The important thing is to not give up! It’s not uncommon to send out dozens of resumes and receive no response. Big companies have software that uses algorithms to throw out as many resumes as possible before anyone looks at them, you might have better luck at smaller companies. Recruiters are free, make sure you use them. There is no pay to play in the US, if any recruiters ask for money then it’s a scam. Both in your written resume and when talking to people, don’t harp on being a fresh grad or having little experience, focus on talking about the things you do know and have done. A short cover letter with a couple lines stating that you are excited about an opportunity to work with the specific hardware/software (mention them directly by name) mentioned in the job posting might help - people love to see enthusiasm. Don’t be afraid to take a side job to get some spending money while you look for a tech gig, restaurants are desperate for people at the moment, just make sure mornings are free so you can take interviews. If you have family you can live with while you look then take full advantage of that - lots of people do that - and in forty or fifty years you may be returning the favor.
Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
91–100 of 141 posts
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#92Get a LinkedIn premium subscription and ask alumni of your school for referrals. Just random alumni. I was given this advice and thought it was brazen and aggressive and that nobody would do it. I didn't after graduation. I was wrong and when I tried it later, it worked. And I ended up doing it for others who messaged me. Apply though the back door for VIPs. Plenty of people are happy to put you in. Random people on…
> Get a LinkedIn premium subscription
How does this help with asking alumni of your school for referrals? Can't you do that with a regular account?
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#93Bigger, name brand tech companies have way more applicants than they can accept so they have a crude recruiter funnel that is tossing out resumes for any reason they can find. They're literally trying to turn thousands of resumes from hundreds of schools into curated packets of dozens of candidates. But recruiters don't know a thing about software engineering. At best they can keyword match a few buzzwords they got f…
> They're literally trying to turn thousands of resumes from hundreds of schools into curated packets of dozens of candidates. This would indicate that there is a severe oversupply of candidates eager to work in this industry. Which may well be true, but conflicts with the narrative that there is a severe shortage of people.
It indicates an abundance of applications for sure. That doesn’t indicate an oversupply of applicants nor of qualified applicants. How many times have we read the advice to apply for hundreds of jobs and only apply to those that take little effort? I think there’s a lot of people out there applying to every long-shot job because the prize is large enough.
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#94Bigger, name brand tech companies have way more applicants than they can accept so they have a crude recruiter funnel that is tossing out resumes for any reason they can find. They're literally trying to turn thousands of resumes from hundreds of schools into curated packets of dozens of candidates. But recruiters don't know a thing about software engineering. At best they can keyword match a few buzzwords they got f…
> They're literally trying to turn thousands of resumes from hundreds of schools into curated packets of dozens of candidates. This would indicate that there is a severe oversupply of candidates eager to work in this industry. Which may well be true, but conflicts with the narrative that there is a severe shortage of people.
Almost all these people will get jobs at non-Faang companies.
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#95Firstly I would not worry too much about it. You are writing a master thesis or something at the end, I guess. Look for a company where you can work part time and work on your thesis in the setting of the company. As a student you are a cheap worker and many companies look for that. You should obviously choose something interesting, otherwise you might not pull through to the end of it. If you do well during your the…
This is basically it…a lot of people are applying to google but not that many to your local large insurance company that needs Java Enterprise programmers & pays decent but unspectacular salaries. Once you have experience it’s much easier to get the next job.
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a note: With recent spike in salaries, many venture backed companies don't have the cash to pay the salaries of good seniors. Spoken with a dozen founders in SF facing this problem over the past two months.
This doesn’t seem possible. Startups are raising Series A rounds of 15-20 million routinely. A quarter of that would cover a reasonable number of senior engineers for a year or two. But just in case it is possible… Maybe they should try offering meaningful stock packages, rather than 0.1% and less? Meaningful as in 0.5 to 1% for a senior engineer, 4-6% for a manager, until salary improves. Also, try offering stock wi…
You shouldn’t be giving managers 6-8x what you offer senior engineers at a startup, at least not in a startup where engineering matters.
If smart candidates are rounding the grant value down to zero, smart companies will not seek to give grants that are multiples of the current size. (That’s giving away $100 bills to someone who values them at less than your cost.)
When you’ve raised a $20M round and have an employee pool that is 10-20% in total, you don’t have many 1% grants to give…and you have exactly zero 6% grants to give.
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're literally trying to turn thousands of resumes from hundreds of schools into curated packets of dozens of candidates. This would indicate that there is a severe oversupply of candidates eager to work in this industry. Which may well be true, but conflicts with the narrative that there is a severe shortage of people.
There is an oversupply of candidates, as evidenced by the fact that engineers have very little bargaining power about the terms of employment with any particular company. The negotiation for 90% of engineers is very one sided.
And then how does that compare with other jobs? That possibly can be said for negotiation for 90% employees in any field too.
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#98You might look up this HN thread for ideas or inspiration.. lots of good stuff on that thread! My recommendation? Get a NOC Technician job at a datacenter/hosting outfit or ISP. It’s pretty easy to get your foot in (at least somewhere). You won’t get paid much, but you WILL learn a helluva lot of actual real-world tech fundamentals, and most importantly, you’ll learn how to troubleshoot and move and act quickly.. jus…
For skills-development, I totally agree. I have several strong devs/other tech roles on my team who came via this route.
For salary-development, you’d probably be better if you start SWE, even 6 months “late” and rotate through an SRE group at some point early in your career.
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a rough anecdote, what I've heard consistent from my network is that the current job market is wildly different depending on experience level. From what I've heard and seen, anyone hiring a junior engineer is getting overwhelmed with applicants the moment they advertise it. Going up in experience level, the same places that are overwhelmed with junior engineers are begging for senior and principal engineers and a…
Agreed. It's hard to hire senior people with experience in anything much. I strongly suspect that our industry has a self-inflicted injury where we make developers - even people who are meant to be doing deep algorithmic stuff - do web stuff and devops and 80 other ancillary things - then we jump up and down because we can't find people with experience at higher level things. Even at a very senior level, I've been as…
Isn’t much of the job/industry “web stuff” though?
Re: Ask HN: Graduating CS soon, how do I find a job?
#100Getting the first job is hard. Don't be picky. Just apply for everything related to CS. It is normal for companies to ghost you so don't expect hearing back from 90% of them, even if you have had an interview.
I also recommend ignoring the requirements in the job posting, like years of experience, tech stacks, etc. The job postings are made by recruiters that don't know what they are doing.
Once you have two years of experience you can get a job at any company, so don't give up. If you end relocating you can move back after you get those two years.