Finding your first job as a junior developer

 

New year, new start!!! Let's talk about the most challenging but rewarding journey: finding your first job. You must have just finished your study or intensive training to become a software developer. Now comes the time to showcase your skills and get the position you wish for. Finding a job in Finland is never an easy journey, especially when you have almost zero year of working experience or even a degree if you have just taken some courses and learned programming by yourself. Here are some strategies and tips for you, hopefully they can help your journey be more successful. 

If you have not had working experience to show, you still can "make" it

There is a saying that "Fake it until you make it", but unfortunately, I do not think it works in this case :D. Moreover, nothing is worse than promising something you can not deliver. So... what "make" it here? If you have known me before, you know that by the time I was applying for jobs, I had been programming for 6 months including the time for study. I studied to become a digital marketer, and worked for several years in Marketing fields. I have been through a long thinking process to become a programmer which means I have to start all over again: no background, no experience. It was hard, I have to admit that. 

I was building my portfolios by doing group work: building small projects during my studying at Integrify, taking some clients and building websites for them. I built websites for my sister's company, I built websites for others in my connection with a small fee. Those are all real projects: I started from understanding their needs, researching technical solutions, wrote all the codes, and deployed to production. They are my friends, so they trust me to handle their websites even though I have not had any experience. By doing that, I had chances to have hand-ons experience, and some products as a showcase to recruiters. 

Some special notes when you are building your portfolios:

- Even you are doing school work projects or just a small projects for learning, remember to follow best convention and practices. Since the technical examiner will focus on it a lot when they are checking a candidate's portfolios. 

- Aim to write all the code yourself from crash. Using a framework or some fancy library helps make a website look amazing. But it was my mistake back then, hopefully you can learn from it. A team lead is a programmer, they tend to look at the code instead of the website :D, your lines of code should be the focus. 

- If you can have a collaborative project with others using GitHub, it will be a huge plus. Working with others is already a challenge, like you have to resolve git conflicts almost everyday or someone else changes something which breaks all the things you did. On the other hand, it is a great experience. You can make a more complicated project with more people, you know how to use tools for collaboration (GitHub, Jira, Miro,...),  and you know how to handle the pros and cons of teamwork. 

By doing practice projects but in a broader scope and higher complication level, you can step closer to real life projects and use them to showcase your skills. 

Dear Mr/Ms, I am desperately looking for jobs. I can do everything if you give me the job.Best regard.

Write a job application that make you are YOU

Writing a job application has never been easy for me: I do not have any experience or achievements to say. When applying to the 10ths company, I ran out of ideas. What I have in mind, and if I can, I just want to write to the cover letter that: 

"Dear Mr/Ms, 

I am desperately looking for jobs. I can do everything if you give me the job.

Best regard,"

Just kidding :D.  I think if you do not have much to add to the CV, besides your projects, the cover letter is your chance: try to make it personal, and communicate the values you can bring to the company. By saying being "YOU", I mean the following:

- Being specific on your characteristics, qualifications, and capabilities. For example:

"I am hard-working" would be better by saying: "When studying at the university, I arrange time beside study to participate in volunteer projects".

"I can learn effectively" would be better by saying: "I was starting without any knowledge about programming but at the point of graduation, I was among the top 5 of class".

Give your points strong justifications, and specially a clear benchmark to help recruiters easily evaluate your potential.

- Not only express how you are the best fit for the company, but also explain why you think the company is best for your future. To be frank, I do not think we have any preference for company, we just want the job :D. But really, even if you are a junior, you still bring value to the company. If you believe that the company is best for your future, the motivation, and your interest can make your application stand out. 

Do your homeworks

If you apply for jobs on LinkedIn, you can see the statistics of how many applicants, how you rank among them. Do not be sad if you do not belong to the top 10, or if you met all the requirements, the successful candidate is still not you. Be confident and believe that there are chances for everybody at every stage of their careers. Either you are fresh graduates, junior developers, or switch your career, you still can find a position for yourself regardless of the challenges Finnish job market. Back then, I did a small research of those who have the same background like me: less than 1 year of working experience, or who does not have a computer science background: which companies they started their first job with. Surprisingly, there are quite a lot of great insights from that. Besides applying for vacancies on LinkedIn and other career sites such as Duunitori, I also sent open applications to those companies, or to the companies I find interested. I did get replies from them. Some lead to the interview, some others they prefer me to a suitable position or say they are not open for junior positions at that time but share the time when I should reapply when they will have their own program for junior developers. I would encourage you to do some research, browsing through LinkedIn, talking with your friends,... you may get great insights that make your job search more efficient. 

Open for all opportunities but don't lose your opportunities

Different people have different approaches in terms of job application: some send mass applications and wait for what matches, others are more selective and spend more time preparing. It depends on what you find works best for you. To me, I think the number of technical companies in Finland and their open positions are limited. If you get rejected from a company, which means you have lost one chance. So use all the chances you have carefully and effectively. 

Applying for 10 positions with 10% successful rate is still better than 100 positions with 1% successful rate

Furthermore, everytime you receive a "Thank you" letter, it would hit your confidence in finding jobs. Receiving rejection is not an easy feeling (I totally can relate to that). Therefore, I want to highlight that, taking all the chances you have to apply for but also balance with time for preparing your job application and being selective. Applying for 10 positions with 10% successful rate is still better than 100 positions with 1% successful rate.  

More than that, you can reserve some time for learning new skills, and develop your knowledge which is more beneficial in the long term. If you get rejected because of limited skills, sending the next 10 applications might return the same result if you are still at the same skills level. Invest time in searching for a job, but also invest time in developing your competence, which to me, is essential for your success. 

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If you have any questions, any thoughts or would like to share your own experience, feel free to send me PM or email at hongngoc.ftu2011@gmail.com. Happy to connect. 

I wish you all the best in the coming 2022. Stay strong!!!