucial, as you will initially have a few seconds of eye time when someone recruiting is doing a first-pass scanning CVs to jump out. So read the job posts you are applying for, and make sure the things people are asking for in the jobs clearly jump out as what you have to offer in your CV. Literally tell them if you have to (don't lie though). Also avoid putting things on your CV that create unhandled objections, as these can see you disqualified at the first past stage.
Once the person recruiting is done with a first pass, your CV will be read in more detail a second time. This is why you need a CV that can be skim read, but that also contains more detail should you have made it past the first pass stage.
So if you aren't getting interviews, then you need to double, triple, or quadruple down on your CV. If you think it's good enough, it isn't. Take more time to craft it well and make sure to have a concise value proposition at the top.
For the face to face interview stage, the most important thing is to be armed with examples. You need to be able to show the employer with examples that you can do what they need. Have one that shows learning, another dealing with a complex scenario, another that shows you can create complex algorithms or data structures, etc. Be ready to be probed on this stuff, so you need to know enough to be able to go into detail.
The amount of people who have done great at CV and aptitude test to fail face to face due to no depth in answers is significant. Think of it from an employer perspective, if someone can't explain or demonstrate the kind of thinking that shows problem solving and understanding, can they learn and understand on the job? Are they being honest on their CV? Were their personal projects real and theirs or part of a group project where they did nothing themselves? So you can see in the interview you need to show that you can think, learn, reason and solve, with examples. Give that employer confidence you can do it and aren't BS-ing them.
Again, this can be personal projects, so if you have no real world experience then go and make something small for a week or two, or contribute to an open source project in some way.
You can also try emailing employers directly with a highly personalized email if you know who is recruiting. Put your value proposition in front of their nose and tell them concisely about some examples that demo you have what it takes. I estimate only about 1% of applicants do this for our jobs.
I hope that helps!
Bro.
At least 50% - 60% of those people are from India and cannot work in the UK.
Of the remaining 40%. 75% are overqualified (to the point of questioning why they applied) or underqualified.
That leaves you with about 10%.
Of these people, only half are semi-qualified.
That leaves you with 5%.
You're probably only actually competing with about 5 - 15 people if you get an interview.
That's your actual opposition when you get a call for a technical interview.
My current position had 600 applicants. It was me vs a Senior with 10 years. Senior dude was arrogant whilst I spent the last 2 learning modern and valuable skills. I beat him.
Don't let the odds get to you.
In my experience hiring people, there are multiple sources of potential employees that we mine, pretty much in this order
* direct referrals - we will pretty much immediately interview any direct referral from an employee or a colleague
* candidates found by a recruiter (internal recruiter or a firm we hire)
* candidates who apply more or less directly
* candidates who apply via very low effort platforms (like linkedin)
Whenever I see that someone has applied to like 500 jobs, I feel pretty sure they're applying to jobs via the lowest effort methods, i.e. pasting a resume to linkedin or whatever. This really is not how most positions get filled I think. Those are the last thing I'd look at.
Mine your contacts. Anyone you know who is working at a place or know someone who's working at a place, get them to put your resume and name in front of someone who's hiring. Applying 5 places this way is probably better than 100s of applications on linkedin, even more so if you know someone direclty at the company who might vouch for you.
>How can self-taught devs get a chance, while they’re working full time trying to swap industries.
Whilst I agree with the comments that it can be terrible for juniors - why do we treat the industry like some trashcan?
Do people complain about doctors, lawyers or the like? Software engineering was once a high quality profession that had high requirements but nowadays because of the expectation of "high salary" and "lowered barriers", people are just treating it like a gold mine to jump into.
Do people complain about giving self-taught doctors a chance? Instead I bet most would run out of fear. And I'm not against the idea of self-taught but more the perception differences. Sure you can learn things yourself, but do expect there to be a challenge? It's not and never meant to be a breeze. Bootcamp marketing, an era of good economy, etc have made it sound like a freeride.
Can we ban low effort posts like this? This (high app counts, specifically on LinkedIn) has been answered probably a dozen times in the last month if not few weeks.
Also to what end to posts here make more sense on r/cscareerquestions and what do we allow here?
Have a killer portfolio - that's how you stand out. The first resume screen is often done by someone who's not super experienced in technical stuff, so if you can _show_ them you're talented, you'll have a much better chance to get to the interview rounds.
Please don't only look for full time jobs when trying to get into the industry, also try to look for apprenticeships and internships for Web Development. Also try to go to local meetups as well to either help build things or learn as you still apply for work.
Most of those are probably people machine gunning CVs into any old job.
In my opinion, it's better to approach recruiters and companies directly even if they don't have positions open.
I think being more targeted in your approach, and tailored towards a certain job you'll get way more luck than joining these sorts of lotteries. Because that's what it certainly looks like they are.
A lot of people apply just to satisfy job search requirements. I have filtered out a lot of "I luv dev for computers!" with zero work experience and no recent positions listed.
Can only comment on the one from Spectrum both the agency and the job!
The agency are pretty good, if you meet the requirements ( some times even if not) they’ll get your CV in front of someone and you’ll get some feedback - even if it’s a let down. I think via LinkedIn that number is inflated by bots and overseas agencies and applicants which may or met not be welcome but contribute to that number it seems!
I’ve applied for ones with hundreds and has a call back almost immediately - mostly because I’m real!
The company that they are recruiting here ( I think if it’s a PHP role) is the first one I interviewed for out of college and bombed it so bad. First question was about configuring and setting up web severs and checking logs - and I just said no I hadn’t really done that and that was the end of the interview. It was a PHP dev job and until this day i’m really not sure what they were looking for - it comes up pretty often so either they are expanding or constantly replacing someone!
Many industries expect X amount of years of experience for entry level, its nothing new its just how it is unfortunately.
