How do I separate myself from most entry level devs?

I’m taking a gap year and my goal is to get a junior back-end position. I recently completed the CodeCademy Back-end Developer Course. To find out the standards for a back-end developer, I read stories and articles and what I find that commonly pops up are:

  • Active Github profile (daily commits)
  • Well-structured and documented programs. (Modular & uses Swagger Docs)
  • Projects that are specific to my skill set. (Back-end would be APIs, server-side logic, databases, etc.)

To implement this, I’ve planned out my year:

  • Weekly mini-tasks to strengthen back-end skills
  • Midyear project which compiles skills learned
  • A capstone project
  • Job prep for internships/junior position

This is a fairly simple plan and I would love to hear input & feedback from the community about this plan. What other standards stuck with you that helped get you the job? Any stories, tips or help is much appreciated.

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Hi @ejsalga2007

Talk with potential or ideal employers.

  • Ask them what hard and soft skills they are looking for.
  • What are their cultural values? Visit their website and read reviews about them to gain an insight.
  • Have examples of your strengths, your work, and approach to work which aligns with these values, featured in your resume or cv.

Happy coding

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Great point by Teller, but I would expand on it.

My feedback is on the fact that you seem focused on a specific set of technical skills as the way to get a job. I have two responses:

Response #1 - There is a huge diversity of skills throughout the tech world, and the ones that are in demand can vary by your location.

So what can you do? The only way to know your local job market is to interact with other developers personally. It’s a great start to ask questions on a forum, but the best thing to do is to ask these same questions to hundreds of other developers at local meetups (and conferences, and online too). And the very best time for you to start doing so is now, at the start of this year of learning, before you are actively (and perhaps desperately) looking for a job.

The answers you get to your questions should shape the course of your technical learning over the year as well. There are some cities that still have a huge demand for Java, or for .NET, and if you’re in one of those cities, you should probably change your focus from something like NodeJS or Python.

The answers to your questions should challenge all of your assumptions. If you asked me for advice at a meetup and told me you want to be a back-end developer, I would tell you that in my experience, there are fewer and fewer pure back-end roles on the market. My team recently hired someone for the back end, but the job was called Full Stack Developer (back end focus) because we needed someone who could work on the front end if needed. Of course, I’m just one person, and I haven’t studied the broader job market, and I don’t know if things are different in your area. That’s why you should talk to hundreds if not thousands of developers in your job market over the next year.

Response #2 - Pure technical skill is unlikely to get you your first job.

A lot of developers (myself included) start out with an assumption that pure technical skills will qualify you for a job, and thus the way to separate yourself from the competition is to hole up on a bedroom, basement, or maybe a series of coffee shops, and achieve technical superiority by out-working other people (and maybe Leet-coding your eyeball out too). Even if this does not lead to burn out, it often leads to social isolation, which is the opposite of what will actually help you on the job market.

What you really need on the job market is to know people who can recommend you personally. If you have spent a year meeting developers and discussing what you’re learning and making, those are the people who can recommend you to be considered for an interview. At this point, the interviewers may (or may not) look at the projects in your portfolio, and they may (or may not) give you a technical interview. On the strength of a personal recommendation from another developer, the interview may be just a behavioral interview to check if you are a good fit for the team.

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Thank you for the short but valuable advice!

I have not really considered soft skills and it was largely mentioned in other posts. It’s a practical skill I’ll develop over this year.

Thank you for taking the time to give such detailed information!

I’ve been hearing often on how important soft skills are and it makes sense since I will be working closely with other developers. I plan on putting more effort into networking since there are a few developers I know in my community. I haven’t paid any attention to what technologies are demand in my area so I find that really good advice. Thank you so much for the detailed and actionable guidance!

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