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Andy
Andy

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Needles, Haystacks and Early Career Job Resources

Photo by Zhifei Zhou on Unsplash

Long ago, you could throw a resume on Monster.com and hope for the best. I landed interviews that way in the early 2000s. I'd get a random email from a recruiter and go from there.
(The other was in person career fairs, which I didn't mind but they never led to much for me.)
My first "serious" tech interview was at IBM. I was working at IBM part time in technical support and got an email from a recruiter:

Recruiter: Would you like to work at IBM?
Me: I already do!

Talk about pure chance. But that lead to my first onsite interview and first software job offer.
Thankfully, Handshake and other companies exist to help folks coming out of school or starting their career.

Now that I'm deep into my software career and have been a hiring manager for a few years, my ❀️ goes out to folks trying to land their first gig. It must feel like a needle-in-a-haystack approach of applying to many jobs, rarely getting feedback, and lots of waiting.

(Shameless plug: if you are looking for a new job after starting your career, I'm hiring folks with 2+ years of experience for SRE and Software Developer roles at NinjaCat. Check us out!)

I have helped build an apprenticeship program and mentored folks transitioning from Support to Engineer roles. I try to mentor or coach folks early in their career. I don't have the answer but I do have some answers. In the last few months, I've wanted to compile a list of resources to help early career folks looking for technical roles. And here it is.

Credit goes to the creators of all this great content - the folks organizing supportive communities like VirtualCoffee.io and The Collab Lab, Danny Thompson, and more. And big thanks to the folks in virtualcoffee.io for compiling this list.

Early Software Career Resources

I'm categorizing these as Job Hunt, Community and Learning. Have anything to add or think it should be organized different? Did I get anything wrong? Respond and let me know and I'll adjust.

Job Hunt

Resources for landing a job, finding open roles, interviewing, etc.

Community

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I've needed help in my job search as an experienced engineer and I think it's important to have support, encouragement, and guidance. Hopefully one of these communities can help you as you're searching for a role.

  • Denver Devs Discord - My hometown team, if you will. There's a Career Mentors and Career Juniors channel in here that are a good resource.
  • VirtualCoffee.io - One of the most friendly and sincere communities of developers and tech-adjacent folks on the web. Get involved and help out if you're interested too!
  • The Collab Lab - I have only heard amazing things about this group. "A place to work alongside your peers in a fully remote setting" as you learn is an excellent idea and gives folks great experience going into a full time remote position.

Learning

Everything else. Guides to starting your software career, landing your first role, more articles on interviewing, etc.

Top comments (5)

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bekahhw profile image
BekahHW

This is such a great list! Thanks for adding my post.

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virtualandy profile image
Andy • Edited

Thank you for all you write and share and how you help others!

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cassidoo profile image
Cassidy Williams

Thanks for sharing my content, Andy!!

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virtualandy profile image
Andy

Thank you for sharing it in the first place haha!

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virtualandy profile image
Andy