Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid

Senior dev here who wasn't even a CS grad.

I got experience by finding a job with someone that didn't require experience- they were ok with a certification. After that, I used experience and connections to find jobs. Usually they just fell into my lap.

Today is different. But I'll give you a hint: either co-op or take a job in some sort of related field part-time in college if you can and network. Networking no longer means attending club meetings or being a douche who tries to sell himself to others during social/networking events. Instead it means coding at meetups, etc. with others. It means getting involved in open source projects that people actually use a lot- the same people interviewing for jobs that you're applying for.

No one is going to just hand you a job. We are now churning out kids to college who got trophies just for playing sports. You don't get a job for finishing college anymore. And getting jobs without having experience has never always been easy. But if I did it without even having a relevant degree many years ago, you can do it with a degree now.

If you suck a interviews, practice. If you get nervous when you speak, join Toastmasters. Actually do stuff like coding up applications for things you are interested in. Maybe you have a steep hill to climb, but you can do it. I'm not saying it is easy. But there are enough jobs out there that if you don't get one, you are either (1) in the wrong place (move to another tech hub city) or (2) you have a deficiency you need to work on. There are jobs for people right out of school. I know because I know people that have gotten them while in school, and they are set when they get out. Stop just taking classes like that is enough. It isn't.

So- of course inexperienced doesn't mean stupid.

But it does mean: unexperienced. Get some experience.

1) Inexperienced Joe's most pressing problem as a result of inexperience is attempting to find a job by looking at job ads. Joe does not yet know, but should learn, that most jobs in fact have no associated ad, and that jobs which do have ads are disproportionately jobs you do not want to apply for. Instead, Joe would have been better off attempting to get his name in front of people who have the authority to hire junior programmers, who are a) legion and b) overwhelmed with their current inability to source candidates who are capable of producing working programs/systems/etc.

1b) Not posted job description anywhere accurately represents all parts of the job, and for the right candidate, companies are willing to ignore virtually anything. The right candidate is "anyone who can convince the decisionmaker that they're the right candidate." Decisionmakers at many companies value grades a lot less than Joe, in his inexperience, believes they do.

2) There actually do exist many companies which invest, heavily, in being the first job you'll ever have. Fog Creek and Matasano spring to mind, and I'd work at either. Both of them do it in part reaction to the fact that if they didn't experienced talent would be available too infrequently and priced too high for them to hire the quantity which they want to hire, which strikes me as a common enough problem that other companies probably adopt quietly the policies those guys adopt publicly.

I get offered and x-number of juniors per month. I don't need to advertise for inexperienced juniors. And most of them come via internships anyway. As a consequence, I don't spend money or effort advertising junior positions.

Average Joe needs to be more pro-active in selling himself to companies he wants to work for. Job postings in general are more a description of an ideal than a list of cold hard requirements. What he has to do is decide if the future version of him wants to match that description and sell the shit out of that.

From what I gather, Joe has been applying to exactly the wrong job postings, those that look for people fresh out of school and select on grades.

Also, you know all that experience and those technologies listed in those job postings? We know you don't learn that shit in class. We certainly didn't. So if you read between the lines, you'll see the real #1 criteria: be pro-active and never stop learning.

Despite all the HR horror stories, expect most hiring managers to be able to tell the difference between "I've had two years experience with X because my last boss made us do it" and "I've spend the last two months teaching myself X because it is awesome". Guess which most of us prefer.

Average Joe needs to grow some balls to break into the industry. Most professions have it way worse. Try talking to an actor.

>that most jobs in fact have no associated ad

so what should he do then; go into google maps and drop off a resume at every nearby engineering firm?

That's actually a pretty good idea (and I am being serious). These firms are always looking for good engineers (I didn't say "experienced") and have a hard time finding ones. This is especially true for smaller companies that don't have very strict hiring process.

If a guy walks in my company's lobby to ask if we are looking for engineers, I'll certainly give him an interview.