Landing your first Software Engineering job
If you feel lost or feel like it’s never going to happen, you feel like you’re never going to land that first job. Just remember you are not alone, you are not the first, and you will not be the last to feel this way.
1. Making Connections
Landing the first job in any industry is the hardest thing to do when you do not have “built-in” connections into that field already. Which brings me to one of my first points and honestly one of the most important points, MAKE CONNECTIONS.
Whether you are at a university, a bootcamp, or you are self taught, go out of your way to make connections. They will help you more than you could ever image, attend online seminars, cold contact, go to events at your university, reach out to your class mates, any way you can make a contact is a good way. Even if those contacts do not help you out immediately with your first job found, they could introduce you to someone who can or they could help you with a job swap later on in life.
2. Preparing for the interview
Once you have some connections made and someone can introduce you or throw your name into the mix at a position of your interest, you are going to need to be prepared for the interview. The two big focuses of your interviewing process should be the technical portion of the interview and the personal part of the interview.
3. Personal portion of the interview
The personal part of the interview is mainly personal questions, like “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” and “Why did you decide to choose software as your career?” The best way to prepare for these answers is to PRACTICE. Practice with your partner, a sibling, a friend, or a parent. Get as much practice as you possibly can. The more you practice the more confident you will be with your answers, do your best to not sound too rehearsed, but create a set of “guidelines” for you to follow with your answers.
4. Technical portion of the interview
Next part of the interview will be the technical portion of the interview. Every company is different when it comes to the technical part of the interview. Some companies will give you a problem and want you to solve it in the most effecient way possible, some companies will give you a larger problem as a “take home” problem, in which they will allow you 24–48 hours to solve a large problem or create a small application, and some will ask you to show an application you have created and why you decided to design the application the way you did or what was the hardest part of designing the structure of the application and how you over came it.
The best way to prepare for the technical part of the interview is to practice the most common questions or problems that are given out in interviews. Leetcode, HackerRank, and Code Wars are the main three I used for practice when preparing for the technical portion of my interview. I would try to practice for at least one hour a day to keep myself sharp and my confidence high. Don’t feel down on yourself if you can’t figure out a problem, google it, look for the best approach to the problem and move on and try to work on the problem in the next couple days.
The most important thing in your job search is to not give up hope and don’t get down on yourself. Something will come, the right thing will show up for you when the time is right. Your job in the mean time is to just be prepared for when that opportunity arrises. You got this and don’t give up!
