Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?

I've applied at probably 3-4 dozen places through my school's job board over the past month and have received zero responses. These are applications for entry level and internship positions. I'm worried my resume just doesn't standout. I only have a couple projects under my belt and no other professional experience.

How can I stand out to recruiters and employers? What can I do to improve my resume? I've worked with many different technologies but I'm afraid because I haven't bothered to work on mastering any of them that an employer wouldn't wanna take the risk on me being able to learn their stack.

When I was graduating, basically all of my leads came from job fairs. Does your school host those? Does a nearby school host them?

Other ideas:

- Alumni networks

- Professors with industry connections

- Friends from school who interned with companies during previous summers

- Friends from school who graduated last year and have found jobs at companies

- Even extended family members might have a useful connection

To reiterate: automated application portals are notorious for rejecting large swaths of qualified candidates. The only way to get past them is a human being, even one you don't know all that well is fine. I've gotten my foot in doors via friends-of-friends that I've only met once.

Best of luck. I'm sure you'll find a job eventually, there are lots of them out there!

Outside of what pg5 user already mentioned, there is probably only 1 more thing you can do.

Employers want problem solvers and people with skills. You may not be able to offer that just yet.

So, you need to instead demonstrate you are worthy of investment. That you are hungry to learn.

That is generally not a quality or a byline on a resume.

Being worthy of investment is to be demonstrated. Think about that.

Its all about behaviors, not skills: Open source contributions, going the extra mile, hustle, and grit.

The most effective way to get a foot in the door, and the thing I wish I did when I was in college was go to all those different career fairs that your college likely hosts.

Talk to the different representatives of each company, tell them what you like, what you're interested in and _ask them questions_. What interests you about their company? If you seem excited about it, they are more likely to be excited about you.

If you have any kind of CS Alumni group, talk to them. Network. It is 1000x easier to get a job knowing someone already at the company vs applying blindly.

Some bigger tech companies FAANG, S&P500, etc have recent grad positions and programs. Those are like rocketships to get you ahead at the company. They might sound too junior, but in practice, you will be working with a different team every 6 months, making connections, and working on tons of different real world problems you can add to your resume. At the end of it, typically you get to pick which team you liked the best, and if they like you back, that relationship is worth its weight in gold for things like promotions etc.

If none of that is on the table then first step is to create a LinkedIn. List all your skills that you know, even if you dont feel that you know them the best.

Have any side projects? Anything you can show in Github? List that as well. No recruiter will look at this, but it will still make you look good.

Lastly, and what I had to do, was literally sit in a cafe, your bedroom, wherever you are, and just apply to every vaguely relevant job that pops up in the area you want to work.

When I graduated I didn't live in a major tech city, so I very literally applied to every jog that popped up with my skill-set (in my case iOS). I swear I applied to over 500 positions. Got maybe 8 interviews. Made it to the finals in 5 and took one job.

If you end up doing this, work smarter, not harder. Make a generic cover letter, and add a paragraph you can change to look specific to that company. Leave the rest the same.

You'll see the same 5-6 job application software tools pop up when applying to different companies. Make a text file that has the info they ask for and just copy and paste. Writing it out each time is exhausting, and soul crushing.

It's normal for it to take a while to get your first job. It doesnt feel great, but we've all been there, and there's nothing wrong with you if it doesnt happen right away. You will get there, I promise.