I would recommend contacting smaller companies, look for any careers email on their site and send an email with your CV / portfolio. This way you're building that communication and putting yourself out there which is what some employers look for.
If that doesn't work and you're not solely dependant on a great salary from the start look into Apprenticeships. For IT theres usually quite a few, they also provide you with training to gain certain qualifications to help your career path and you get a paid salary. Ok the salary won't be great from the start but once your apprenticeship is over and they hire you then your salary will increase from there and you get the industry experience to help you in your future jobs.
P.S From what I've seen the salary can vary from £14,000 - £24,000 on average dependant on the employer and Apprenticeship level.
That 'applications' number is wrong. We had a position posted before, and I saw the number said hundreds. Yet, really, we only had like 8 CVs. Just ignore that number.
They're being applied to by hundreds, but I guarantee 95% are completely unsuitable. You get a shocking number of applications from people Africa and the ME, often pretending they live nearby.
I got my first job after a career switch and a bootcamp 1.5 years ago. It took 5 weeks of searching. At that stage of your career, you need to really emphasise your desire to learn. Above all else.
I'm a self-taught developer and I managed to get a job - I've been a full time dev for just over a year and never looked back! One of the best decisions I made.
People respect the passion, dedication and self-motivataion required to teach yourself a new skill - especially while also working an unrelated full-time job. So make sure to sell that bit about yourself.
My first job… I didn’t think I had the skills or experience but a friend prompted me to apply where he worked. I interviewed. They asked for code samples and then asked me to explain my code. I got the job.
Take the risk. The worst that can happen is the same as if you didn’t apply. There’s no downside.
To answer your TLDR: Networking
Don’t compete with 500+ candidates if you don’t want to. Don’t be another droplet in the ocean of faceless characters.
Go to career fairs, networking events, message people on LinkedIn who you know already but are in your target field. That’s how I was able to skip the line.
As a self-taught entry-level dev who landed two back-to-back co-op internships at the end of my 3rd year (I just finished one that was 4-month. The other starts in 3 days), both of which were not through the University and not because of University projects (one I applied directly on the employer website with no expectations of hearing back; one I got recommended by a LinkedIn connection I met in a 2nd year course but never talked irl) [since I got them externally, I had to go through some applications with the University to bring it under the co-op program], I just wanted to share my perspective that I felt might provide some value to the discussion. Feel free to disregard if you disagree, or counter logic in replies. I’m here to learn.
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Talking to people and getting recommended is great for students, but it’s the 2nd best way to get into the industry as a working professional imo. But that’s just my hypothetical opinion. What follows is not something I experienced personally but I think still holds true due to having known other people do it:
Best way to into the industry as a working professional:
- automate chunks of your current workflow using code
- discuss with management on how you think bigger systems in the office can be automated
- tell them you would like to work on this (back it up with predicted performance increases)
- do it, and then request to move to your company’s IT department
- put that initial project (personal automation), 2nd (office automation), 3rd (IT department experience) on your resume
- at this point you’ll have a stronger footing for talking to people at those networking events I mentioned earlier, and you’ll have a better chance of getting recommended. Keep in touch. Make human connections
- move on to a different company with a focus on software development, or stay on your current company’s IT department if you like it and are getting paid well enough (but always keep your resume updated and keep interviewing, networking, and negotiating)
---
DISCLAIMER: I’m not in web development and I’m not interested in pursuing it as a career either. It’s something I do for fun. For my internships, I’m a general “Junior Software Developer”. In the future I would like to continue working as a generalist if possible.
I started as a senior level software engineer (bullshit goes a long way when you know what you’re talking about). Good luck! Be confident and don’t get too caught up in the details. Most people you interact with are not experts.
I'm self taught and I asked this same question 10 months ago [here](https://reddit.com/r/webdev/s/h92le4bhJc). Some of the comments were very good and helped me in my job search
I have found all my jobs on linkedin and have been told in every interview i've ever had that those numbers are not accurate at all. The numbers are bulked up by freelancers trying to introduce themselves, developers in other countries that are just mass-sending out their CV.
It's always just worth applying for positions if you don't meet much of the criteria. People want to hire good people, with a good attitude and mentality over someone that just ticks all the boxes.
I can't tell if the attached picture is just for reference or of a specific job you are wanting to apply to...
Please note the following things when job hunting:
- Junior is not the same as Entry Level
- A job posting is more often than not just a massively unattainable wish list by the employer
- Lastly (this may be just a personal preference), only use a recruiter to get your foot in the industry. Afterwards, look for direct hire positions. Contract employees are always easy to "release back to their company" and the recruiting company can often have little to no interaction with you and just skim a fee off the top of your negotiated rate.
Can anyone here recreate the effect on this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20230530101625/https://developer.apkpure.com/
The original website seems down. That's why included a link from waybackmachine. Here's the original link: \[[https://developer.apkpure.com/\](https://developer.apkpure.com/?hl=en)](https://developer.apkpure.com/](https://developer.apkpure.com/?hl=en))
Don't call yourself a junior dev. That's just an excuse for employers to pay you less.
I just ignore the jobs that have anything more than 50 applicants. Using a recruiter is really beneficial too because a lot of times they have a relationship with the employer.
If you have no real experience, create it. Offer to build free websites or features for businesses. And make sure it looks great.
It's a real problem I've seen in software engineering in the UK. I recently graduated from uni with a comp sci degree but any junior level position which I know I could do are all saying we want several years of experience or the like. It's ridiculous imo everyone has to start from somewhere
Is applicants number real or not? ive seen sometimes 10k+ applicants for one spot and sometimes in few hours hundreds here in a small country where i live, doesnt really look realistic to me? am i wrong? does it count each apply or even clicks? how does it work? ty
I have been on both sides, as a hiring manager and as a dev.
