I’ve considered it. A lot of those programs seem predatory and give me bad vibes though. I’m also most likely going back to college to finish my CS degree.
I would take those kinds of projections with a truckload of salt. They never specify what level of seniority that is in short supply. There seems to be a gigantic shortage of seniors. Juniors seem to be regarded as industrial waste best dumped on someone else.
The jobs they announce are most often for senior positions, but that doesnt mean the company doesnt recruit anyone else. I know some people in 2nd grade at my school that already got jobs secured pre graduation thanks to their internship.
And about 80% of last year graduates got job after school.
Ive spoken with many companys and they dont have major expectations of the juniors, rather they go by personality and want to see the person is dedicated and want to improve.
The jobs they announce are most often for senior positions, but that doesnt mean the company doesnt recruit anyone else. I know some people in 2nd grade at my school that already got jobs secured pre graduation thanks to their internship.
And I know people with completed master’s degrees in computer engineering, and years of work experience who can’t get jobs, so it seems to be a mixed bag.
I know some people in 2nd grade at my school that already got jobs secured pre graduation thanks to their internship.
And I know lots of people who can’t even get internships, because there are 20 or 25 applicants for every available position. In fact that happened to me when I was in college, it was all smiling faces and almost desperation about how many open spots they had in their summer internship programs. I applied the same day as the applications opened and was told that it was already filled.
Ive spoken with many companys and they dont have major expectations of the juniors, rather they go by personality and want to see the person is dedicated and want to improve.
I also live in Sweden, and trust me. I have seen loads and loads and loads of companies expecting a junior with no work experience to have 3+ years of experience with C#. I am willing to concede that I might be wrong, but my experience is that companies love to say one thing at fairs and in interviews, but when it comes to paying up the reality is totally different.
I can tell you love tech and that you have great potential. Don’t give up but looking at your profile, it reads like
I just took up front-end web tech as a hobby and am trying to break into the industry. You actually used the word unemployed on your LinkedIn under frontend developer. REMOVE THAT! This lowers your crediability. List the things you have build in bullet points under this and list the tech used. It should read like you are freelance software developer and not unemployed. The employer doesn’t care if you were paid or not, they care you have the ability to do the job. This is true but your profile needs to read that you have 2+ years of experience building software. This is also true based upon the number and frequency of commits in your github profile over the past 3 years. I would use this wording on your profile, LinkedIn and talking to recruiters. Its not a lie! You really do have 3 years of software experience. The only difference is that you were not paid for it like someone working at a company with it. I am not going to write a novel as this doesn’t help you much so I am going to summarize what I would do in some bullet points:
- Repeat in all bios, about pages, and in person that you have 3 to 5 years of experience. (HR people are scanning documents looking for this specifically)
- Make an effort to learn and follow good web design principals in your sites. Your projects are cool but they lack refinement. I know this will come with time but make an effort to study professional websites and make them look as closes as you can to theirs in terms of how things are laid out, where things are placed, etc. Don’t just know how, learn the why and demonstrate that. This will help your profile.
- Get some testimonials to add to all your profiles. Build something for someone for free and get them to get you a review. This will improve your credibility and if they use words like react, pro, frontend developer etc. then the keyword density for the search terms you want to show up for with improve.
- Really read the jobs descriptions of the jobs and objectively ask yourself if what you are presenting in your resume meets the requirements. If it doesn’t then either adjust your resume to reflect you are a good fit or move to something else. After reading the job description and your LinkedIn/Resume, the HR person should think, This is an interesting person sounds perfect for this job. If it doesn’t leave them feeling that way then they will move on.
- Have multiple version of your resume. Clearly if you applied 200 times and have not gotten any responses there is something not sitting well with recruiters. From what I am seeing its likely a presentation thing. Look at different formats, increase the number times certain keywords appear in your resume. It needs to be both human readable and more importantly machine readable. Focusing on this should help your resume convert better ultimately lead to interviews.
Without a doubt if you do these I have outline you should start being able to get some interviews. Best of luck. Thank you for your service. You got this bro!
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About things like “I know Dave and he has a lot of education and experience but can’t find a job …”
Remember that coders are not commodities. Not every coder is right for every job. In fact I’d say that most coders are a bad fit for the vast majority of jobs. There are so many languages, frameworks, libraries, and other areas of expertise. There are a lot of jobs. It’s a matter of finding the right person for the job. Hiring managers aren’t complaining that there aren’t enough applicants, but that there aren’t enough with the right skill set. There are probably a few jobs out there that need exactly your skill set. But your goal should also be to grow your skill set, increasing your employability. This also shows employers that you are driven and can learn so maybe they’ll be willing to take a chance that you could pick things up quickly.
If you can’t accept someone who has shown that they can learn the things you need quickly but need a bit of a run-up then there can’t be that much of a shortage.
