Graduate as Full Stack Web Dev, applied to more 140 jobs, but now I applied to my old regular job

When I saw this, considering out of 140 apps only 2 invited you to interview, I’ll admit, I wondered if maybe it was severe lack of skill level or something… Id say most of the jobs I get a referral to, I dont have the skills for it at all, but since I was referred and theres stuff in my resume thats interesting, I still make it to the tech interview.

But…I checked out your website, LinkedIn and resume and I really cant see why people arent giving you a chance. One suggestion I would make, might seem minor but…I noticed on your site you refer to backend as your interest, but on your resume you list yourself as a web developer. Maybe instead, refer to yourself as a back end, or even full stack dev.

Another thing to try…ask your friends if they can connect you with someone who is a recruiter or who conducts interviews and ask them if they would be willing to give you advice on how you present yourself. No ulterior motive to get in the door where they work, just to really get their advice and help you improve. People can be super helpful, and even if they cant help, will introduce you to someone who can. Ive met a lot of people that way and it has led to some incredible opportunities.

Seems the thing right now is to avoid your application / resume from going into the dark void. Instead of trying to guess what the problem is…go to the source, find people in the position to tell you what they are looking for.

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What were their feedbacks, as in what made them decide that you were not the candidate for them? That’s really the most direct source on why you’re not making it into interviews. You are doing the most effective thing already, which is network with real human beings.

The lack of interviews is perplexing, usually, human connection gives you more room and opportunities for a sit-down or phone conversation

There is no such thing as a perfect match because there are always expectation gaps on both sides. You just have to tailor your resume to fit the jobs you apply to better and justify your qualifications. You might have to consider expanding your search to jobs in different areas both geographically and figuratively. Apply to jobs that list Java/Node as qualifications, honestly just expanding your search pool. The underlying concept of full stack development is the same, and all you need is one person to believe that you can learn their stack relatively soon.

I think maybe the major thing that’s lacking on your resume for a full-stack dev is a more modern JS framework, which learning React will help. Frameworks do come and go, but in term of matching job description and employer expectations, it is much preferred to have a proof of a skill that’s current so that you can be productive as soon as possible.

Linux/Unix literacy can also be a key skill. You don’t have to be a master Linux user. No one is going to ask you to set up a server cluster or configure kernels and drivers, but be able to most of the file operation with command line and write some basic shell script can be surprisingly handy and desirable.

Some of the referrals were for position looking for mid level Developers. One in particular was for a open position over at The University of Maryland ( I resided in LA). My wife’s cousin is a professor there and he just forward me the link. The position had been posted for a couple of weeks, so I am sure I was late to apply. Another open position happens at the university where my wife works. Because she knew the person in charge of the department looking to hire, I got interviewed. Unfortunately, this position required some solid knowledge of Coldfusion. Now, I did showed my willingness and proved how I have taken other challenges learning as Freelancer and so on, but it was not enough. Because They couldn’t afford to risk losing their legacy code and wait for me to learn. The only one taking care of this legacy code was a Remote Senior Developer, who was working in SF full time for another major company.

If you are counting people who just forward you a job link like the UofM job, then yeah, thats not a referral. A referral is like when your wife talked to the hiring manager about you. If someone personally recommends you for a position, your application goes to the top of the pile and chances are really high you’ll get an interview regardless of your skills.

Still though, even if most of them were jobs you applied to without a personal referral, 140 is a lot to only get 2 interviews…thats why I suggested making a move to reach out and talk to people who are in a position where they review resumes / conduct interviews to look over what you have and see if they can help you figure out what you are missing. And I dont mean missing skill-wise, cause seriously, you seem to have a lot going for you.

I get it though that youve been trying, this job hunt thing sucks, Im in the middle of it myself here. Just suggesting…what you have been doing hasnt been working to get you in the door, so its time to try something new and focus on talking to people who may be able to help you understand why and give you advice based on their experience as the one doing the hiring.

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Agreed. I have to do something different to get my first job. I was going to Meetups but I haven’t the last 5 months. I will be going back to some of them and go from there. Also, I am hoping to do some small talk, present perhaps a project or what I am learning at the meetup.

Hi @RafaelHernandez,

I think that the approach of MPJ (from funfunfunction) is a good one:

Ok. This is how I managed to get hired as a web developer.
I went to hacks.

Prior to applying, I went to almost as many evening/weekend hack things that Spotify arranged (http://www.meetup.com/Sthlm-Spot…) as I could squeeze in. Besides amazing fun, free beer and pizza, I got to know many Spotify employees this way, and I got to ask many questions about the culture without having them filtered by a recruiter. It was during these hacks that I really decided that Spotify was a place for me. In fact, the people I met at these events made me feel like I’ve come home.

The next step was to talk with the recruiters, to find out who was responsible for recruiting the role that I was interested in. By the time I found my recruiter, I had about seven people inside Spotify that I could email that I’ve submitted my application through the official channel (Jobvite).


Teaching beginners how to program is often hard. We love building programs, and seeing our loved ones struggle with this is painful. Showing them how to copy-paste a few example programs and change a few parameters is easy, but bridging from there to building substantial programs is a different game entirely. This talk is about how to teach programming successfully, through comprehensible design recipes, which anyone can follow, using languages and tools designed for beginners. This approach is probably different from how you learned how to program, or how you’re used to teaching. It is more effective, however, as it teaches more material successfully to a broader spectrum of people. It is also more enjoyable.

