What am I doing wrongly?

Career Advice
1

Ahem…, a little help, please?

I actually had started feeling confident enough to apply for some junior/ intern web designer posts after 2 years of self-teaching alongside 12 hours of full-time jobs as a security officer away from my home country, followed by 2 months of web designing course I took here in Nepal (am currently in Nepal). I even created some dummy webpages and hosted them on GitHub, so that I could show them off to the IT companies. I then applied for web designer posts which would say it is for junior or interns. But no one seems to respond to it and offer even an unpaid internship to me. Lately, I even started applying to remote internship programs on whatever location I would find in various job portals.

Am I missing anything to get that? Please help me find what it is that is stopping me to move forth from this point. I’ve linked the projects mostly I show off on emails for the application below:

I’ve been feeling demotivated a lot lately to learn more, due to this. Shall I blame my luck, the COVID thingie or am I putting my effort into something that is not meant for me? Every suggestions count, PLEASE HELP!!!

2

hello! i’m new to coding and you might be better waiting for replies from more experienced people. but i’ve had a look at your work…

based on the projects i’ve looked at, my work needed is not on your coding (the designs show evident skill) but on the presentation i.e. the text, photos & grouping design elements together with less space in between.

your web coding skills are obviously good, especially your animations and colour schemes & all of these projects demonstrate that, but to me some of your sample text is a little too sparse, i think you should pad out your text elements slightly so your pages look more “full”.

also maybe get rid of any stock images with watermarks across them - and either take some photos yourself, or use stock photos without watermarks for a more professional look.

what i mean is - make your sample text/photos look a little less like samplers and a little more like the real thing… hopefully this makes sense! i don’t have the pro language skills. let me know if i’m not explaining this well.

also in general i think you should either a) group your elements a little closer together, or b) pad out your elements with some beefier content.

also… i clicked on some drop down menu links on one of your pages and nothing happened, i would expect something to happen when i click. so maybe introduce a text colour change, or some kind of movement. or even better, create a page to link to. just so the page feels more alive.

hope this helps in some way, it’s only a first glance opinion. and i’m not technically experienced, but i do think some very simple changes would make these projects look more finished and more pro.

good luck you’ve obviously worked very hard.

whatever is lacking here will be very easy to fix, you’ve done the difficult bit. it’s just presentation from i can tell.

respect,

lizzy

1 Like
3

Hey Humble Assassin, I’ve been in your exact shoes when I did not get a single response for even an unpaid internship, and yet I don’t know what went wrong and how to improve upon it. Now that I have overcome that and having worked professionally for quite some time, I would share my perspective from a developer’s point of view.

