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How to Get an Entry Level Software Engineer Job_
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Feb 6, 2024
"How to Get an Entry Level Software Engineer Job" is an instructional video designed to provide aspiring software engineers with practical guidance on securing their first job in the field. The video likely covers a range of topics, including building a strong resume and portfolio, networking with professionals in the industry, preparing for technical interviews, and showcasing relevant skills and experiences. It may also offer tips on how to effectively search for job openings, tailor application materials to specific positions, and stand out as a candidate in a competitive job market. By offering actionable advice and strategies, the video aims to empower viewers with the tools and confidence needed to successfully navigate the job search process and land an entry-level software engineer position.
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How to get an entry level software engineer job
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In this video, I'm going to be talking about how to get your initial experience
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Then I'm going to talk about how to market yourself. And finally, I'm going to talk about where to apply
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It's important to remember that when you're trying to get your very first position as a programmer
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employers are looking for someone that they don't have to spend a lot of time teaching
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They aren't going to want to hire someone who's going to require a lot of training unless maybe you're an intern and you are going to be working for dirt cheap
0:29
But in general, they want someone who's going to hit the ground running. It's expected that there's going to be some ramp up time
0:35
You're going to have to learn their application and some of the tooling and stuff like that. They want to be assured that you are low risk when it comes to how much time you are going to take
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and that you aren't just going to become a money sink that's not delivering value and that's bringing the whole team down
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Because when you're new, if you aren't able to get up to speed fast, then you are not only wasting time for yourself and money
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all of the other engineers that you have to interact with that you're having to ask questions from and everything
1:05
they all get impacted and slowed down. And so you actually can slow down the whole team
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Again, there's an expectation of a certain amount of ramp up time. But the more you can prove that you are ready to hit the ground running and that you can quickly get up to speed
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the better off you're going to be. And if you're new, then you aren't going to have a lot of experience to speak for
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So you have to do things that are going to sell your. yourself to prove that you have skills and that you have the experience that you need
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The very first thing that you should be doing is you should be having your own website portfolio
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And this is something that you should build yourself and that can stand as a sample of code
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but that will also be used as a place to showcase the different things that you have worked on
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so that you can have a visual impact and convey in as few words as possible, a lot of different things
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that you have been able to accomplish. The next thing that you could be doing is building websites for other people
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That could be doing some websites for smaller companies, for some nonprofits, for your neighbor
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Anyone who is needing a website, especially if they're willing to pay, that's great
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But even getting started, even if you're having to donate some of your time to just, you know
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build something that you can put on your resume as something that you've done for another organization
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that's going to be great. you could also be building some website templates and things that you're going to sell on like
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Envado or someplace like that and potentially create a recurring source of passive income
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Start building things that you can use to showcase and that provide some visual interest
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Think of your website, personal website that you're building as kind of a marketing tool of something
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that's going to visually showcase a bunch of different products. And those products are the things that you have worked on
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I'm also a fan of when you're getting started, if you want to have some showcase pieces to consider building an application that you either deploy to the Apple store or, you know, to the Google Play store that will allow you to learn how to, you know, not just build the front end of an application, but also, you know, the back end and the deployment process
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and then you have something that people are actually using. Because I think that's going to be huge
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that if you can demonstrate that people are using this application and it's something that they could actually download themselves
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and they could play with the application and get a feel for what you've accomplished
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and that is proof that you have built something that is being used
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And the more popular that application is, the better. And one of the ways to do that is to build applications
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that tie into an interest you have, a hobby, something that you know because then you can be in a better position to identify areas that would be useful for other people and that would actually solve existing problems And again like with maybe building some website templates that you sell
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the apps can be another source of revenue on the side that, you know, creates a form of passive
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income. And it doesn't just have to be an application. If games are your thing, you could build
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a game that's, you know, deployed on the app store. Anything like that that is a project that
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aligns with your interest can be really good. Because then you'll also be more passionate about it when
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that comes time to interview because you're excited about the topic and that excitement will carry
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through. And excitement is huge in convincing someone that, you know, you plan to stick around
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and you're in it. Another thing you can do to build up your experience in your portfolio is to
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contribute to open source projects. Now, this isn't something that you're going to be able to do
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right out of the gate because contributing to a project is going to require some experience
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in order to actually get your poll request approved and merged into the project because you're
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going to have to be able to write some quality code. But you could definitely start out by looking
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at open source projects and seeing what problems they're having and trying to solve them and then
