Graduated from the bootcamp last month, feeling it's so hard to get into the industry

I graduated from college last year with statistics major. After I graduated, I know I want to be a developer. I attended a coding bootcamp, and finished the program last month. I’ve been applying jobs in linkedin, indeed, and glassdoor. Didn’t get any interview, the company will either not responding me or just say we will move the other candidates. I also get emails from companies like revature telling you to relocate to another place with minimum pay, and worked for them for a certain period of time. Before I start the job hunting, I thought this is a ripoff, and now I even start to consider about it.
In the meantime, I’m learning data structure at the same time, revising my resume , and projects. It’s just so hard to get the first job. If anyone else has similar experiences, you are not alone.

Hello @morningchenyun, welcome to freeCodeCamp!

Its hard to get a job, especially in the current COVID climate. Lots of companies are struggling, and all companies are having to deal with fairly dramatic change to daily life. This doesn’t make getting a job much easier.

However, just because its hard doesn’t mean its not possible. The generic approach to getting a job, pandemic or not is to have a plan, execute that plan, get feedback on your plan, update your plan and repeat.

Even with your quick summary of your background you do mention a number of advantages that can put you above the other people your applying against:

  • You have a college statistics degree, this is big as it will get you past job filters that require degrees, and its in a relevant field.
  • You went to a boot camp for web development, this means you should have direct experience with web development.
  • You have gotten offers from companies (Revature) they just aren’t what your aiming or expecting.
  • You have projects to show off

You don’t mention a few things that may or may not be impacting your overall job search and application process.

  • How long have you been applying? Even during the best of times, job searches could take months.
  • What kind of feedback have you gotten when applying?
  • What have you done to in regards to the feedback you’ve gotten?

There’s always other questions that could be brought up to help refocus that plan I mentioned earlier. Its not a fool-proof method of getting a job instantly, but it is a method to get you closer and closer to getting a job.

Finally I wanted to point out I bring all of this up because there are other people in the same boat, and I’d hope this advice helps you and or anyone that ends up reading this post. :slight_smile:

Good luck! Keep learning, keep building, keep applying! :smiley:

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I’d suggest you post your resume/portfolio to give more information on where you stand. There’s a few things I would bring up based on what you described.

  • One month of job hunt is really short period of time, this could easily takes multiple months if not a year for you to eventually land as a new grad.
  • While landing full-time is very hard, getting internship, contribute to open source project, or even some “ripoff” work could be a few magnitude easier. I would also apply for those position as well, have a few months of these intern/freelance experience would boost your resume tremendously.
  • I’ve reviewed a lot of bootcamp grad resume for both at work and helping out voluntarily. The one common theme for bootcamp grad is that the resumes are very repetitive. I could tell which bootcamp a candidate graduated from just by looking at their tech stack/projects. Keep that in mind that you are mainly competing against your fellow classmate for junior positions. You really have to go an extra mile to differentiate yourself from others either by extending your project, have more tech stack matched with job requirements, more industry experience like mentioned in previous point