  1. Job Market Research - Do good research on what skills are in demand in your local region for your targeted position and the places that you targeting on joining. Chances are that your skillset is not matching well with the job requirements.
  2. Stick with a path - Since I worked in the US, also I know the industry is similar in East Asia, what I interpret it based on my past experience, might not be true everywhere else in the world. If I am a hiring manager that is recruiting, you are stepping onto 3 different paths at the same time without a clear target
    • Web Designer, what you have proved to the hiring manager, is that you are capable of building marketing pages with limited functionalities. This is a traditional/older path that was popular 10, or even 20 years ago. Nowadays is mostly done by a web design agency and on the lower end of the tech food chain. It looks like you are on this path to be solely based on your portfolio. I would not personally aim to walk this path due to many reasons, like pay, competitions, the rise of template automation solutions, future growth, and so on. If that is your goal, then you should not learn MERN stack, picking up WordPress, PHP and other relevant skills should be what you are looking for.
    • UI/UX Designer, which is common for the tech industry nowadays to have UI/UX designers coordinate with the web developer. Maybe this is the path that you are actually targeting based on your work. This requires a basic/intermediate level of skills of HTML/CSS/JS, a strong set of skills in graphic design using tools like Adobe suite, and some good UX project planning skills. I couldn’t speak too much on that since I have limited insight on that path. This is a great portfolio by carol from my perspective, it is presented as a product designer though, so you should emphasize more on the UI/UX part if you are following her pattern.
    • Software Engineer/Web-developer, which is the path I went with. I will be straight forward with you if this is the path you are aiming for. Based on what I see in your works and Github, you are the furthest away from this path. The core skills like React are very limited basically non-existence, not even mentioning the entire full MERN stack. You will not even pass on the recruiter round, not to mention hiring manager, tech challenge interview, and so on. I would say focus on React(with Redux, SASS) only out of the MERN stack, it will take you way too much time to become a full-stack MERN developer at this stage. You could become a frontend web developer to break into the industry first. Try to build polished projects that are functionally feasible like @lizzyjane340 mentioned. This path could take you another year or so based on what I see. This is my portfolio that I had 2 years ago when I applied for a full-stack developer role. You could try to build something similar with Frontend only, neglect the backend and infrastructure side of things.
  3. Business Perspective - This will come after getting #1 and #2 sorted out. Even as an unpaid intern, you need to sell yourself as someone who could output values other than consuming too much time on the senior folks. That makes hiring you a negative investment even if you offer free services. Once you nailed down #1 and #2 I would suggest putting less emphasis on your past learning experience, put a heavy emphasis on the impact you have brought prior.
    • For example, A engineer with 2 years of frontend web development experience, have exposure and a good understanding of server and database. Contributed to more than 10 web applications for local businesses that helped them attract an average of XXX revenue and 100,000 cumulative page view/marketing impressions. Looking for a XXX role in the XXX industry/area to contribute to with my web development skill as well as personal growth.
  4. Keep on grinding - Take the beaten and bruises, get back up on your feet, and keep moving forward. I know it is stressful and emotionally harsh, but put yourself in the perspective of the long run, if becoming a developer is truly your dream, which would be the worst? Spending 2 more years of grinding and finally achieved your dream, then 20 years later you will be cherishing your accomplishment with your family, and be appreciated to the past self that you have not given up your dream. Or admit that you are defeated and live the rest of your years with regrets of missing the promising opportunity offered by our current generation and questioning on yourself “what if I tried harder?”.

The process of starting a new career is rough, and it will continue to be rough until you finally gain a foot on the ground. Prepare yourself strategically, keep grinding down the path and you will be at the place that you envision yourself in, for sure.

3 Likes
4

Hey @HumbleAssassin!

You have already received some great advice already.
I just wanted to add two things.

  1. I would suggest contributing to open source projects. Right now, your github profile only has your personal projects. Being able to show an employer that you are also active in the community and contribute to different projects will work in your favor.

  2. I am not a huge fan of skill bars on portfolios. I don’t really get them. Rating yourself on different languages doesn’t make sense to me because that prospective employer is going to form their own opinion on your skills based on your projects and coding tests. So I would personally leave it out.

2 Likes
5

Also for your resume, I would replace experience with projects.

Right now your experience section just talks about what technologies you have learned in two years.

Example from your resume:
I started as self-taught before I decided to seek professional mentorship
from the institute for two years from various online resources while I was
still working as full time Security Officer in UAE.
I learned about front end technologies
I learned basics of version control
I created and built some mode

The experience section should be for internships, freelance work, previous junior dev jobs, etc.

So I would personally get rid of that and just list the projects you have worked on instead.

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6

The projects you are using as examples of your work look unfinished and somewhat unprofessional to me. They’ve got a ton of filler text in them and some of the English is not very good. When you are competing for a job with a lot of other people then things like this might keep you from getting consideration.

1 Like
7

Hey there,

a job application has multiple parts:

  • writing to the correct person
  • showing who you are
  • proving that you can do the job (e.g. showing projects)
    …

Why do you think that your projects are the problem?

1 Like
8

Actually, I am not sure if it is in my project or it is in the CV that I prepared. I just wanted to know what could be the possible factors for this and tackle them one by one.

9

I would start with the resume since that is the first thing people see.

Do some research on how to put together a resume that gets noticed.