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Jasterix
Jasterix

Posted on • Updated on

Best way to get project experience BEFORE my first job?

I've spent the last 3-4 hours struggling to find a great resource for technical project-based volunteering. I'm a future junior developer, who wants to get real-world experience in the time before starting my job search.

As fun as working on personal projects has been, it has been less fun than working on scoped projects with a team. So rather than shifting my direction to open source, I'm interested in a part time volunteer project.

The ideal experience would be:

  • guided / overseen by an accountable organization
  • scoped to a specific timeline, with mapped deliverables
  • part time (5 - 10 hours per week)
  • geared to a real-world social issue
  • led by a senior developer (this is critical)
  • in a dev team (3-10 people)
  • mimic a dev workflow
  • fullstack
  • similar to the (now defunct) freecodecamp nonprofit projects

This list is deliberately project oriented. Though I am still studying and am weeks (if not months) from landing a full time position, I'd love to find a great project part time (5-10 hours per week).

Running list of resources I've applied to or checked out:

This will be in addition to my weekly self study, algo practice, meetups, hackathons, personal projects, etc. Working on a team project is an invaluable experience for any field.

In university, I always pursued competitive summer internships, while volunteering during the semester. So I'm hoping the same will be possible in tech.

Separately, this is a great resource for nonprofits who want to recruit great tech volunteer.

Top comments (7)

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andres profile image
Andrés Pérez

Check if these guys are still running cohorts chingu.io/

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eerian profile image
Erion Pali

Ah Chingu still around, might give it another try

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jasterix profile image
Jasterix

Thanks, I just applied! Can't believe I forgot about this program. Did you go through it?

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andres profile image
Andrés Pérez

I was a member during 2017.

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abdurrkhalid333 profile image
Abdur Rehman Khalid

First of All I want to thank you for this post, it is a great resource for persons who struggles with finding the new ideas or even ideas to work in order to create the portfolio, I am bookmarking this post so that later I can share this with my other fellows as well.

I recently applied at Chingu, and After initial process, they asked me to build a Project so I build a Book-Search Application whose more information you can get from the link of my GitHub Profile.
Search-Book-Application

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jasterix profile image
Jasterix

Hi Abdur, this is great. Thanks for sharing the github. I'll try to keep it up to date as I come across more resources. How long after applying did they reach out?

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abdurrkhalid333 profile image
Abdur Rehman Khalid

I guess after one week I got the Startup Guide and they will now send me more information about getting started on 12th September as well.