It has been said in plenty of sites and forums that you should apply for jobs even if they dont match all of your requirements, including if they ask for x years of experience or they ask for an specific education.
In my case I´ve been learning for little more than a year, and I have done an short bootcamp during this time. I´ve built a portfolio. With this in my back I´m appying to jobs that:
Ask for 1 year or less of experience.
Ask for education that is not a CS degree (bootcamp or vocational schools degrees) or they dont even ask for any education (very rare but sometimes I find some).
However I have a doubt. Should I recognize in my cover letter that I do not that have that education? What about experience? Should I write like I assume they refer when they talk of “experience” also self-taught experience? (even though i know they mean professional experience) Bascially the job site where I apply cover letter is very important because the CV section is quite poor so most companies the first thing they read is the cover letter so I wonder if I should recognize there that I do not have the education they asking for or I should just dont say anything.
The education requirement is mostly a formality of the req – just ignore them. I have no degree, and I always left the education section off my resumé entirely. Never had a single interviewer ask me about education. Nowadays I have enough experience that I can laugh at anyone who tells me I need a degree (I’m quasi-freelance anyway, so I laugh at interviewers in general).
Cover letters are a waste of time. Absolutely no one reads them now. Instead, punch up the little “about me” blurb that goes at the top of the resumé, which is usually the first thing people see.
Well thanks for the reply I guess I’ll have to start applying a more jobs if I feel the job offer is a good match even if they ask for a degree!
About the cover letter is because the job site you can’t attach a CV, you just can put experience and education in a very schematic way… since I don’t have experience nor formal education in CS apart from a little bootcamp, if I don’t do the optional cover letter when you apply to the job, I literally have almost nothing for the RRHH to show when they receive my application! Lol
then use the cover letter to highlight why you would be a good fit
don’t beet yourself down saying why they shouldn’t hire you (if you mention you don’t have the education, it will be you saying you don’t think you qualify for that reason)
I’m a hiring manager for a mid-large software company.
No. Talk about your skills using the asked for tools/languages/frameworks/etc. You have a very small amount of the hiring manager’s attention – don’t waste it with a negative point that will be obvious from your resume.
Don’t approach the question of experience. Again, talk about your familiarity with what they’re asking for (bonus points: link to a project built in the language/tool/etc).
Hi, thanks you for the advice. I will do exactly that!
I want to ask you a question since you are hiring manager:
I live in a small town and here there aren´t many job opportunitties. So I usually apply too to jobs in a much much larger city (Madrid, Spain) which is a 2 hour train from my city…
In the profile when I apply it appears the location of the applicant, so I never know really what I should say when I apply regarding this…
Usually I say something like this:
“…by the way, I currently live in [my current small town] but I travel regularly for family reasons to [city where the job is offered], so I wouln´t have any problems in having a in-person interview”
In one sense this transmits that you care about the job offer, but at the other hand, it also puts a kind of “pressure” into the hiring manager, right?
What´s your opinion in that? Other option of course is just changing my profile location to the city that I want to apply too, of course. But I don´t want to lie if I don´t have to of course…
Where I am currently working at (Argentina, Buenos Aires) I’ve seen many applicants from places as far as where you are. IMO it sends out a good message that you care about the position and care enough to share those details. But also, why do you feel the need to mention that?
