Thought - How to get your First Job
How do you survive in a market where every job posting has 1000 applicants and they all know the same rudimentary skills as you?
I receive the hundreds or messages every week from bright ambitious college students asking one thing
“What exactly should I learn to get a job right now?”
They expect me to say “React” or “Python” or “Kubernetes.” They want a checklist. They believe that if they just acquire the right combination of keywords on their resume the job offers will unlock.
I have to tell them the uncomfortable truth.
I do not know.
And frankly neither does the market.
The disconnect between “Building a Career” and “Getting a Job” is massive. The advice I give to seniors (go deep master the internals) is useless for a junior who needs a paycheck next month. You cannot become an expert in database internals in four weeks.
So how do you survive in a market where every job posting has 1000 applicants and they all know the same rudimentary skills as you?
The Hiring Manager’s Mindset
To get hired you have to stop thinking like a student and start thinking like a business owner.
When I look at a stack of 500 junior resumes I am not looking for the smartest person. I am looking for the Least Risky person.
Hiring a junior is a massive financial risk.
You will likely consume hours of senior engineering time.
You might break production.
You might take six months to become productive.
Most bootcamp grads try to solve this by listing 20 technologies on their resume. They think “Look I know everything!”
To a hiring manager this screams risk. It tells me you know the syntax of everything but the depth of nothing. You are a chaotic variable.
Don’t Learn Syntax Learn Process
If you want to beat the 999 other applicants stop optimizing for “Tech Stack” and start optimizing for “Day One Utility.”
There are skills that every team needs but most juniors ignore because they are not sexy.
Debugging - Can you read a stack trace without panic? Can you use a debugger instead of
printstatements?Version Control - Do you know how to resolve a merge conflict without deleting everyone’s code?
Testing - Can you write a unit test?
Deployment - Have you ever actually put code on a server that is not your laptop?
If you come into an interview and say “I know React but I also know how to write a CI CD pipeline and I love writing unit tests” you instantly move to the top of the pile. You are telling me “I will not break your build and I can do the boring work that seniors hate.” That makes you Low Risk.
The Portfolio of “Done”
The other mistake is the “Tutorial Trap.”
I see endless portfolios of the same To Do apps and Weather apps. These prove nothing other than your ability to follow instructions.
If you want a job build one thing that actually works and put it online.
It does not need to be the next Facebook. It can be a simple tool that solves a tiny problem. But it must be finished.
It has a URL I can click.
It has a README that explains how to run it.
It has error handling so it does not crash when I type a number in the name field.
A junior with one ugly finished deployed app is infinitely more hireable than a junior with 15 half finished tutorials on GitHub.
The Side Door Strategy
The final piece of the puzzle is actually getting in the room. Most juniors complain that they apply to 100 jobs online and get zero replies.
This is because you are walking through the front door along with 1000 other people. The front door is the automated application portal. It is a black hole designed to filter you out not filter you in.
You must learn to use the Side Door.
Stop applying to “companies” and start applying to “people.”
Find the engineering manager or a senior developer on LinkedIn.
Do not send a generic “I am looking for a job” message. They will ignore it.
Send a message that proves you are a peer not a supplicant.
“I saw your team uses GraphQL. I just built a graph API and struggled with the N plus 1 problem. I read your blog post about data loaders and it helped me fix it. Thanks.”
This is not a job application. It is a conversation.
Engineers love talking about engineering. They hate talking about recruiting.
If you can get a senior engineer interested in your mind they will walk your resume to the hiring manager’s desk themselves.
Conclusion
Finally in a sea of identical resumes the tie breaker is never code. It is communication.
Can you explain why you made a technical decision?
Can you admit when you do not know something?
Can you take feedback without getting defensive?
No Guarantees Just Better Odds
I want to be clear that nothing I have written here guarantees a job. The market is chaotic and luck plays a massive role. But this approach is the most effective way to stack the odds in your favor.
This is how I hire. This is how my peers hire. We look for low risk and high utility. Be that person and you will eventually find the open door.