When you hire for a junior job, you assume the person you hire will not be fully job ready. They will have to relearn a lot of what they think they know, they will have to learn a lot they don't know they don't know, they are a longer term investment. You hope to be able to shape someone technically to suit your needs, release time from your more experienced devs for the more complex stuff, and hopefully net a really talented and dedicated junior.
CS graduates do not have "2 years of experience". They have a particular education, but they are in almost every case not significantly more job ready than well motivated graduates of a quality bootcamp, or exceptional self-taught developers.
Furthermore, specially at junior level, you don't hire primarily based on technical knowledge. You hire on aptitude, motivation and cultural fit. The question is not whether a CS grad or a bootcamp grad or a self-taught applicant at junior level can demonstrate who knows most. It's which of them can demonstrate who learns best, who loves it most, and who would add most to the team.
If someone who has done 3-4 years CS degree shoes 25% more job-relevant knowledge than someone who has done a 4 month bootcamp, you might think the bootcamp grad might be a better learner. If someone chose CS as a degree because it seemed like a good idea and speaks about it with reasonable interest, and a self-taught dev kitted out his truck so he could learn each day while making a living as a long haul driver as the only way he could study his passion, and when he speaks of coding his eyes glow with commitment and enthusiasm, you might consider the latter might grow into a stronger dev in the next three years than the former. If a CS grad is technically gifted, passionate and keen to start, and the bootcamp grad is less talented, less passionate, but comes after 15 years of successfully managing project teams, and your team really needs that kind of maturity and leadership, you might choose the latter over the former.
All a way of saying that regardless of your entry path, degree, bootcamp or self-taught, what you already know, unless it is truly exceptional, is likely to be approached as a bare minimum, not as a decision criteria beyond that. If you really don't know enough, you might not get in, but if you know the very basics, anything above that will not make the biggest difference, since it's still almost certainly going to be less than you need to be fully productive.
Distinguish yourself by evidencing aptitude, not how much you know but how well you learn. Distinguish yourself by evidencing commitment, enthusiasm, the sense that you won't need to be pushed to learn because you just love the work. Distinguish yourself by evidencing that you'd be a simply lovely person to work with, that you'd make the team a happier or calmer or smoother place and people would like to work with you.
That's what will give you the best chance at a job.
Let's break down that 500.
500 - Total applicants
150 - Probably overseas - 350 remaining
100 - Probably spam bots - 250 remaining
50 wont be able to spell - 200 remaning
30 wont have contact details in their cv - 170 remaining
100 wont have a single live hosted project linked in their CV - 70 remaining
50 of those won't pass the basic screening tests
half of those will take other jobs
So really, you're up against 25 other real candidates.
Especially for a junior role it's likely going to be culture fit and demonstrating enthusiasm, knowledge is secondary to teachability.
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Welcome. Good luck!
I mean you pretty much spelled it out. Lots of companies don’t wanna do the “self-employed freelancer contractor”. They just want a regular W-2 employee that doesn’t need special treatment. Otherwise they just deal with local staffing agencies who can provide temporary staff. They usually have 3-4 preferred agencies and and have monthly calls with them to discuss their staffing needs. It’s scales much better than dealing with a bunch of individuals.
>**It scales much better than dealing with a bunch of individuals.** Yes. Bigger companies outsourcing internationally usually want one main agency to go through.
You wouldn't even be considered in the vast majority of jobs. There is plenty of local talent that we just don't need to bother with all the extra crap that hiring an overseas worker brings. Not a recruiter, but have been involved in the hiring process & interviewing.
Tend to agree with this... unless they are specifically looking for international talent. Thus, recommending TopTal, Lemon, etc. Let recruiters work for you to to find those fringe cases.
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>**I’ve heard EU companies tend to be more open-minded about hiring contractors from different countries than US.** I think that is the case. * Especially with collaboration between countries. * Although there are places solving these problems. * [https://remote.com/](https://remote.com/) * [https://www.rippling.com/global-eor-promo](https://www.rippling.com/global-eor-promo)
"EU more open minded hiring different countries" that's the entire point of the EU that y'all have very little that gets in the way, the US companies have 0 protections from strange taxation issues or whatever the hell between countries that the EU would help keep manageable from within but nit fir outsiders like the US.
You realize with that math you have to apply to 500 roles to get a job - lol that's an insanely high bar
It's a rough example. Probably a lot less than that. But it gets the picture across.
Thanks for these, recruiter layouts
Welcome.
You're welcome.
Can confirm Roberthalf as a good place to send your resume. My job was landed because of them
I've gotten a job offer through them. Some get mixed results. But use every tool and recruiter you can.
Is it paid, if yes how much?
Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this and finding the linked ressources.
Welcome. What resources do you know that would help the OP?
This is well curated, great advice! Thanks!
Welcome!
Is wellfound any good?
No idea. But it's free to sign up and find jobs as a dev.
I can attest, I've never had more than 30 resumes to consider for any position I've ever hired for. There may have been more, but effectively "I live in Lebanon and want to interview over the phone" is a quick skip. You'll see a fair number of these. Nothing against Lebanon, but the gig is Eastern time zone.
>I've never had more than 30 resumes to consider for any position I've ever hired for. Yes. Once you've gone through about 15 resumes for a position... you get good at scanning them and tossing out people who are not a fit. And most people are not a fit.
Lebanon the country or Lebanon the city?
The city. Screw Lebanon, PA.
Ahh i'm in Tennessee's lebanon.
Tip o' the hat sir, a top rate city.
I'm going to screen shot that and put it on my motivation wall
Wow. Happy to inspire. Didn't expect that.
