TLDR:
Here’s my resume and social profiles if you just want to give advice on that that’s super helpful!
Resume
linkedin
Github
Portfolio Site
Cover letter I used for one application I sent
If you want to read my story and could give more general job searching/career/direction/time spending advice that’s also helpful!
Here’s my story:
After 2 years of job searching after graduating with a Computer Science degree in June 2016, this July I got an internship at a Software Company and i’m still working it (it’s paid and would be enough to not have to work a 2nd job if it wasn’t 30 hour limited). The problem is is it’s not a software developer job so while I do get to do some programming through VBA in Excel to automate some processes and do sorting/matching/analysis on data, long term I still deeply desire a full time software job (especially because I still work a part time grocery store job where I just feel my time slipping away when I could be programming or learning).
Anyway my boss told me the the company isn’t currently hiring Junior developers so I should probably start applying to other jobs because he doesn’t want me stuck as an intern for too long so i’ve started fixing up my social profiles and Resume again and have been applying to jobs.
Because of freeCodeCamp and self study i’m most proficient at Javascript and front end development but long term I want to do full stack and also have taken a great interest in low level development, however since right now i’m best at front end that’s what i’m targeting and in the very short term am brushing up on React as my framework of choice (in the past I spent far too much time learning Angular 1, React.js, Angular 2, then Vue, then built an app intentionally with no framework to try the whole no dependencies super fast load times PWA thing).
I also wasted a bunch of time on sites like Codewars (link to my profile) doing problems in random programming languages just to try out and learn different syntaxes and paradigms. The problem with all of this is I have no deep specialty and even though i’ve dedicated a lot of time to study have nothing to show for it.
I’ve attended over 7 local programming meet up groups (4 of them regularly if I had no work) and just this weekend went to a .NET conference (but i’ve decided to move a way from going that direction because even though I used C# in Unity to make a simple game in college and Java was the primary language for most of my classes i’ve kind of fell out of the OO paradigm and getting interview proficient in it might not be time efficient (design patterns etc.). Tomorrow there is a talk on PWAs I will go to and then the next day there is another smaller group where I know many of the people doing lightning talks. Is this an efficient usage of my time or should I be doing white board write ups of javascript closures/prototypes/coercion gocha problems? Or is it better to focus on the algorithm problems and do random selections from cracking the coding interview (I only have a small white board do need to buy a large one and explain time complexity outloud to myself while solving these?)
My current plan was to try and contribute to freeCodeCamp to have open source listed on my resume and more visible code (as well as me really liking this project and the youtube channel and content it has) but when I forked the repo it’s in a pull request consolidation mode (as far as I understand because of the update) so I emailed the link that said you can offer to help merge the pull request to try and help with that but I don’t even know if that is a good use of my time for finding a job.
As far as how I apply I mostly start with indeed and apply to front-end offerings that closely match my resume but will also make stretch applications to things that I don’t have the most experience in but could probably learn (as well as stuff I did some of in the past but forgot) but try to prioritize more relevant positions. There are also local tech companies sites that I check on in my local area (RedHat, Cisco, SAS) but those haven’t had relevant positions recently.
So if you’ve read this far do you have any advice on targeting a more specific efficient direction and plan of action for getting a job (for example is making this post worth my time as it’s taken quite a while to type out)?
