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

It took me about 7 weeks, in that time I submitted upward of 90 applications, as I was okay with moving. And had interviews/emails trickling in at the 2 week mark. My resume was groomed, and edited by some career development minded folks, I did a lot of reading on resume formatting and word choice. Practiced white boarding, reviewed and felt comfortable with the base data structures and algorithms.

I would say if you can speak to your relevant experiences and are able to tie that into the position, most times the 2-3 years of experience or BS in CS or engineering is a soft requirement.

That being said shoot for doing 4-5 applications per day, and if an interview goes poorly, brush it off, and get ready for the next one.

I created categories, or staging points for each application in asana, and treated the job search like work. (Applied, emailed, follow up thanks, phone screen, phone interview, onsite, etc)

Depending on who is doing the hiring the process could take an hour or it could take 3wks+ if its a big organization.

Edit:

Also reframe any "problems" as challenges, and instead of making negative comments try to pull out the positive from any given situation when asked about something.

It would be interesting to see your resume. Imagine you are the hiring manager at a company and read your resume. Would it make you interested? I see a lot of resumes that list a set of skills but there is nothing in them to hook me.

What do you have on Github that's actually getting you job leads?

I'd say a few things will move you up the pack extremely fast:

* Do open source. This doesn't necessarily mean "Contribute to some huge project"- I mean, do ANYTHING, commit that to Github, and use that as part of your advertising process.

* Attend local meetups. Doesn't matter how unrelated they are. Is it for designers? Who cares, go and meet people. People throw away resumes, they have a much harder time throwing away a handshake and a smile, especially if you tell them what you've been up to.

* Don't be afraid to show passion for whatever it is you're working on. It also will make you stand out greatly over the other applicants.

I know this is going to be hard advice to take, but learn to be self-sufficient in your development work. Don't know how to get a site online? Learn how to deploy. Pick some technology that seems neat and learn it inside and out- I did this with Docker over the course of 2 weeks and immediately was able to put it to use when talking to employers.

Also, follow up with those Engineers you talked to. Be a squeaky wheel. Especially for the ones who are doing something interesting.