Tech Career Series: How to get your first technical job
We’re sharing helpful and practical advice about how to start your technical career.
Our mission is to give women/non-binary people from all walks of life the skills and confidence to be technical and help create a workforce as diverse as our society.
But, what does this actually look like to us?
We want more women included in technical conversations. We want more women leading technical conversations.
More women working in tech teams building the products we use every day.
More women interested in tech and using it as a way to pursue their passions.
More women driving the creation, implementation and definitions of new and emerging tech such as artificial intelligence. And more. Much more.
In honour of International Women’s Day, we’re launching our ‘Tech Career Guide’ series to provide helpful and practical advice and lots of resources to women at different stages of their careers.
We’re starting with our first blog about how to get your first technical job. This is for women who have some programming knowledge (they’ve done a boot camp, studied Comp Sci, have been self-teaching for about a year, etc) and are ready to start their technical career. Applying for jobs might seem daunting at first but our tips below should help make the process a lot smoother. Let’s get started!
1. Join communities and embrace your networks
The word networking is sometimes stereotyped as a bunch of people in suits, drinks, awkward chats, business card swapping, a place for extroverts, too loud music...We appreciate these scenarios work for some, but we like to look at alternatives. Places where others are as excited and as passionate about tech as we are, smaller groups, more structured events, and more. We also like places that are online as we appreciate events can sometimes be London focused.
There are brilliant and welcoming online and in-person tech communities you can join and become part of. By becoming a member you can speak to other people about their jobs, ask what helped them on their job search as well as get an honest account of working at a specific company or in a certain role. Some of the best jobs are not publically shared (this is definitely another debate and deserves a completely separate article) so you might connect with someone who is hiring for your perfect role.
Here are some networks and meet-up groups you could join:
Online
Ada’s List
Elpha
DevelopHer (have in-person events)
We are the the city- tech women (have in-person events)
Future Girl Corp (have in-person events)
Witty Careers (have in-person events)
In person
Women who code
Tech for Good meet up
Code Untapped
She Plus Plus (and online)
Once you’ve joined these groups, say hey and introduce yourself (we love a good gif).
Here are a few other things you could do:
- Ask for a quick coffee meeting with someone who works at a company you want to work at or in a role you’re interested in. Tell them who you are and why you want to meet them- be concise- and explain the impact this will have for you.
- Get feedback on your projects/cv/ portfolio.
- Learn from those a few steps ahead, not the person at the top. Firstly, they are probably more accessible. Secondly, they will have more current insight.
- Share how you’re actually feeling — these are safe spaces where you can talk about your highs and lows. You’ll have a community championing and supporting your journey.
- Read, listen, watch. There are tonnes of resources that communities put out.
2. Define what kind of company you want to work for and the role you want.
When you first start applying for roles, it’s very easy to adopt an ‘all systems go’ mindset and apply for every vacancy you see, rather than thinking about the role itself and the company’s value and mission.
Before starting a bulk of applications, make a list of career priorities that are important to you. Use these questions to help guide you:
- What skills or languages do I want to focus on developing?
- What kind of tech stack do I want to work with?
- Do I want to have the option of working remotely/ flexible?
- What part of the tech industry do I want to work in?
- Do I want to work for a company with a mission I believe in?
To find out more about a company’s culture you can use websites such as Glassdoor where you can read past employee’s reviews. We are the city and Fairy God Boss profiles different tech companies that are recommended for women, and websites such as working families and working mums review companies‘ flexible working policies and only post fully flexible vacancies.
A good time to start getting a feel for the company is your first interview with them. You are interviewing the company too- always ask questions and observe. Talk about flexible working or how many women are in senior management- ask the hard questions and if it makes them uncomfortable, they are probably not ready for you.
Developer and 23CS teacher Louise recommends: “Get word-of-mouth advice on the best (& worst!) recruiters as there are some great ones who share relevant & interesting opportunities plus sometimes insight into the interview process and salary negotiation if needed/useful. Overall, in my experience, every good person you can seek advice based on personal experience from when job-hunting is beneficial.”