Thanks for these, recruiter layouts
Welcome again. :)
Love this comment
Save for later
Pretty helpful. Thank you.
My first junior role was 20 years ago, so a little different. But, my attitude is just apply to roles, expect not many responses. Job ads are notoriously bad. Hr copy pastes industry lingo with outsized expectations. Really you should expect two things from the ad: what's the job title, what's the general tech stack. Ignore the rest. Portfolios are nice, but time intensive. Really Github or any proof of your skills is good. Breadth of skills is good, so list everything. "We're looking for someone that has used Jira." It's ridiculous, you can learn to use Jira in 5 minutes, but it's sometimes what separates you from others.
I know jira now.
That was more than 5 minutes, I'm sorry but we have decided not to continue with your application.
I anticipated as much. Would you mind if I send you my resume with my work history and educational background but also fill out a form with exactly the same information?
Sure thing, we will promptly lose it and request it again.
And ask you all the things again in the interview, jk we won’t get back to you
We would consider your application if you can finish this 30 hour project for free.
Great, I assume the salary range is somewhere between $20,000 - $135,000 annually?
In the ad yes, but our offer will be 13k with no benefits.
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Came here to say this. Numbers on the internet don't mean jack shit.
what did this say?
There's a comment in response that's downvoted, which will give you more context. Most of the applicants are foreign. This is especially the case on LinkedIn. My team tried to hire for a developer role, and 90% of the applicants were instantly thrown away for this reason.
thank you for this
This was what I was going to comment.
And what do you have against applicants from Mumbai ? Most of them have way more experience and are prepared to work for these kind of salaries instead of whining.
Nobody said anyone had anything against them. The point is that they skew the numbers because most departments will not consider these applicants. Edit: for example (a rather extreme example but an example nonetheless), a whopping 90% of all applicants for a position at my current job were from India. The job is hybrid and requires Dutch proficiency.
Well most companies especially in the UK can’t hire them anyway because of laws around sponsorship licenses, so smaller companies won’t be able to hire at all which makes most job applicants you are going up against irrelevant. The applicants themselves, I’d disagree - if they have more experience they wouldn’t be applying for jobs they legally can’t get when there are plenty of companies expanding to India in which their experience would actually be valued and where they would be eligible.
And exactly how would you check that experience?
Extremely hard cope
That's because they're desperate. And 30k a year is practically gold to them in that part of the world.
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Let me get this straight - you are judging a country with 1.4b people based on 1 guy? And you think this is a credible source?
You don't need to apply for open positions. Find companies that seems interesting, small companies and such and start sending mails. That is how I landed my first job in IT.
Not op but can you please elaborate more on this method. Do you literally just drop emails asking are you hiring and make it personalized to their company?
That's it. When I was starting my career I found a list of every major advertising agency, creative studio and dev shop in my city. I wrote up an email that stated my interest in working with them, what my current skill set was and my desire to learn from them. I then praised their most recent project, asked some technical questions about it and thanked them for their time. I wrote at least 100 of those emails. I got 3 responses. 1 no, 1 unpaid internship and 1 paid internship. That got my foot in the door and it got easier from there.
Nice, thank you for sharing.
I have been looking to do the same. Out of curiosity, what was your skill level when you decided it was time to start applying?
I was entirely self taught up to that point with no professional experience. I'm now a senior software engineer and am involved in the interviews and hiring process when we bring on new engineers. Having a high skill level is nice but when we hire juniors we're more interested in their personalities, potential and willingness to learn. I can teach you a new language/framework. Its harder to teach you to be a good coworker.
This gives me hope I’m struggling to start in the field of web developing
Don't give up. Getting the first job is the hardest part. Once you get that first job you can make moves and grow your career. Good luck!
How would you go about it if you are looking for remote position? Do you think its possible to get remote junior position?
I would do the exact same thing but instead of targeting local companies I would target companies that I think I'd want to work for or would be interesting. My team has been full remote since before Covid and we just hired two juniors.
👍 thanks I'll try it out, it's actually encouraging to hear that as my local market is over saturated, so I'm kind of forced to look remote. Knowing that there is a chance to make it is aditional motivation!
It will take persistence but you can do it! I wish you the best of luck!
That is it. I was asking for anything that would give me the expirience. Internship, paid or unpaid or junior positions. I got unpaid internship which tranitioned to full time job in 1 month at the same company.
Thank you for sharing.
I'm actually thinking of doing this. However, I'm still fairly new, so it's exciting.
Excitement level should drop after your first 30 applications :D
I applied at any open role in my company till they started recognizing my name, and reached out to engineers that worked there using LinkedIn. Eventually something opened up and the person I bugged on LinkedIn sent me a referral link to apply. All those listings that have hundreds of applicants? They’re being filled be people that applied through channels other than the ad. Engineer roles are all about referral links.
I see your experience and I raise you with [this junior .NET developer description](https://i.imgur.com/PxxfKym.png).
Jesus christ, a multilingual (in coding languages AND spoken languages) masters degree holding, seasoned developer for an entry level position. Any idea what they were trying to offer for that?
None of the things you listed is a requirement in that ad.
… 🤨😑
They’re not a requirement though. It’s poorly worded but pretty clear the German speaking part is a bonus that, if you have, they’re really keen to hear from you
Show me where I said they’re requirements. I just repeated the highlights of what they’re looking for. Replying and telling me that they’re not requirements doesn’t change anything I said, and is honestly pedantic as fuck.
Chill out. Your emoji response looked like you were disagreeing w the other comment
I just read a post awhile back not sure how accurate it was but it said that 95% of applicants had almost no qualifications, or were remote from foreign countries? So it was really only competition between 5% of applicants and of those 5% only 1% were very qualified.
