Ask HN: How long did it take you to get your first dev job?

Here is an idea: Take whatever they are doing-- let's say it's a social network-- and re-create a very basic version of it using new hot technology. Then send it to them and say, "Hey, I made a basic clone of SocialNetwork with an Elm front-end and Rust microservice backend on Docker utilizing Neo4J and Elastic Search."

That will grab their attention! The ultimate engineering employee is one who is passionate about working for the company and takes the initiative to go above and beyond what is expected of them. (Notice I didn't say that the smartest/most accomplished person is the best employee). Your goal should be to appear to be that ideal employee.

The layout (especially the "Knowledge and Skill" section) look like you're trying to pad things out to fill a page.

If you do more admin stuff, maybe you are applying for the wrong jobs. If you are looking for software development jobs, be concrete. Give examples of projects you've built or contributed to: e.g. "Implemented significant features for in-house helpdesk ticketing system (Python/Javascript/HTML/CSS) supporting 35 users and over 2700 tickets/week." Enumerate the "working code" that you shipped.

I had zero professional experience, and bad grades. I knew that for my first job coming out of school, a lot of places would ask for a transcript...so I pointed most of my energy at places where the HR process seemed lax enough that I'd get to talk to developers (who could advocate for me) before I had a conversation where grades would come up.

At the start of my search, the Star/Globe had an insert with "Canada's Top 100 Start-Ups" - I cold-emailed all the ones in there which seemed interesting. A few got back to me, and one of the ones that did is where I'm still working.

As someone on the other side of the table now (at a ~25-dev shop), some things I think about when I'm considering new grads:

* I'm looking at passion, which I use as a proxy for long-term potential upside. You likely won't be a valuable contributor for 6+ months while I get you up to speed on my domain and what real-life professional programming is like. Some new grads can have an immediate impact, but most of those will have already been hired by Google/FB/etc. before they even think of my company. Convince me that you're the one I should be placing my bet on.

* If your CV talks about a mobile app you built, have it installed on your phone so I can play with it. If you talk about a web app, have it bookmarked and walk me though it. If you have one of those you're not excited to show me, I'm going to assume it's bad or you didn't finsih it (so don't mention it). If you don't have one of those and you're a new grad, I'm going to wonder why not. These don't have to be sophisticated; what you're showing me is that you're excited about technology, and can apply it in a non-academic, non-forced context.

* Show that you can communicate well. We're going to be spending a lot of time teaching you stuff, so I'm going to be probing to make sure that you can absorb it all (emotionally and socially).

* Don't focus that much on your specific tech stacks, aside from enumerating them. I'll assume your experience is of limited/academic depth only, and that you don't have much real-world experience. Don't boast that you know Scala when you used it for a project and a co-op term; focus on selling that if I need you to learn OCaml, you'll be a quick study.

Lastly, re: meeting engineers at meetups etc. - don't forget about follow-ups. Maybe the person you had a positive conversation with was just being polite...but it's more likely that they just forgot about the conversation. Send them an email a few days after to remind them you exist.