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

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

#51

3 weeks from (cold) apps to offers, with somewhere around 140 apps. My approach may be mildly unusual, but I think there's a bunch of very good reasons to play it like a numbers game. Off the top of my head: - The more interviews, phone screens, etc. you have, the better you get at them. Better studying than studying. - Having a competing offer, even if you don't plan on taking it, is going to make companies you DO w…

This has always been a difficult challenge when job hunting for me, and I'd be curious to hear how you dealt with this in your application process.

Nearly every job offer I've encountered expects a response within a few days. In practice, I'm usually interviewing at multiple places and at different stages of the interview process at each.

When engaging with so many companies, how in the world do you synchronize all the offers + interviews?

For nearly every offer I've received, I feel that the company might take objection or even not allow me more than 3-4 days to decide on an offer.

Also, how do you manage other companies sensing that you're 'playing the field' with them (which can easily become apparent, when you're employing these tactics)? That's generally not positive for goodwill with someone you might eventually be working directly + closely with.

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

#52

3 weeks from (cold) apps to offers, with somewhere around 140 apps. My approach may be mildly unusual, but I think there's a bunch of very good reasons to play it like a numbers game. Off the top of my head: - The more interviews, phone screens, etc. you have, the better you get at them. Better studying than studying. - Having a competing offer, even if you don't plan on taking it, is going to make companies you DO w…

This has always been a difficult challenge when job hunting for me, and I'd be curious to hear how you dealt with this in your application process. Nearly every job offer I've encountered expects a response within a few days. In practice, I'm usually interviewing at multiple places and at different stages of the interview process at each. When engaging with so many companies, how in the world do you synchronize all t…

Re: response times, I don't think it's unreasonable to explain that you have additional interviews coming up. You're excited at the offer, but you want to explore your other options before making a final decision. Then get on the phone with the company/companies you really want to go to and get in for your onsite ASAP.

As has been discussed on HN ad nauseum, most exploding offers are pretty BS. A ton of time and money has been spent on you already, they want you, and the odds they rescind that if you ask for an extra week to decide are pretty slim. That said, by waiting you DO probably give up some of your ability to ask for extra $$...

One final note regarding the perception of playing the field. It was something I was concerned about when I was in the job search process. When people asked me where else I was interviewing, should I tell them? Doesn't that reveal that they're not, so to speak, my one true love? Had that exact discussion with the recruiting team at my current gig; turns out it generally makes you appear more desirable than disingenuous.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>GitHub has generated several leads for me too. I 've had recruiters say the generic line ' I am impressed with your projects on github' , I am sure none of them actually looked at my github. But in your case looks like it was not some random recruiter? This would be my ideal way to find a job, I would always choose this over stupid whiteboard interviews.

I'm not the OP, but my portfolio and side projects have outright given me jobs before. Quite a long time ago I had a small project done in Java, but I built an XML file format for tracking all my stories, and an XSLT script for generating a burn down chart, calculating velocity, etc, etc. OK... XML and XSLT... I said it was a long time ago ;-). I provided a link to the Java code as proof that I could do some basic Ja…

Those katas are awesome, great job recording it. I love pomodoro technique .

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

#56
post #32

I have also been appling for developer jobs and waiting more than a month for more than rejection responses. For anyone who came here to share advice about my resume, here's a link via my VPS: http://162.243.149.58/Resume.pdf

one quick piece of feedback: resumes about stories. namely, your story: what have you done? how did you do it? what impact did it have? there's a hint of a story in your last internship - there was a proposal? you proposed it to management? you wrote some java code for hadoop? what did all of that do? but it's hidden amongst very low calorie things like "ssh key management" which is basically just copying blobs of te…

Excellently articulated, this is what you want to go for.

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

#57
I haven't gotten a job yet myself but I got my first interview by having a resume that really stood out. My process was:

- download their website

- edit the images and content to add your CV details

- convert html to pdf (I used https://pdfcrowd.com/html-to-pdf-api/)

- send

In my case the job I was applying for was a campaigning/petitioning platform so I sent them a petition titled "Hire mpatobin to work at X" and had some fun with the copy.

I can send you a copy of it if you'd like.

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