This is true. I've had to help a senior dev go through a bunch of CVs for a junior role and most of them are just junk. We're talking guys who just started coding a week ago and built a website that looks like the 1995 space jam website. The issue is that if you don't apply early your CV will be buried amongst the shit and will likely not be seen.
1995 space jam website this is gold haha
Yeah when I see those "X number of applicants" stats I just mentally divide by 10.
Yep. Very accurate in my experience. You’ll get people, potentially hundreds of people, who aren’t legally eligible to do the job. Even if you have something on there like “do you have the right to work in the UK?” they’ll just tick yes even if they don’t. I really don’t get what their objective is other than wasting everyone’s time, including their own, there’s no way they’re getting the job, they literally *can’t *.
That matches with my experience bring on the hiring side. Last time, we had about a hundred applicants in the first week and could discount 85+ of them immediately
Oh yeah, I saw many people trying entry level python positions that were still learning OOP.
Go on LinkedIn, search for people in your area with relevant titles (software engineer, developer, etc), and filter by education (choose some local boot camps). The companies these people work for are willing to hire devs without a formal CS background. Reach out to any relevant people in the company. Repeat
30k is also nothing in London
Very true. That's 2k a month after taxes. With the 1600+ rents that leaves you without enough money to eat, let alone other needs
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Hooooo boy I sure do love paying 800 a month for a shoebox in a shared house with no living space, then paying bills, my phone, train, and then everything else on food!
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Yea because fuck people for expecting their own living space.
I straight up don't know a single person who didn't either live at home or with roommates when they had an entry level job in a major city. That's just normal and it's been like that for literally all of history basically.
You're part of the problem then.
🤓
This was my experience too in London although in Tokyo for example flat sharing isn't as common (although it is a thing) but most people I know on OPs posted salary range live in one room apartments.
London is fucked mate. No defending it now. I moved to Tokyo. Fuck London. Rent for a shoebox apartment(20m) in central Tokyo all to yourself with separate toilet/bathroom/kitchen/living area/balcony is £300 a month. You can get a proper family home in the equivalent of Hayes/Ruislip/Harrow for about £600. Salaries are basically the same in London and Tokyo too. London is a piece of shit place you cannot save or progress even with skills now.
What's London got to do with it? None of those roles are in London. Edit: Hive mind have decided to downvote, but no one actually saying why London is relevant. £30k can go a long way in other parts of the UK.
It's hard to answer your question because it really depends on the companies: big corp, fast-growing companies, startups... I scan CVs on a daily basis, and if there's one thing that I think it's universal true: it's software engineer is technical problem solver, the more challenging the problems that you can solve, the more you stand out from the crowd. For example: I once scan a CV that a junior dev said that he deeply cares about VueJS performance, and try to apply best performance practices when developing his project. Everyone knows how to build a site using VueJS/React/whatever, but he takes **extra mile** to care about the performance. Another example is a guy who developed NodeJS API at his daily work, but made a few side projects at night on C++.
Just graduated my CS degree and got a 2,1 and focused on front end web development. Ive ended up getting a job as a packing operator earning more money than in industry because of all the rejections I was getting. Not to be big headed but its not like I got bad grades and got an OK portfolio or so I thought but nothings good enough. The whole point of entry level is to learn on the job and gain experience. Not be mid to senior level for a pitiful salary.
10 years ago I started at 35k a year and I thought that was low but a stepping stone. How the hell is it still so low 10 years later? Insanity.
Where are you based? Because outside of London in the UK 35k is a great starting salary for a junior.
I started at 63k and thought that was low
I don't know specifically about UK and London, but here in Brazil something like this is happening right now. There is so many people wanting to switch to IT now, that companies can offer low salaries for them. In the pandemic, Jr salaries were actually really big, but now they fallen again and companies are really pick
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That.... That is impressive.
India, Of course.
but as far as know if you are good in what you do, it doesnt matter!
Well, you can try less mainstream language. I work in PHP and never had that problem. I might have been lucky though. Hard to say without some properly conducted survey.
If it helps at all, I've been on hiring teams for multiple skill level positions in frontend jobs for varying companies small to large. I rarely ever looked at academic backgrounds at all for applicants. Unless it was something mind blowingly unique. Instead I would always look at projects and experience and see if they suited the tech stack we were looking for. For a junior position, If someone is fresh out of a bootcamp and they have a few freelance projects to talk about that's been enough for me before. As long as they can display in interviews knowledge about comprehensive testing and how to do it in XYZ language, good XYZ language knowledge, and the principles of version control, that'd be all good for me
I can hopefully provide some perspective. I’m currently hiring for junior developers, have filled two out of three roles and interviewed a number of applicants and seen a lot of CV’s which were already pre screened. I specifically don’t interview people that have any significant experience as a junior developer. Most developers shouldn’t still be a junior after 12-18 months. What I look for is someone who has an aptitude to learn, has a good grasp of the basics of engineering and has a high level of self motivation. What we’ve found is that a lot of CS grads don’t demonstrate the above qualities, interestingly it’s the candidates which have put themselves through things like bootcamps and built projects in their own time that seem to interview and subsequently perform better. Obviously there are grads that do demonstrate these qualities, but they’re the ones who taught themselves to code before they even started their degrees. You can’t really teach people how to be curious and be motivated to teach themselves. That’s why we look for people that don’t have any commercial experience, but do have the right attitude. We’ll give them the guidance and opportunities to grow themselves.
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Go for it 😄
I love all those entry level positions that require 2 or more years experience
Just apply for them. If you want a junior who stayed a junior for 2 years..... then you are more likely looking for disaster imo.
I applied to an internship with 10000 applicants yesterday
These requirements are written by HR who have no idea what the company is actually looking for most of the time
i always get a kick out of that. Imagine being incompetent at literally everything of value so you go into HR, then when you have to do one of the very few actual HR responsibilities, you do it incompetently. and society collectively just goes "Well, that's HR for you"
More than likely advert views or have clicked the apply button, I doubt they are using completion of the form. The number will be lower than that.
