I love reading through the forums here, especially when we hear from someone who’s landed their first job as a result of FCC. I find it’s a great morale booster, and it’s useful to read through what they did to get to that stage.
However, I’m interested to hear from everyone who’s currently fighting to get that first job. What have you tried so far? What’s the closest you’ve gotten? How are you keeping yourself positive throughout it all?
I’ll kick it off. Been seriously applying for a month and a half now. At first I was getting nothing back, but then I had several companies express an interest at the same time. So far I’ve had two phone interviews, one of which didn’t go anywhere. And last week I had a face to face interview, which I thought went really well, but I’ve just found out they went with someone more experienced.
On the plus side I’ve had some useful feedback, and I’ve got another face to face this week. It’s hard dusting yourself off each time it doesn’t pan out, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end.
I started FCC in Feb 2016. Currently working through the back end cert. Here’s my portfolio-
I’ve started applying for junior web positions about two weeks ago. So far I had one face to face interview, which was my first ever interview and I believe it went pretty good (although I didn’t get any response from them) and about seven phone calls from recruiters and I haven’t heard back from any of them . Disaster.
I’ve been sending applications on and off in the Chicago market since March, about 50+ by now, I’d estimate. My application rate has picked up the last two months using job boards like ZipRecruiter and Monster. Haven’t had a single phone screen or in-person interview. I have been contacted by a bunch of recruiters, but they haven’t led anywhere.
When people reply to this they should recap where they are in the FCC ciriculum and post their portfolio sites so we can get an idea of where they’re at in terms of skill.
The “I’m applying for jobs and got X number of interviews/got hired/etc” does us no good if we don’t know how experienced the person is.
I got the front end cert and working react projects for more than 1 month. I also started applying in mid Sep. Here’s my portfolio.
Since my goal is to land a front end dev job. I only stop at the Recipe Box project and start learning more about javascript and react.
I have had 7 interviews so far and 4 of them was in last week. I got 2 offers from those. And next week I will start working with a new position: Junior Front End Dev for React.
Also good news for me because you’re only a little bit ahead of me on the FCC map. I need to polish up my portfolio site in terms of mobile and fix a few things on my projects but I feel like I’m getting close to start applying for jobs.
I started FCC (and web dev) in Feb '17 but I had done some coding work decades ago in C. I finished the three certs last month (FE, DV, BE). My portfolio is here.
I’ve been seriously sending out resumes for a few weeks now. I’m on a lot of online sites and regularly check job postings. I send a resume if they criteria more or less fit me and if they aren’t asking for too much experience.
One frustration is how everyone wants 5 years experience. I saw an add for an unpaid internship that listed as a requirement must have held a previous internship. WTF?!? I guess that’s the price of living so close to Silicon Valley.
But I take it with a grain of salt and apply to anything with less than 3 years exp needed.
I did get one bite on a resume and they sent me an incredibly complicated React/Redux test problem (100 different components/containers for a glorified todo app). I worked my ass off on it. He gave me a nice little critique. He liked all the React/Redux stuff I did. Where I got dinged was mostly CSS problems. Ouch. But that was good to learn - working on my CSS now.
Just went to a Career Fair today. I though, being in the Silicon Valley, there would be more tech companies. It was just about 7 tables, mostly insurance companies looking for salesmen. Yikes! I learned a lesson - learn who’s going to be at the job fair. But at least it forced me to get my act together - update my resume, get business cards, by a domain, etc.
I recently got turned onto AngelList and have found some appropriate jobs there. I need to check into those more. A few of them are actually listed as Junior positions.
Other than that, I’m just going to keep plugging away.
The site is from one client, I only have one client during the time I learned for the Front End Cert. However, I don’t think it’s matter that it is free or paid.
One thing I would suggest is put EVERY things you know at the top of your portfolio.
For example: HTML,CSS,Javsscript, NodeJS, Express, Mongo, SQL, MEAN stack, Angular, Jquery, Sass, Responsive Design
Basically, it’s like a tags group so recruiters can scan through.
One more thing, because I don’t know if companies despite self-taught or not. I just didn’t mention how I learn. If they asked in the interview, I’d say I’m self taught but I just don’t mention it in my CV or portfolio. This is because I want to make sure they’re interested in me because of my current skill sets.
If you don’t have interview yet, keep working on doing more project. Try something small so that you can finish it. It’s the matter of time that you will get your job.
Are you apply for full stack position? I heard that they generally require more experience for full stack.
That’s true, but I’m applying for everything. Anything that I can get that will replace my modest teaching income and get me squarely on the coding path is OK with me.
It feels like this is about the 700th time I’ve rebuilt my portfolio, and I’m sure it won’t be the last! Every time I learn something new, I seem to end up tinkering with my site.The only framework I used was bootstrap for the navbar.
This version started out with me deciding to learn flexbox. I found a tutorial, opened up a codepen and started playing around with it. I really liked what it was producing, so I started stacking a few wireframe boxes to see how it all responded, and before I knew it I had something that looked like the skeleton of a portfolio.
Here’s a pen from when I started to realise I was on to something!
After that I just started looking for inspiration and adding things I thought of. I knew I wanted to show off some knowledge of css animations, so I built the planetscape. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, even if it looks a bit silly.
Originally it was at the top of the page, but it didn’t look right there. It didn’t give a very professional immediate impression when someone landed on my page. So I went with the full page text wipe as an intro and pushed the planetscape down to a subheading.
I’m never going to be happy with my portfolio, and I think that’s a good thing. It’s a place for me to test new things in the wild.
. Disaster.
I have been contacted by a bunch of recruiters, but they haven’t led anywhere.