7 Tips on How a Junior IT Professional Can Find a Job Today

The economic crisis is reaching us inevitably: many large tech companies retire their staff, including entire departments, and put the hiring processes on hold. It stands to reason; these world events affect the tech hiring market as well — the number of IT talents looking for a job is significantly increasing. The competition between even experienced candidates with vast professional backgrounds is tough; for junior tech talents finding their first job turns out to be a real challenge today. However, the mission is possible.

Choose online resources for your job search

No doubt, LinkedIn remains one of the most popular online resources for finding a job: first of all, start with updating your status on “open to work” to draw recruiters' attention. While describing your key skills, use hashtags to make your profile easier to find. If you have any courses completed and the certificates — be sure to include them too as well as the link to your portfolio in case, you have any.

Are you looking for your first job and the only experience you have got is an internship? It can also add some points, so be sure to indicate this in your profile, not forgetting to write what tasks you have solved.

Also, various job boards (for example, Indeed) are what you can and should also use while searching. If you are interested in a specific tech industry (i.g. gamedev or any other), be sure to use thematic job boards where you can find job openings in the field you want to start your career. Some job boards put vacancies for junior talents in a separate category, which further makes the search process much easier.

Taking part in various job fairs is still a thing: you can kill two birds with one stone by developing your networking and making new connections and looking for job opportunities at the same time. Many companies from large corporations to startups usually take part in various job fairs, telling you more about job openings they have at the current moment.

The rule of 10

Sometimes even experienced candidates can get upset after unsuccessful attempts, and junior professionals often go through such refusals much harder. How could you reduce your stress level? Convince yourself that finding a job now, especially the first one, is a long process, involving lots of effort, time, and mental resources, so do not blame yourself if you do not receive thousands of invitations to interviews the next day after the start.

Response to as many job openings as possible: the rule “you send 10 CVs and get one invitation to an interview” can also work in the case of juniors. It is not worth spending a lot of time on compiling the perfect cover letter exactly for each company: Prefer making yourself a template that can be easily changed rather than spending plenty of time on writing the perfect cover letter for every company you send your resume to.

Try mock interview

Job interviews, especially when it is your first one, can be really stressful. How can you reduce stress and feel more confident? Try to arrange a mock interview — it can sound complicated but in fact, everything is quite simple and useful.

Where to look for such a service? Again, you can use LinkedIn or other social networks: many recruiters offer their help, including ones with very rich expertise from world-famous companies. At the mock interview, you will do some roleplay with the most popular questions you can face at the real job interview, discuss with the recruiter how you can answer them, give feedback on your performance and growth areas and develop your strategy.

If not LinkedIn, then you can look for such services at the tech recruitment agencies' websites or various meetups.

Portfolio and pet projects matter

You may not have “real” work experience yet, but in case your occupation involves having a portfolio (for example, a frontend developer), create one at any rate. Surely during your studies, you completed some projects. Sometimes interesting cases and a competent portfolio can be the decisive factors for an employer to continue a dialogue with you.

Where can you create a portfolio? Decide on the perfect variant according to your key goals and objectives: you can create your page at websites for creators (e.g. Behance) or just store your files on your Google drive in Google Doc/Sheet format if it fits you more.

Furthermore, include pet projects in the portfolio, if you have ones. It can be everything: from the video game you are making together with a friend to the website you are working on. Don’t forget to mention it at the interview and add at least a general description to the portfolio, even if the project is still in the process of being created.

By the way, do not neglect pet projects: they perfectly help to gain experience.

Networking matters too

With developed networking, the chance of finding a job through your connections increases significantly (which especially matters in the case of juniors) — in many large companies, there are special referral programs for employees who bring new hires, so the situation is win-win for all parties.

The Internet is not the only place where you can join some tech communities: visit various meetups and workshops in your area to gain new experiences and make new people. Moreover, you can find some meetups for juniors during which various experts give their advice on how to start your career, what to focus on, and share their own experiences and useful lifehacks.

…As much as a mentoring matter

Mentoring is currently developing in the IT field rapidly. Don’t give up if your financial state doesn’t allow you to use it: today it’s possible to find a mentor also on a free basis. Certainly, this way may be more complicated, since there are fewer such offers, but some experienced specialists write that in the current situation they want to do their best to help in any way possible and offer mentoring for a symbolic payment or even without it, especially for talents coming from certain unstable regions.

Juniors often have a lot of questions, and cooperation with the mentor makes it possible to develop as a professional faster. How to find a mentor? As a rule, you can do this in thematic chats or channels, via LinkedIn, through acquaintances, or within an IT community on various online resources.

Think of your soft skills

Even if you have minimal experience, but you know how to present yourself in the most component way, this can play in your favor.

Which soft skills are employers looking for more often? Leadership, responsibility, flexibility, ability to work in a team, meet deadlines, and act under unpredictable circumstances. In case you confirm each soft skill with facts, it is always an advantage. Take into account that having work experience is not mandatory for this: for instance, you can illustrate leadership qualities by providing examples from your courses or university where you led a group project.

Hope my article will help you navigate through creating your job search strategy. My main advice is do not give up, do not stop trying, and believe that the mission of finding your first job is not impossible!