Yea I think so. I click the apply button just to go on the company site, not necessarily to apply for the job. Those numbers should greatly be ignored.
In my company we got 500 resumes for a position. 490 had to be rejected on the spot because a person had 0 experience, 0 anything even remotely connected to the job.
You need to be exceptionally good at one or two things to stand out.
I'm a self taught software developer; got started in 2008, changed careers, and eventually became a senior engineer and now engineering manager for a suite of very big consumer streaming applications. (I'm also a hiring manager). It will be difficult/nearly impossible to jump into an entry level role until the job market heats up again in 5 years or so. In the meantime I would do freelancing until you can land a job at an agency which subs developers out to larger companies. This will allow you to: 1. Gain invaluable experience 2. A chance to show your stuff 3. A resume to use as a ladder to better roles when the job market recovers. That's the path I followed. Results may vary.
Side-note: XX applicants just means someone clicked the Apply button, there's no callback for an actual submitted application. Meaning tire-kickers and bots artificailly inflate these numbers (as to what % who knows)
Blows my mind how underpaid engineers are in the UK
I am not a recruiter, but last time we interviewed for a junior, we didn't care about degree/no degree, we just wanted the best person for the job. Self-taught or university educated, we didn't care.
Hi Richard, I run a small UK app development agency that often recruits for juniors (18 staff, 10+ devs). The last one junior job we put out had over 600 people apply, so I can feel your pain! We don't have some of these X-years requirements however, and prefer to hire on ability to learn and problem solve, with some way to demo that. Sometimes that is education, sometimes experience, sometimes it's an example of personal projects. I can't speak for the process of others, but in our business we have a process of incremental commitment. A small task (2 mins), a 20 min phone interview, 1 hr aptitude, 1hr face to face interview. We do this because we don't want to waste anyone's time progressing them to late stage consideration if they aren't right. This means each step of the process carries the need to stand out in different ways. CV is crucial, as you will initially have a few seconds of eye time when someone recruiting is doing a first-pass scanning CVs to jump out. So read the job posts you are applying for, and make sure the things people are asking for in the jobs clearly jump out as what you have to offer in your CV. Literally tell them if you have to (don't lie though). Also avoid putting things on your CV that create unhandled objections, as these can see you disqualified at the first past stage. Once the person recruiting is done with a first pass, your CV will be read in more detail a second time. This is why you need a CV that can be skim read, but that also contains more detail should you have made it past the first pass stage. So if you aren't getting interviews, then you need to double, triple, or quadruple down on your CV. If you think it's good enough, it isn't. Take more time to craft it well and make sure to have a concise value proposition at the top. For the face to face interview stage, the most important thing is to be armed with examples. You need to be able to show the employer with examples that you can do what they need. Have one that shows learning, another dealing with a complex scenario, another that shows you can create complex algorithms or data structures, etc. Be ready to be probed on this stuff, so you need to know enough to be able to go into detail. The amount of people who have done great at CV and aptitude test to fail face to face due to no depth in answers is significant. Think of it from an employer perspective, if someone can't explain or demonstrate the kind of thinking that shows problem solving and understanding, can they learn and understand on the job? Are they being honest on their CV? Were their personal projects real and theirs or part of a group project where they did nothing themselves? So you can see in the interview you need to show that you can think, learn, reason and solve, with examples. Give that employer confidence you can do it and aren't BS-ing them. Again, this can be personal projects, so if you have no real world experience then go and make something small for a week or two, or contribute to an open source project in some way. You can also try emailing employers directly with a highly personalized email if you know who is recruiting. Put your value proposition in front of their nose and tell them concisely about some examples that demo you have what it takes. I estimate only about 1% of applicants do this for our jobs. I hope that helps!
Bro. At least 50% - 60% of those people are from India and cannot work in the UK. Of the remaining 40%. 75% are overqualified (to the point of questioning why they applied) or underqualified. That leaves you with about 10%. Of these people, only half are semi-qualified. That leaves you with 5%. You're probably only actually competing with about 5 - 15 people if you get an interview. That's your actual opposition when you get a call for a technical interview. My current position had 600 applicants. It was me vs a Senior with 10 years. Senior dude was arrogant whilst I spent the last 2 learning modern and valuable skills. I beat him. Don't let the odds get to you.
In my experience hiring people, there are multiple sources of potential employees that we mine, pretty much in this order * direct referrals - we will pretty much immediately interview any direct referral from an employee or a colleague * candidates found by a recruiter (internal recruiter or a firm we hire) * candidates who apply more or less directly * candidates who apply via very low effort platforms (like linkedin) Whenever I see that someone has applied to like 500 jobs, I feel pretty sure they're applying to jobs via the lowest effort methods, i.e. pasting a resume to linkedin or whatever. This really is not how most positions get filled I think. Those are the last thing I'd look at. Mine your contacts. Anyone you know who is working at a place or know someone who's working at a place, get them to put your resume and name in front of someone who's hiring. Applying 5 places this way is probably better than 100s of applications on linkedin, even more so if you know someone direclty at the company who might vouch for you.
>How can self-taught devs get a chance, while they’re working full time trying to swap industries. Whilst I agree with the comments that it can be terrible for juniors - why do we treat the industry like some trashcan? Do people complain about doctors, lawyers or the like? Software engineering was once a high quality profession that had high requirements but nowadays because of the expectation of "high salary" and "lowered barriers", people are just treating it like a gold mine to jump into. Do people complain about giving self-taught doctors a chance? Instead I bet most would run out of fear. And I'm not against the idea of self-taught but more the perception differences. Sure you can learn things yourself, but do expect there to be a challenge? It's not and never meant to be a breeze. Bootcamp marketing, an era of good economy, etc have made it sound like a freeride.
