Hi people,
This morning I got called by a recruiter asking me to do a traineeship. She claimed it would be hard for me otherwise to ever land a job in the Netherlands since I don’t have 2-5 years work experience. Also she said a Bootcamp will be a terrible idea since she says it is hard to find a job for those people. What is your opinion on this?
Right now, I am working on my Portfolio with React and Material-UI. My goal is to land a junior developer job and not do a traineeship first where you can’t pick where to work. Here is a screenshot of my portfolio so far: https://i.imgur.com/immbPI7.png
Do you think I have a chance with this when it comes to getting a junior developer job? I don’t want to kid myself but at the same time I want to reach the maximum possible. Feeling a bit pressured now for this traineeship so figured I would ask for some advice here.
Thanks!
Victor
Hi Victor,
Is this recruiter offering you a traineeship, or just recommending one? If there is an offer, what are the terms of that offer?
Of course, she is right - it is hard to get a job without experience! It’s not impossible, though. So it becomes a gamble based on the resources you have available to you, your capacity to build a network and seek opportunities, and the job market in your area.
I met up with an old colleague this morning that is now a software engineer after having started an apprenticeship in February. She actually started work for the company in their marketing department, but let them know she was leaving to start an apprenticeship as a developer elsewhere. They liked her so much they created an apprenticeship for her there instead, and now she’s graduated to a fully contributing member of their team!
Her example shows that not only are apprenticeships worthwhile in some cases, but also the importance of networking and using the resources available to you.
My story was very different - entirely self taught; no internships etc. My break-through came from attending a meet up and networking.
There are many others in our community that have taken lots of different paths to finally get where they wanted to be.
The key for you will be to try everything reasonable! If you can do the apprenticeship without too much of a financial burden, then it could be a great opportunity. You could try getting a second opinion from a competing recruiter - they may tell you something very different. If you can’t do the apprenticeship, then keep self-teaching and try to make opportunities for yourself through meetups or freelancing or anything else that helps you towards your goal.
Good luck!
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Thank you very much! I decided to say no to traineeships for now and see if I can get a junior developer job myself first. Also that just convinced me to put my portfolio online and add more projects to it:
https://victorvermeulen.github.io/Portfolio/
I’m not sure what a “traineeship” involves, but if it’s unpaid I wouldn’t listen to what someone trying to convince you to do work for free is telling you about your other options.
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It really depends how confident you are in landing a junior dev position
if if has been half a year in your job search then yeah it’s probably better than nothing
But if you are just starting to look for work no
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Thank you. It really depends on the traineeship. Basically you often make a bit less, have to do some jobs that you don’t want to do (so they make their investment back in you) but the plus side is that you receive training and feedback in return so you will be in demand later. There is a high demand for IT people in the Netherlands so many companies start traineeships because of this. Maybe you find this interesting with google translate:
https://traineeshipsoverzicht.nl/traineeship/it
Thank you. That was my reasoning too. I did not search seriously yet, since I first want to have better achievements to show for on my portfolio.