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work off of that and refine it. And it's a great way to get some exposure. Also, meet some other
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people in the industry and interact with people and learn the process of submitting your code
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through, you know, pull requests and things like that. Also, if you're doing that and you have
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like your GitHub account and everything, it creates kind of like a public record of some of those
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contributions and and acts as a source of proof that you can also share with potential employer
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And there are employees who are going to ask for your GitHub account. So, you know, this will
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you know, have that already established for you. Now, I had mentioned building a personal website
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And that could have been because you wanted to have a blog or it is going to be your portfolio
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And if it's your portfolio, that is going to play a huge part in getting your job
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Anything that you can convey visually will have a greater impact because it's a
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it is always more effective to show instead of tell. And when it comes to your portfolio as a programmer
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you want to be able to convey what you are working on
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without having a huge clutter of words and stuff. And so for me, I like to do that with thumbnails
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and things of projects that I've worked on and have something that's just visually impactful
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I really try to treat it as almost like a brochure or if you think about like a product launch website
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like when Apple is launching their product and stuff, and there's just, lots of visuals so that immediately you see it and you're like, oh, wow
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And it conveys that this is really cool, really quickly. That's kind of what you want to have happen with your portfolio website and stuff
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It's not about telling. It's not about deep diving into things. It's not about trying to convince them of, you know
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everything that went into, you know, building the application. You're trying to just say really quickly in case they just barely look at it a glimpse
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Oh, look, here's 10 different things that I've worked on. They all look different
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Oh, yes, this person has worked on a bunch of different things. Yeah, we're looking for someone who does front end work and everything
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And this kind of looks like the quality of stuff that, you know, we would expect in everything
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Yeah, I'd like to ask them some more questions about it. You're just trying to create questions that, you know, a hiring manager would want to answer
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would want to call you to come in so that they could ask you those questions and, you know
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have you answer them. That's when you want to be answering the questions. you know, deep diving into it. But to get your first job, a portfolio is huge. I think that that is
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one of the things that really helped me with getting my first job was that I had taken the time
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to really put together a nice visually attractive portfolio that I was able to like pull up on
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my iPad. So I go into the interview and I'm like, yeah, this is actually what I've been working on
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stuff Here this Let me you know demo this for you and you know walked around there and showed a bunch of things I didn spend a lot of time on each of those items as I was describing them but being able to talk about okay you know and I built this with Angular and it does this and this and this
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stuff and this tool that I built doing this. Basically, it just kind of reassured the person that, okay, if they went to the effort to showcase this, then they've likely done that
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Now, you don't want to be laying and putting stuff in there that you didn't actually do. want to be, you know, truthful there and put in your own work and stuff. Always be like open and
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transparent because otherwise it can just bite you and it's not worth it. I know some other people
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choose to fib on like the resumes and stuff like that. I'm not a believer in that. I believe in like
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you know, being straight because sometimes those things come around and can really bite you
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The next thing you should be doing is having your LinkedIn profile filled out. My first enterprise
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level job actually came from doing just that. I wasn't expecting that job offer. I had started
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to look at like other places and stuff, but it was actually a recruiter contacted me through
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LinkedIn about a position and I was interested in that position and I said yes and that started
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the ball rolling and eventually that led to a job and I didn't even have to, you know, go out
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and apply for it compared to some of the other jobs where, you know, you just fill out the application
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and you apply and you don't hear back from anyone because you don't even know if that position
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is even going to be fulfilled. There are companies out there. who constantly have open positions on their websites
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just in case that awesome person happens to be available, you know, that they're gonna snatch up
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but they really don't have any plans to fill that position with anyone other
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than the most exceptional candidates. And they may not even have any interest in
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or need to fill it right now. They might just be collecting, you know, resumes of people so that down the road
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if they do have an opening, it'll get filled. But when someone actually contacts you off of link
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in, that means they are trying to fill a position because the recruiters only get commissions
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if they fill positions that actually exist. And that leads me to working with a recruiter
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You might be able to work with a recruiter to find a contract position and it might be easier
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for you to get a contract position than a full-time position because it's less risk to the employer
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They know that there's a set amount of time that they're going to be hiring you contract and that
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if you aren't doing a good job, then at the end of that contract, they don't have to renew it
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They don't have to worry about unemployment. They don't have to worry about all these other issues, legal issues, because you are not
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their employee. There is less risk. But when you do get in as a contract position, then you're able to work hard, prove your abilities