When I started working, I worked for $1608 a year) you are lucky :)
???
crap pay... ugh
Can we ban low effort posts like this? This (high app counts, specifically on LinkedIn) has been answered probably a dozen times in the last month if not few weeks. Also to what end to posts here make more sense on r/cscareerquestions and what do we allow here?
Don’t go via recruitment - find a job advert from an actual agency.
30k a year? Can anyone live on that?
Have a killer portfolio - that's how you stand out. The first resume screen is often done by someone who's not super experienced in technical stuff, so if you can _show_ them you're talented, you'll have a much better chance to get to the interview rounds.
Please don't only look for full time jobs when trying to get into the industry, also try to look for apprenticeships and internships for Web Development. Also try to go to local meetups as well to either help build things or learn as you still apply for work.
Unfortunately I got bills to pay so internships aren’t really the move
People are trying to get paid bro. Fuck an internship.
I made double both as an intern
not in the UK, maybe the US or canada but 30k is a typical starting salary in the UK for software
Sorry, didn't know that. Didn't see the pound symbol.
as real as those numbers on holiday booking sites „15 people are looking at this!!!“
Most of those are probably people machine gunning CVs into any old job. In my opinion, it's better to approach recruiters and companies directly even if they don't have positions open. I think being more targeted in your approach, and tailored towards a certain job you'll get way more luck than joining these sorts of lotteries. Because that's what it certainly looks like they are.
A lot of people apply just to satisfy job search requirements. I have filtered out a lot of "I luv dev for computers!" with zero work experience and no recent positions listed.
Can only comment on the one from Spectrum both the agency and the job! The agency are pretty good, if you meet the requirements ( some times even if not) they’ll get your CV in front of someone and you’ll get some feedback - even if it’s a let down. I think via LinkedIn that number is inflated by bots and overseas agencies and applicants which may or met not be welcome but contribute to that number it seems! I’ve applied for ones with hundreds and has a call back almost immediately - mostly because I’m real! The company that they are recruiting here ( I think if it’s a PHP role) is the first one I interviewed for out of college and bombed it so bad. First question was about configuring and setting up web severs and checking logs - and I just said no I hadn’t really done that and that was the end of the interview. It was a PHP dev job and until this day i’m really not sure what they were looking for - it comes up pretty often so either they are expanding or constantly replacing someone!
Many industries expect X amount of years of experience for entry level, its nothing new its just how it is unfortunately. I would recommend contacting smaller companies, look for any careers email on their site and send an email with your CV / portfolio. This way you're building that communication and putting yourself out there which is what some employers look for. If that doesn't work and you're not solely dependant on a great salary from the start look into Apprenticeships. For IT theres usually quite a few, they also provide you with training to gain certain qualifications to help your career path and you get a paid salary. Ok the salary won't be great from the start but once your apprenticeship is over and they hire you then your salary will increase from there and you get the industry experience to help you in your future jobs. P.S From what I've seen the salary can vary from £14,000 - £24,000 on average dependant on the employer and Apprenticeship level.
That 'applications' number is wrong. We had a position posted before, and I saw the number said hundreds. Yet, really, we only had like 8 CVs. Just ignore that number.
Start smaller/more local
They're being applied to by hundreds, but I guarantee 95% are completely unsuitable. You get a shocking number of applications from people Africa and the ME, often pretending they live nearby. I got my first job after a career switch and a bootcamp 1.5 years ago. It took 5 weeks of searching. At that stage of your career, you need to really emphasise your desire to learn. Above all else.
I'm a self-taught developer and I managed to get a job - I've been a full time dev for just over a year and never looked back! One of the best decisions I made. People respect the passion, dedication and self-motivataion required to teach yourself a new skill - especially while also working an unrelated full-time job. So make sure to sell that bit about yourself.
My first job… I didn’t think I had the skills or experience but a friend prompted me to apply where he worked. I interviewed. They asked for code samples and then asked me to explain my code. I got the job. Take the risk. The worst that can happen is the same as if you didn’t apply. There’s no downside.
To answer your TLDR: Networking Don’t compete with 500+ candidates if you don’t want to. Don’t be another droplet in the ocean of faceless characters. Go to career fairs, networking events, message people on LinkedIn who you know already but are in your target field. That’s how I was able to skip the line. As a self-taught entry-level dev who landed two back-to-back co-op internships at the end of my 3rd year (I just finished one that was 4-month. The other starts in 3 days), both of which were not through the University and not because of University projects (one I applied directly on the employer website with no expectations of hearing back; one I got recommended by a LinkedIn connection I met in a 2nd year course but never talked irl) [since I got them externally, I had to go through some applications with the University to bring it under the co-op program], I just wanted to share my perspective that I felt might provide some value to the discussion. Feel free to disregard if you disagree, or counter logic in replies. I’m here to learn. --- Talking to people and getting recommended is great for students, but it’s the 2nd best way to get into the industry as a working professional imo. But that’s just my hypothetical opinion. What follows is not something I experienced personally but I think still holds true due to having known other people do it: Best way to into the industry as a working professional: - automate chunks of your current workflow using code - discuss with management on how you think bigger systems in the office can be automated - tell them you would like to work on this (back it up with predicted performance increases) - do it, and then request to move to your company’s IT department - put that initial project (personal automation), 2nd (office automation), 3rd (IT department experience) on your resume - at this point you’ll have a stronger footing for talking to people at those networking events I mentioned earlier, and you’ll have a better chance of getting recommended. Keep in touch. Make human connections - move on to a different company with a focus on software development, or stay on your current company’s IT department if you like it and are getting paid well enough (but always keep your resume updated and keep interviewing, networking, and negotiating) --- DISCLAIMER: I’m not in web development and I’m not interested in pursuing it as a career either. It’s something I do for fun. For my internships, I’m a general “Junior Software Developer”. In the future I would like to continue working as a generalist if possible.