Your definition of “shown that they can learn the things you need quickly” may be different than theirs. One of the things that I learned after starting my first dev jobs is that things were a lot more complicated than I thought they would be and there were a lot more things to learn that I’d expected. And I’ve also seen people come on with a lot more experience that got more productive, faster. It’s easy for us to have Procrustean ideas about what we think the qualifications should be, but that is self-serving and chauvinistic.
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Did you read what I wrote? Master’s degree in computer engineering, multiple years of work experience? If that is not enough then employers should start getting a lot more honest about the nature of their claimed critical shortage.
You’re assuming that education and experience are the only factors. It’s a lot more complicated than that. We can focus on complaining that hirers don’t want what we’re offering, or we can focus on understanding and tailoring ourselves to what they want.
Come in with a master’s degree and multiple years of experience, corporations complain about “social skills” or “cultural fit”, come in without experience and corporations complain about lack of “profesional experience”. I have played this game, it is unwinable. Corporations need to be made aware that they are not going to get a limitless supply of employees with 5 years of experience in their specific tech stack.
OK, man, let us know how that works out for you.
Soft skills are real. I’ve seen from the inside the difference. The statement that “it is unwinable” is obviously untrue. I (for one) got a great entry level position with no tech degree and minimal experience and an OK portfolio - but I’m strong on soft skills. Lots of people get jobs. It is not “unwinable”.
But again, you can complain all you want or you can do something about it. Learn, learn, learn and build, build, build and work on your soft skills. A little kvetching is OK, but bitter complaining isn’t going to help. Yes, it’s frustrating. It drives you crazy. I’ve been there. We all have. But the only solution is working the problem. The struggle is great, but so is the reward.
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But again, you can complain all you want or you can do something about it. Learn, learn, learn and build, build, build and work on your soft skills. A little kvetching is OK, but bitter complaining isn’t going to help. Yes, it’s frustrating. It drives you crazy. I’ve been there. We all have. But the only solution is working the problem. The struggle is great, but so is the reward.
I don’t even know how to argue this without getting an accusation of entitlement or “bitterness” hurled at me.
Cool, whatever. I would humbly suggest focussing on making yourself more attractive to employers. It’s like a bunch of guys sitting in a bar drinking beer complaining that they can’t find a woman because none of them are impressed with how good they are combing their hair. That’s one part of the equation. Focus on the other parts too. You don’t get to decide what they want - they do. Or just keep complaining and blaming them.
Yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, there is BS. But if this is a job you want, this is part of the process.
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That works both ways, if you want to use analogies. How would you feel about someone who claims to be starving and willing to eat almost anything, and then refuses to eat because you brought them veal instead of steak? Or someone claiming to be dying of thirst who refuses to drink the beverage you brought them, because it was Perrier when they really wanted evian?
From the company’s perspective, their issue is new hires are costly. No matter how good the hire is on paper, it usually takes a couple months for a new hire to become productive, and that training also reduces productivity of the current team in place. Onboarding cost like adding coverage for the new employee, various level of access and bureaucracy approvals, and additional workplace training are also part of the math.
Every time a hire goes south, no matter the reason, they have to go through this process and bear the cost all over again, which companies hate because the cost and reduced productivity eats into their revenue.
Which is why companies post job description for overqualified candidates to reduce work for themselves before hiring and why networking is often more effective, because the extra level of trust and comfort ultimately can reduce cost for the company.
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Where did the tech hirers of the world get together and agree that they would “eat anything”? As hard as it is for them to struggle to find something, the wrong person can actually do damage to their business. I think your analogies are flawed because the things are functionally equivalent. I might say “you need a screwdriver and they bring you a hammer”.
I understand. I felt a lot of the same frustrations you do. I even said some of the same things. I made progress when I stopped complaining and buckled down and worked on all those other things. And now that I’m on the inside I understand a lot better - some of those things that I thought were ridiculous were actually quite important.
Do you really want me to start referencing all the articles about the “STEM crisis” and “The critical shortage of engineers”? How about you go back a couple of posts in this thread and read about the claims of how many positions will be available for programmers in Sweden.
I highly doubt this claim. If you really had the same frustrations then you wouldn’t use the boostraps argument.
A simple search of my past posts will find threads that I started talking about this exact subject and my frustrations.
The logic of your argument is fundamentally flawed. “Some people that I think are qualified can’t find jobs even though I think that my definition of ‘qualified’ is the correct one, so this all proves that there is no job shortage.”
Look, I sit one cubicle away from my boss. I hear the online interviews. I hear the discussion of candidates. I’ve heard people get rejected because, although they have technical competence, they lack some of those soft skills. I also hear the complaints about not being able to enough people that meet their standards.
They have they jobs. They get to decide what they want, not you.
But this is going in circles so I’ll have to back out of this conversation.
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Thanks for warning me! I was dreaming too much and forgott about reality. I didn´t know that the competition in big cities is so hard.
I thought it is easier to find a job as CS student but I guess I was in my own bubble because companies in my country (Germany) say they need progammers. I was sceptical but I guess not enough.
Thanks for some dose of reality.