The talk is based on many years of research by the Program by Design, DeinProgramm, and Bootstrap educational projects, as well as over 30 years of personal teaching experience in school, university and industrial contexts. A word of warning: The resulting approach is radically different from most teaching approaches used in universities and schools. In particular, it avoids teaching purely through examples and expecting students to develop the skills to arrive at the solutions on their own. Instead, it eaches explicit methodology that enables students to solve problems of surprising complexity on their own, whether they are 11 or 55, whether in a classroom, a training facility, or your home. Extensive documentation, material, and software to support this methodology is available for free. Mike Sperber


  • I find that a statechart[1] is really useful for keep the complexity low, I use Xstate:

Cheers and happy coding :slight_smile:

Reference:
[1]

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@RafaelHernandez keep applying to new jobs while continue working in your old job. YOU ONLY FAIL WHEN YOU STOP TRYING!

Trust me

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My recommendation for finding any job is to locate people doing what you want to be doing on LinkedIn. Use that as a springboard to ask questions on the best way to get into their company. Most companies use recruiting firms to find people, and pass over great candidates, because they aren’t well-versed in a field. By reaching out to people in the same kind of positions that you want, they might be able to get your resume in front of the real decision makers.

This is the worst advice ever. Apart from being immoral, the technical people will discover it easily and then you will blow out the minimum chance you have.
The road is to keep working is real projects and improving your experience and keep applying.

i think the most important thing is to have a website that works and have links on it to your projects. thats the only way recruiters or anyone will take you seriously

Hi I think you need to assess what went wrong?

1_ have you asked for interview feedback?
2_ or someone who is an HR staff to review your resume?
3_ have you shown projects that display good coding and fundamental skills?

I have the same story. In my mid 30s, complete career change with no background in code. Did freecodecamp and then signed up for a 12 week full stack bootcamp. I applied to nearly 200 jobs over 6 months. I got rejection emails every day saying they decided to move on with candidates that were a better fit. I polished up my resume and portfolio. I even made some react apps that I published on an app store. I got 1 in person interview that I did just “ok” on. Friends referred me to their companies, but I never got anything. All postings I look at want 3-5 yrs experience for entry level. No one else from my coding bootcamp cohort got a web developer job yet and most went back to their old work.

What did I end up doing? I applied to contract positions that I would normally pass over. I ended up with a 3 month contract job and now have actual web experience on my resume. I was contacted on linkedin by a contracting/staffing company and starting to get notifications of other short term contract work. I figure after a couple years of this, I might have a chance for a regular full-time position. Try contacting staffing agencies that fill contractor spots. A lot of them get bad reviews on glassdoor and my experience with the contracting agency was really frustrating (I didn’t get paid 3 times before complaining) but I’m paying my dues and making traction vs the rest of my coding cohort.

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Whoa, what bootcamp is this? Might have to let people know on course report so people make more informed decisions.

The 3-5 years experience thing is mostly not a hard gate, because most of the job don’t really require the experience they ask for.

Contractor experience is very hit and miss, but it is not uncommon to evolve from a contractor to a full time employee if you gave an impressive enough perf. However, a lot of companies also prefer to go more contractors over full time employees due to corporate cost cutting practices.

There is a middle ground of being a technology consultant where you are an employee of a consulting firm but contracted out to companies on a project basis. You are expected to learn technologies quickly and apply them to projects, and it can be a lot of moving around dependent on the nature of the project. Try contacting recruiters for companies like Accenture, Cogizant, Wipro, Infosys…etc as well as some more area focused consulting firms like Slalom. It may help you transition into a less frustrating career experience.

I did trilogy. They pair up with universities and offer it through their name (Rutgers, UCLA…etc). They don’t advertise their job placement rate (prob because it’s low). However, I heard the same from friends who done app academy, general assembly, thinkful, hack reactor…etc.

I agree that 3-5 years is not necessary, but having 0 yrs will get a rejection as OP and I have experienced many times. I think at least 1-2 years will let you in the door, but it’s hard to get that 1st job.

Contractor experience is not great, but is the only way I’m able to get that 1-2 years to get in the door. I tried applying to Accenture through my bootcamp (who set something up with them), through their site, and then later through a friend referring me. None of those led to anything.

In summary, it’s hard to find the 1st job after bootcamp. You may need to expand your search to contractor jobs or tech consultants to get that experience to get in the door for the future. My mistake the 1st 6 months post bootcamp was passing over contractor job postings.

You said no one in you cohort got a job, which is very uncommon to my knowledge. I know people who did hack reactor and I worked with people who did Thinkful, as far as I know their placement rates are good, I mean even if the reporting is inflated, any thing is better than none.

sorry, let me clarify that. I don’t know anyone else in my cohort at trilogy that got a job (or they may have and not updated linkedin). I also know many people who struggle getting a job for up to a year coming out of thinkful, hack reactor, app academy…

I agree that most of the other bootcamp have decent placement rates (except mine). I guess my overall point is that many bootcamp grads have a difficult time getting their 1st developer role.

Dear Rafael,

I think its such a pitty to see that because I am looking forward to start a bootcamp being 27 years old to learn everything about full stack web dev to change the path of my career and then of course keep learning all my life to improve my skills.
But my question is, did you create some web apps to add to your portafolio? Because the only important thing about this kind of jobs (what people normally say) is that you need to add websites and all kind of projects to your portafolio, because at the end thats what we should be able to do.
Considering your point of view, is that right or what do you think? Someone else willing to share an experience? I am very curious about this situation.

Thanks!

@RafaelHernandez Would you like to be connected to some engineers? They might be able to help you out.

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@treliphone That would be great!! I would really appreciate that.

@raimundobg yes, I have a full app working right now. https://quotes.rafaeldavis.me