I really want to hear what others have to say on this. I want to be hireable, but I don’t know when is a good time to look for work.
(Basically when does full on job searching rather than just studying becomes a better use of ones time)
I have a portfolio page: codedave.me. I lack the confidence to show it to employers or even looking for them, I don’t have a college degree and my last job was a truck driver, so a resume makes me look very under qualified.
(I am also terrified of job searching) Anyways any advice or opinions would be appreciated.
Your portfolio is great! I would hire you if I could
It’s more about your lack of self-confidence than lack of skill. When you apply for a job you got nothing to lose - it’s not the end of the world. You just have to be more courageous, but I know it easier said than done ;p
Just go apply for anything that seems like a good fit to you.
It’s rare that someone doesn’t get rejected during a job search but that’s not a reason to not try. Think about it rationally and logically like when you code—you will likely come to the conclusion that the fear of trying is irrational.
I don’t have much specific advice to offer since I have never had to apply for a developer job (or at least not yet :p), but do read some of the success stories here and you will realise that you are not alone, and that it’s worth trying. In addition, don’t forget about the possibility of learning while you are on the job, or internships.
Other than that, here are some things that you may want to consider changing on your portfolio:
Double check for typos/misspelt words. For example, “exiting” should be “exciting”. Something like Grammarly may also be helpful for smoothing out potentially awkward expressions if you don’t have someone who can proofread things for you
Missing colon after “I have experience building with”
I in “including other necessities…” reads better capitalised
Find someone who knows you well to read your “about me” section to see if it sounds like you
Nothing to do with your porfolio (which is very good) but your Recipe Box (which is very good) you have “recipes” as the key for local storage. If another user uses the same key name, this would be a problem.
“recipes_codedave” would be a better key name.
Another issue. The code for Recipe box goes to github for local weather!
PS. If you ever want to work on anything, I’ll work with you! I am thinking of going freelance at some point.
Thank you for the encouragement @axon7@honmanyau@JohnnyBizzel, and I very much appreciate the spotting of the mistakes, I will have to fix them as soon as I have the opportunity.
Your site looks good and demonstrates your skills. Just apply, have nothing to lose but a job to gain by putting yourself out there. Also, your twitter link at the bottom of your page is broken.
Effectively, your portafolio is great. You can have both approaches, search and let recruiters find you.
Maybe update profiles in linkedin, angellist, indeed and craiglist. I’m also bad at searching but updating my profile let recuiters to find me and get interesting job offers.
In the interview, don’t worry about your background, get a glance of all the success stories in the “get a developer job” section in the freecodecamp forum and you will see that there are other people that are in the same situation as you are or similiar. For example, I’m changing of proefessional career too.
From what I have read, there’s a good opportunity in startups for people with low or no developer background, maybe with your background it will be more difficult to land a google or facebook job immediately but not in other awesome companies.
What they are interested in the most is that you can have the job done.
Also a guide of things that may help you in interviews : https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-you-can-land-a-6-figure-job-in-tech-with-no-connections-6eed0de26ea4
You will never think you are ready. Just make the jump. If you go in as a junior Dev, they expect you to not know much of anything really. But then comes the real test, can you learn quickly enough to keep pace with what the company expects? I didn’t do so well my first backend Dev job, but I had a lot of personal issues that inhibited my abilities to learn that went on during my first 3 months, plus the company was not ideal for me. Second time around, nailed it. Really just start applying, nothing to lose you either get hired or not.
So… I decided the best way to find a job would be trough a meetup … and I got frustrated using the meetup search. So… they have an api, using this I began recreating their search but using a map instead.
You could say I’m on track to networking, and you could say that I am not.
Hopefully this will impress some employers when I am actually talking to them.
Also when the project is finished I plan on doing a forum post, hopefully using this to find meetups will help others get a job as well.