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

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

#81

Post by pawelwentpawel »

> I've applied at probably 3-4 dozen places through my school's job board over the past month and have received zero responses

I'm assuming you were qualified enough for those positions if they came through a school board. Any idea what the competition was? Could you reach out to those companies again and ask for some feedback? If you've sent so many applications and got no response at all I could see 3 potential problems - there is a major power outage, the local market is ridiculously crowded (maybe plain crap) or there is something wrong with your application that doesn't even get you a screening call.

Apart from the above, and with all the great advice from other posters, I'd suggest to create a LinkedIn profile and start building a network asap for a bit more of an outbound personal marketing.

Don't only connect with people who work in hiring but also with other more senior software engineers - they usually have established networks that you will be able to access if you post anything. Ask a couple of them if you could get a review of your CV / some advice on the market, you might learn a lot from them. While not everyone will agree to your request, you'd be surprised how helpful and kind strangers are.

Once you think your network and CV is sufficient, drop a post saying what you do and what kind of work are you looking for. Then reach out to those connections you added previously and ask if they could hit 'Like for more exposure' - this will bump up your posting in feeds of their networks. Adding this method to my past job hunts has been an awesome boost and got me great gigs that I wouldn't even know existed, pretty simple yet effective.

> I'm afraid because I haven't bothered to work on mastering any of them

Try at least one - it's not a waste of time even if you end up using something else on the job. I'd pick something popular (javascript and friends maybe) to increase your chances of getting through the first interviews.

> employer wouldn't wanna take the risk on me being able to learn their stack.

That is probably slightly true but in my opinion the point of an internship is to learn. I wouldn't hire an intern and expect them to be experts. Technology changes very often and even senior engineers have to learn new stuff on the job too. Very rarely people who just graduated have all the knowledge and know the exact stack in and out. Don't let this slow down your efforts.

Good luck!

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

#82

Post by viraptor »

> I've applied at probably 3-4 dozen places through my school's job board over the past month and have received zero responses.

Potential reality check - over a decade ago, with some non-trivial experience I sent out my CV to 200+ places and got maybe 5 responses. Don't stop - you'll find something, but these days it may be even harder. Don't limit yourself to the school's job board. (that's where you get a guarantee of competition with similar skills)

> 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.

Don't worry. If you can make a working Hello World on your own, you're already better than quite a few graduates. It's extremely uncommon to get someone just joining the workforce who is close to mastering any tech. If that's the direction you enjoy, just add to your application that you're trying to be a generalist. It's a valid idea. Unless you're joining a (for example) a specialised 100% C#/WPF consulting group, even senior people are pretty much expected to learn more of the stack on the job. (and the stack is expected to change)

> How can I stand out to recruiters and employers?

Are there any tech meetups which are currently safe to attend in your area? If so, see which companies attend there, check out their tech - maybe you can show you're interested while chatting to someone there.

Also if you have anything interesting to share there's often a chance to present and stick a "btw, I'm looking for a job" slide at the end. (just don't be a dick about it - the talk needs to be actually worth doing)

> What can I do to improve my resume?

Have you asked someone to review your resume? Link it here, or try to find someone on twitter - there are people in the industry who offer CV reviews from time to time.

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

#83

Post by epicureanideal »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #63
NetToolKit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try applying to smaller companies. Smaller companies aren't going to land the candidate from a top 10 school who already interned at multiple Fortune 500 companies. But small shops need to hire talent too. They're digging deeper and they have to read the resumes more closely. There isn't much of an HR department, and the hiring manager might be sifting through the raw resumes themselves. This describes my situation…

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 with no vesting cliff. It’s not smart to trade salary for stock when you might leave before the cliff through no fault of your own. So smart candidates often round the value of stock to $0, especially before the cliff.

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

#84

Post by pacifika »

Have you done a placement? Call those contacts and ask for recommendations. Then call those recommendations and if they have nothing available ask if they have contacts you can call. Relevant people in your CS department probably have a network as well. You could call a computing department or tutors in nearby educational establishments and explain you’re interested in job opportunities in that area and ask for contacts.

You might end up for example talking to someone from a business organisation who can put your cv in front of a members meeting and those are good leads, that worked for me.

Your attitude, determination and ability to learn matter more, the CS degree gets you past the requirements stage.

CVs with expertise in too many technologies not backed up by work can be suspicious, keep the ones you have anecdotal talking points for or are your strengths.

Good luck

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

#85

Post by ktpsns »

landont wrote: post #26

Google top venture capital firms and look at their portfolio companies. Find a few that are early (series a-c) to target. Pick ones that resonate with you. Venture capital firms do tons of due diligence, and if you join early enough, when an exit happens it could be a big payday. Write to them about why they resonate with you. Use LinkedIn to find out the right person to message. Your goal is to get into the intervie…

Cannot second this enough. I wonder why so many people want to go to FANGG where a well funded startup can be so much more exciting and little to no insecurity as an employee.

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

#86

Post by zelphirkalt »

Firstly 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 thesis, you might get hired there. That is one way at least.

However, as CS graduate, you can find a job almost everywhere, even with a kind of boring CV. Where I am from, Software Engineers / Devs get above average salary and many companies needs them. The question is rather, whether you are willing to do the job on an ethical level. If you look for an OKish job, which has a bit lower salary, you will probably be accepted, because people not just starting out will not consider applying there. After getting your first job, it will be easier to get another one.

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

#87

Post by sealeck »

zerr wrote: post #76
jjav wrote: post #64

Earlier 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.

It's about the price - there is a shortage of people willing to work for 5-figure.

Although some places do find talent hard to source, at any price (see Microsoft's Bing team who have _really_ struggled to hire enough people to compete with Google)

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

#88

Post by zelphirkalt »

ansy wrote: post #25

Bigger, 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…

Also in a smaller company, chances are, that you need to touch a larger variety of the systems, as people are not in as specialized roles. At least in my experience. This is great for people starting out, because they will learn a lot on the job.

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

#89

Post by unicornfinder »

jjav wrote: post #64
ansy wrote: post #25

Bigger, 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.

I would say there's a shortage of skilled mid to senior level developers, but at the junior level, not so much. That's not to say even decent junior talent is easy to find though.

Keep in mind those large companies can be very desirable to work for - many people don't want to work for these smaller companies, including myself at a younger age, but in truth I think smaller companies can be better to work for depending on what kind of person you are.

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

#90

Post by Retric »

unicornfinder wrote: post #89
jjav wrote: post #64

Earlier 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.

I would say there's a shortage of skilled mid to senior level developers, but at the junior level, not so much. That's not to say even decent junior talent is easy to find though. Keep in mind those large companies can be very desirable to work for - many people don't want to work for these smaller companies, including myself at a younger age, but in truth I think smaller companies can be better to work for depending…

It’s not that mid to senior people are rare, it’s the expectations get high enough most can’t stay in the field. Mid is generally generally viewed in term of years of experience not talent.

Someone that’s good but not great with 7+ years of experience is going to have a rough time as are any senior people that picked the wrong software stack.

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