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And there's a lot of times opportunities where a contract position will roll over into a full-time
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offer from the company if you're doing a good job. so it's a great way to get your foot in the door
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And even if they don't renew it, it's still experience that will go on your resume
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to help you get that next job. You should also be heavily focused on applying to smaller jobs
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Anytime you're looking at the really big enterprise companies, there are going to be a lot of layers of bureaucracy in there
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and HR is going to have a lot of filters, and they're going to have a lot of systems
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that actually will be filtering out resumes and things like that. It could be really hard to get your first job
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in one of those companies if you don't either have a connection or if you don't have a computer
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science degree. By focusing on some of the smaller jobs, they may not be able to pay as much as
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some of the big jobs. They are a great way to get your foot in the door and really you're just trying
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to get that first job. And I would argue that as long as the pay is reasonable, you should probably
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take whatever you can get for that first job because once you in and you get at least a year experience or maybe you stay there for two years but that first experience will help you and make getting the next job a lot easier and it just gets easier and easier
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So anything you can do to just get that first job, and a lot of times that might mean working
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for a smaller shop, a smaller startup, or a mom-and-pop shop, or maybe a shop that's building
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out websites for other people. But focusing on smaller startups can be a great way to get your
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foot in the door. Now, one of the ways that really worked out well for me was by trying to
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create my own position in the company that I was already at when I was first starting out
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And you do this by looking at the direction you want to go in software and then look at the
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company and trying to figure out, okay, are there any needs of the company that aren't being
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addressed that I can either build a small tool to address or are there improvements I could
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make to the website? You know, and if you're just starting out and if they already have a website, then they
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probably aren't going to let you just have access to, you know, their code and to do things with it
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What you're likely going to do is say, okay, they have a website or maybe they have some marketing
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websites. That's a really good place to start. They have some marketing websites that are
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kind of getting dated. I'm just going to make some updated websites. You can't upload it because
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you don't have access to their systems, but you can build a website and you can show them and say
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hey, I've been really interested in, you know, building websites and things like that lately
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And I saw that our website was getting older. So I did some play on. around after work and, you know, came up with a redesign for the website that I think would be
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really cool, you know, is that something you're interested in, you know, using and stuff? And if they
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say, yes, great, you know, you get your foot in the door and maybe they start letting you do more
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and more of that. And if not, then you still have that portfolio piece. So it's kind of like a win-win
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because if you're going to be building something anyways to showcase, whether it gets used or not
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it doesn't really matter. You build something that's functioning, that looks good, and that has
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develop some skills. And one of the things that you should really keep in mind is that it's
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easy to hear about all the different salaries that are out there and to get greedy and have this
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expectation that you should be making a lot of money at your first job. First off, different areas
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paid different amounts. If you're looking at Silicon Valley wages and you live in the Midwest
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you know, might have some false expectations about, you know, what you should be paid to begin
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with. But just don't get greedy. Try and find what is, you know, a reasonable starting
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salary for your area and a lot of times people are kind of tight-lipped. So, I mean, you could look at places
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like glass door, try and get an idea of entry-level positions and really, you know, just try to be
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competitive because, again, you want to get that first job. And then after that, you should start
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working on increasing the amount you're paid as a salary because your value goes up really quickly
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as you get more and more experience. Don't get greedy on that first job. Just try and get in the door
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anywhere you can. Now, if you do happen to have a computer science degree, then one of the easiest ways to do
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this is to start with an internship because those can often turn into a job and you are getting
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practical experience and there's a good chance that you're going to get paid as you go. And with a computer science degree, you're probably going to be able to negotiate a higher starting salary than
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someone who is coming in fresh who does not have a degree and is going the self-taught route or the
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boot camp route. And the other thing you should be working on is networking and making connections
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with people who are already in the industry. And the way you do that is you can go to local meetups
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where people are talking about different things in your industry. You know, if you're interested in the front end
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you can go to JavaScript meetups and learn about the different frameworks that people are using
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and you can chat with and make connections and friends with people there. And you can also get to know people that are hosting the meetups
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and what their companies do. And just start making a network of friends
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And you never know one of those friendships might turn into a job offer. So now that you know how to get an entry-level software engineering job
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You should watch this video on how to write a killer programming resume and I'll see you in the next one
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