2 years old software engineer
Self-Taught Engineer: Things to Prepare Before Applying for a Job
I am a self-taught software engineer, who landed my first engineering job two years ago. In the company, I am lucky enough to participate in the hiring process and here I will share some tips on preparing. I majored in economics and full-time learning programming for 6 months, if I can do it, you can too!
Concept
Luck is what happens when preparation meets oppotunity.
No matter whether you are preparing to get work as a freelancer or joining a company, the concept is the same: selling ourselves to the people and convincing them we can make value for them.
This sounds simple but my team rejected a lot of candidates who have beautiful education records but couldn't show us what they can actually do. People won't get impressed by your Bootcamp projects or projects without souls, eg things that you coded out without knowing the core ideas and how they could generate value.
To successfully sell ourselves, preparation becomes very important. Too long to read, spend time on portfolio, setting career goal, sharpening skills then we are ready to go.
Portfolio
A portfolio is usually the only area on the resume to show the interviewers what we can do. Pick up three of our projects and provide links or demo videos for each of them. 3 important ideas here:
Suitable project that match the position
Suitable project that match the position
Suitable project that match the position
Instead of showing the best or most stunning projects, pick up suitable projects that can best describe why we can do the job and fit the position the most. Suitable projects help more than a stunning project that doesn't fit the position, for example, showing the interviewers a tool to generate a color palette during an interview for an e-commerce development job. This is fine, but a functioning self-built e-commerce shop will be more attractive from the interviewers' point of view.
Furthermore, we need to know “why” we built those projects. The projects might be projects from Bootcamp or Udemy courses, but if we could explain the reason we built them and how they could help the surrounding then that is enough. Showing the interviewers we know what we are doing will give them a good impression and perhaps get us to the next interview. However, interviewers are not stupid, they usually are senior developers who know the industry well, be ourselves, and not cheat during the interview.
Setting Career Goal
During the interview, there usually will have a question about your vision and career goal. The most common career path is to switch to a management role, no matter in which industry. One question here is:
Be a senior of that industry or participating in the management roles
Each position has its own values but always think of that because it will shape our future dramatically. Think well and believe in that answer. Career goal sticks with us our whole life even if we left the company. It is not encouraging to frequently switch our careers because it might need us to start over.
Human loves stability and usually will have a good impression of a good planner. We might have not planned our whole life but having a simple 5 years plan will be enough. Interviewers usually don't pay too much attention to the answer, but the idea is to know how the interviewee could fit into the company plan and what resources the interviewee might ask for.
Sharpening Skill
Good preparation is built on a good foundation.
Don't forget to polish your skill after Bootcamp or courses. However, it doesn't mean spending all your time on the algorithm questions. Instead, we could participate in open source projects on Github or start our own projects. Our brain will archive unused skills and forget those skills after being soft-deleted for a long time.
It would be a hard time for some people because we would need to debug ourselves now and fix our own shits. Believe me that most of the candidates don't know how to debug yet during their trial, and usually bye after that trial.
Summary
You might think these items are basic but my team rejected many applications because they are not ready yet. A medium company has these rules, imagine big tech firms.
If you are not ready yet, don't give up and spend some more time preparing the three items above. In the real world, a smart person doesn't always win the game, a person who stays the last does.
