The Treacherous Road to Employment!

The twists and turns we all experience while looking for that new gig. Let alone a new career, it can be overwhelming.

Currently, I'm attempting my third shot at finding an open door into the programming world. The third time is the charm or so they say LOL! 🤞

My first experience emboldened me. I got quite a few offers right out of college, although the majority of them required relocation. They were to states that I didn't know anything about or anyone. It was hard to turndown, but with a young family it was too risky.

Then low and behold the "too good to be true" job! A remote position with just a few in-office meetings. 🥳️ I completed the phone interviews and simple code review (not a test). Everything was falling into place.

The code review was explaining what a couple of pages of code were doing. It was written in a language I was unfamiliar with and without any comments, but the variable names were enough. It accessed a database to check usernames for birthdates to confirm age verification. My response was met with satisfaction!

Then the BIG BLOW...

Due to fears of an economic recession the company decided to downsize the project, eliminating the need for ME. ☹️ Fortunately, I had a separate career opportunity present itself.

Fate???

It has supported my family and allowed me to have a stable lifestyle. Though it has shortfalls, mainly little room to grow and lack of testing mental aptitude. I'm eager to grow and put my mind to use!

Then I jumped into a Google Python course through Coursera. It was a great interactive program that got me excited about programming again.

So I was back on the road to finding that developer job. I pulled back onto the road just to get T-boned by Covid-19. Well, we all know what happened to the job market during 2020.

It did open quite a few more remote jobs after things started to stabilize. Only to be flooded with resumes from 100s of hopeful developers. Yikes! Impossible!

I received a few of the generic email responses from places that I applied to, but not much interest. I was stumped. Yes, there were hundreds of great resumes but mine got me to the proverbial door before, what's changed?

Life kept me busy and I gave the job hunt another break.

Then I woke up one day and realized it is time. So I started to look at my resume and online presence. My resume looked bleak and my GitHub was simply a disaster. No wonder there was no interest in my last attempt.

I have started to expand and improve my online footprint so that it will be easier to see what kind of programmer I am. Also, I have started to research cities with greater tech opportunities.

What challenges or roadblocks have you encountered battling the job market? How have you been able to succeed? Feel free to share your experience or leave words of encouragement to everyone on this journey!