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I have encountered taking homework out of class, which is a little deliberate. Gold nine silver ten school recruit time also arrived, interested can have a look. Today’s Morning Reading article is shared with permission from @levding translation

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Many software developers go into a job search with the theoretical skills they are looking for, but lack practical development experience, making employers hesitant to hire you. In this article, Paddy Sherry, an experienced recruiter, offers some tips on how to improve your experience of finding a job.

For many young computer science or IT-related graduates, landing your first full-time job without actual project development experience can be the biggest challenge you’ll face in your career.

When you’re fresh out of college, it’s easy to think you know so much about software development that you’ll have no problem landing a job. You might have high grades in school, made a great graduation project, and researched the most popular technologies and JavaScript libraries.

However, unless you demonstrated exceptional programming skills as a teenager, you’ve already established relationships with employers or interned for a company. Otherwise it will take some time and effort to find your first job.

Why is it so hard to get your first job?

The real world of Web and software development is completely different from what you learned in a school setting.

You may have done 12-week projects at school with your classmates, but actual teamwork at work is very different from the collaboration you experienced at school. In a team, every member is united with each other to work hard for the project delivery. This means that you need to understand your part of the project, submit compliant code to the code base on time, deliver it on time, and make sure that the functionality you’re responsible for works well in all environments, not just your local machine.

In practice, many projects have been done before, so it is very difficult even for an experienced engineer to modify and use the code immediately. It can be difficult to learn the structure of a project, understand previous code, and modify it without breaking the rest of the project. Companies are spending time and money on new hires, so they don’t want to invest in a junior developer like you during the probation period.

There is a greater tolerance for bugs in your own or school projects. But these bugs are absolutely intolerable in real work. Any link of the whole software release process of the company is related to the interests of the company, before the completion of the whole software release, any bug you have may affect the company’s revenue and image. Each version of the product needs to be tested to ensure that the product has high performance, high security and scalability. This requires that you have a good handle on the areas covered and the testing required during product development. It’s hard to know everything at the beginning of your career.

To sum up, you can seriously improve your ability in the above aspects. This knowledge will be used to your advantage when you find companies hiring entry-level developers.

Decide which programming language you want to focus on

The plethora of information, computing, and related courses will only give you a taste of Web development, software engineering, databases, networking, user experience, architecture, and business development. A common mistake new graduates make is to list all of these skills.

Any recruiter who sees a resume that says they are proficient in Java, c#, Python, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, etc., will not hesitate to turn their attention to the next resume. You may be good at one or two of these, but mastering multiple programming languages is far beyond your reach as a beginner developer.

Narrow down your skill set and decide which programming language you want to specialize in.

Because backend languages are not easy to change, if you choose software development, it is better to choose a language with strict syntax (such as Java, c#, or Python). If you want to go for Web development, go for PHP and Ruby. These will be the foundation of your career. Add some front-end knowledge like JavaScript and you’ll become a full stack engineer.

You’ve narrowed down your skill set, but it shows you’re more focused on a particular skill, and you can choose to specialize in the front end or back end for the rest of your career.

Employers prefer employees who are flexible (i.e., can do what you’re asked to do).

Build yourself a website that showcases your work

The interviewer will not ask you what you have learned in college, because it is difficult to really know your technical level in the interview. They want to know about your development experience, and while you may not have a lot of experience, the process of creating a portfolio for yourself is a process of improving your development experience.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any work to show in your portfolio. Registering a domain name, setting up a server, installing a CMS, creating an account, submitting to search engines, adding Google Analytics, and more are all essential components of building a website. At this stage, site traffic and influence are not your main concerns.

If you already have a personal website, chances are your friends or family have heard of someone else with a similar need, so this is another opportunity to enrich your work. This will give you a chance to sharpen your skills while working for someone else. This also brings you closer to actual project development, while providing a relatively risk-free opportunity to improve your skills.

These experiences will give you something to talk about in the interview, and you’ll be more likely to impress the interviewer if they think they have some little web site you can do.

Create a product or widget

There are some problems you may encounter while building your own website, and these problems can usually be solved with a small plug-in or JavaScript library. However, if you don’t find a solution that works or you have a solution that needs to be developed further, this is a great opportunity to get ahead of developers at your level.

Then you need to find a way to solve this problem and package it so that users can easily use it. Such as a WordPress plugin or an open source GitHub project.

This will further improve your skill level. Because you’ve gone from doing small things for yourself to creating projects on your own. Be able to think about the needs of other products or designers. Your plug-ins and code have the opportunity to be included in larger projects.

That’s one of the things that appeals to the interviewer, because you’re doing more of the actual development. When developing on a real development team, you’re responsible for a small part of a larger application, and you want to make sure your code doesn’t have any problems integrating into the project. As an added bonus, you can charge for the use of your plugin as a little extra income for your efforts.

Participate in online communities

In addition to technical skills, employers also want to see evidence that you love your job, because technology is changing so fast these days that you must be able to invest more time in improving your knowledge. You need to be able to see trends in emerging frameworks or tools. The best way is to read blogs and check out software development sites. When you have something to contribute, make a comment and offer your thoughts. If you can help others solve problems, your community contribution will soar.

You’d think employers wouldn’t care when screening candidates, but they do. It’s not uncommon for companies to look for evidence that your LinkedIn, GitHub, Stack Overflow, and other accounts are dedicated to your research. The top teams will even demand that the candidate’s contribution to the Stack Overflow community be a minimum. There is no better proof of your skills than the advice you give to other engineers.

Open source all your code on GitHub

Put all your code online for the whole world to see. This will strengthen your critical thinking and analytical skills. Peer comments and questions about your code are an important way for your development team to find bugs and fix them in time to ensure product quality. If you get used to this early on, you’ll find that code reviews don’t have any problems and you’ll be able to give constructive feedback in a business environment.

It also provides a way to look at the code you’ve written. The problems you’ve solved and the projects you’ve worked on are easy, but when a senior engineer looks at your code it adds another level of trust to your development capabilities.

Your potential team members also have the opportunity to read and review your code, your design patterns, and your code submission records clearly. Most importantly, it shows that you are familiar with version control, the heart of the software product, and team building.

conclusion

Landing your first job after graduation without actual project development experience is a daunting task. But there are proven ways to improve and engage employers.

Choose a back-end and front-end language, create a website, and then make a plug-in. Read blogs and websites, comment on them, offer your thoughts, and don’t be afraid of what others may say.

Put all your projects and useful gadgets on GitHub.

Remember that everyone is the same, with the same amount of resources and opportunities. Follow the tips in this article and stick with it while you’re patient and you’ll end up with a high-paying job offer.

Finally, @leviding translated and shared:

In 2017, with so many front-end frameworks, what do you choose?

You may also need:

What should be examined in the interview?

Topic: How did you get your first job? What’s interesting about it?

About this article

Translator: @ LevDing

Translation: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/26593436

By @paddy Sherry

Original: https://www.sitepoint.com/land-development-job-without-experience/