3) Build a personal portfolio and keep practising
An amazing portfolio of your work showing just how good you are goes a long way at impressing your potential employer. Your doesn’t need to be full of “perfect” projects but ones that show your development over time and personality. Have you worked on open source projects, build stuff for friends, created your own mini projects, worked on stuff whilst at bootcamps or going through online courses? Make sure they are all somewhere an employer can access. Whether it’s all on Github, or you have a separate portfolio that links out to all your work, make sure it’s all easy to get to.
Include projects which use the languages you listed as being proficient at on your CV. Include projects that you’re particularly proud of, had a lot of fun building or are super passionate about — this will make it a lot easier to talk about them in an interview setting. Be prepared to discuss your project’s strengths and weaknesses and talk interviewers through your code and decision-making processes.
Below are some blogs showing you how to build a portfolio and some example ones to check out:
Practise, Practise, Practise!
To improve your coding- keep practising. You could either build your own projects you’re interested in or get involved with open source projects.
Also, there are lots of places online that have activities that help you prepare for technical tests. Code Wars are a favourite for fun and challenging programming exercises.
Here are some other links to coding challenges:
Coderbyte
GitHub
Free Codecamp
HackerRank
100 days of code
Top 10 coding challenge websites
Exciting projects you could build
4. Start looking for jobs
Now that you’ve got an amazing portfolio- it’s time to start looking and applying for jobs. Here are some helpful recruitment sites to start off your job hunt:
Tech- Specific sites
Unicorn Hunt
Technojobs
Stack overflow
Angel List
Hired
Web Developer Jobs
Boolerang
We are the city
Womens Tech Jobs
General Sites
Indeed
Guardian Jobs
Reed
Escape the city
LinkedIn Jobs
We recommend signing up for job alerts — you can set requirements for the type of job you’re looking and be notified when a new vacancy which matches this become available.
5. Prepare for your technical interview -you can do this.
So you’ve made it to the interview stage (yes!) and now it’s time to prepare. Having your first technical interview can definitely feel daunting, but preparing in advance will help calm those nerves.
Every company has a different way of interviewing its candidates. Some large companies may run a three-stage interview process both on the phone and in-person, while smaller, more relaxed companies or start-ups might do 1 or 2 faces to face interviews with technical tests.
Technical Questions
Technical questions can be about data structures and algorithms or focus on specific technologies, languages, and frameworks used in the company you are interviewing with.
Start by looking closely at the job description to understand what technical skills are required to understand what you might be asked about. Followed by answering a lot of practise questions and if you can, conduct a mock interview with some of your friends to practise speaking precisely and confidently.
You may also be asked to complete a task at home within a fixed time period or during an interview.
Googling, using documentation, looking up notes- in some job interviews, all these things are allowed as this is what you would be doing in your day to day job. Knowing what to look for and Google is a huge part of being a developer. It’s good to check what the company’s policy is on this.
Here are some practise questions you can test yourself with:
Soft skills
As a developer, soft skills are as important as hard technical skills. What exactly do we mean by soft skills? Have a look at some of them below:
Empathy — How do you understand your customer’s needs and wants? Is the product your building accessible for everyone to use?
Communicating — how do you communicate what you’re working on to other developers/non-technical people? What do you do to communicate effectively when pair programming or work collaboratively?
Problem-solving — how do you see problems and how you solve them is key to programming. Can you be creative, calm, and bring others along that journey.
Further Reading
6. Show your excitement and drive
Alongside your skill set, it’s important to show that you’re passionate and enthusiastic about working in tech, plus why you’re excited to work for the company you are applying for. This will make you stand out from other candidates by showing you are genuinely interested in the job and the opportunities that come with it.
Here a few ways to do this through your application/ interview:
- Talk about any recent events/conferences/ hackathon you attended and what you learnt and why you really enjoyed going.
- Discuss communities or meet up groups you’re part of outside of work and what makes them valuable.
- Discuss any relevant and interesting articles you’ve read, newsletters/ blogs you are subscribed to, podcasts you love reading.
Here are some helpful links to keep up to date with the tech world:
BBC Technology
Medium — Follow their technology section to read the latest blogs about all things tech.
Sifted
Femstreet
UK Tech News
Hacker News
Women 2.0
POC in Tech
Business Insider — Sign up to their daily tech round-up.
We hope this helps! If you’ve got any questions just send them over to hello@23codestreet.com.