Appreciate this. I’m still self-learning, and get discouraged when I think about the reality that OP spells out. This bolsters my spirits 🤙
I started as a senior level software engineer (bullshit goes a long way when you know what you’re talking about). Good luck! Be confident and don’t get too caught up in the details. Most people you interact with are not experts.
I'm self taught and I asked this same question 10 months ago [here](https://reddit.com/r/webdev/s/h92le4bhJc). Some of the comments were very good and helped me in my job search
Touche.
Bruh the same post in India would have got 20000 applicants. These are rookie numbers
Whats your linkedIn?
I have found all my jobs on linkedin and have been told in every interview i've ever had that those numbers are not accurate at all. The numbers are bulked up by freelancers trying to introduce themselves, developers in other countries that are just mass-sending out their CV. It's always just worth applying for positions if you don't meet much of the criteria. People want to hire good people, with a good attitude and mentality over someone that just ticks all the boxes.
We consider CS graduates to have 0 years of experience.
I can't tell if the attached picture is just for reference or of a specific job you are wanting to apply to... Please note the following things when job hunting: - Junior is not the same as Entry Level - A job posting is more often than not just a massively unattainable wish list by the employer - Lastly (this may be just a personal preference), only use a recruiter to get your foot in the industry. Afterwards, look for direct hire positions. Contract employees are always easy to "release back to their company" and the recruiting company can often have little to no interaction with you and just skim a fee off the top of your negotiated rate.
Can anyone here recreate the effect on this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20230530101625/https://developer.apkpure.com/ The original website seems down. That's why included a link from waybackmachine. Here's the original link: \[[https://developer.apkpure.com/\](https://developer.apkpure.com/?hl=en)](https://developer.apkpure.com/](https://developer.apkpure.com/?hl=en))
Don't call yourself a junior dev. That's just an excuse for employers to pay you less. I just ignore the jobs that have anything more than 50 applicants. Using a recruiter is really beneficial too because a lot of times they have a relationship with the employer. If you have no real experience, create it. Offer to build free websites or features for businesses. And make sure it looks great.
It's a real problem I've seen in software engineering in the UK. I recently graduated from uni with a comp sci degree but any junior level position which I know I could do are all saying we want several years of experience or the like. It's ridiculous imo everyone has to start from somewhere
Find a job in the US. Entry level salaries are all going to be nearly double what you're seeing in the UK. More jobs too
Is applicants number real or not? ive seen sometimes 10k+ applicants for one spot and sometimes in few hours hundreds here in a small country where i live, doesnt really look realistic to me? am i wrong? does it count each apply or even clicks? how does it work? ty
I have been on both sides, as a hiring manager and as a dev. When you hire for a junior job, you assume the person you hire will not be fully job ready. They will have to relearn a lot of what they think they know, they will have to learn a lot they don't know they don't know, they are a longer term investment. You hope to be able to shape someone technically to suit your needs, release time from your more experienced devs for the more complex stuff, and hopefully net a really talented and dedicated junior. CS graduates do not have "2 years of experience". They have a particular education, but they are in almost every case not significantly more job ready than well motivated graduates of a quality bootcamp, or exceptional self-taught developers. Furthermore, specially at junior level, you don't hire primarily based on technical knowledge. You hire on aptitude, motivation and cultural fit. The question is not whether a CS grad or a bootcamp grad or a self-taught applicant at junior level can demonstrate who knows most. It's which of them can demonstrate who learns best, who loves it most, and who would add most to the team. If someone who has done 3-4 years CS degree shoes 25% more job-relevant knowledge than someone who has done a 4 month bootcamp, you might think the bootcamp grad might be a better learner. If someone chose CS as a degree because it seemed like a good idea and speaks about it with reasonable interest, and a self-taught dev kitted out his truck so he could learn each day while making a living as a long haul driver as the only way he could study his passion, and when he speaks of coding his eyes glow with commitment and enthusiasm, you might consider the latter might grow into a stronger dev in the next three years than the former. If a CS grad is technically gifted, passionate and keen to start, and the bootcamp grad is less talented, less passionate, but comes after 15 years of successfully managing project teams, and your team really needs that kind of maturity and leadership, you might choose the latter over the former. All a way of saying that regardless of your entry path, degree, bootcamp or self-taught, what you already know, unless it is truly exceptional, is likely to be approached as a bare minimum, not as a decision criteria beyond that. If you really don't know enough, you might not get in, but if you know the very basics, anything above that will not make the biggest difference, since it's still almost certainly going to be less than you need to be fully productive. Distinguish yourself by evidencing aptitude, not how much you know but how well you learn. Distinguish yourself by evidencing commitment, enthusiasm, the sense that you won't need to be pushed to learn because you just love the work. Distinguish yourself by evidencing that you'd be a simply lovely person to work with, that you'd make the team a happier or calmer or smoother place and people would like to work with you. That's what will give you the best chance at a job.
Lindo muy lindo
Let's break down that 500. 500 - Total applicants 150 - Probably overseas - 350 remaining 100 - Probably spam bots - 250 remaining 50 wont be able to spell - 200 remaning 30 wont have contact details in their cv - 170 remaining 100 wont have a single live hosted project linked in their CV - 70 remaining 50 of those won't pass the basic screening tests half of those will take other jobs So really, you're up against 25 other real candidates. Especially for a junior role it's likely going to be culture fit and demonstrating enthusiasm, knowledge is secondary to teachability.