Ask HN: What am I doing wrong?

[dromedariusCase]

Its now September of 2022. I've applied for on the order of 200+ jobs as a junior-developer / intern and received nothing but rejection emails.

Is it the economy? The bubble finally popped? Or am I the stupid one.

Anyone willing to share some tips for someone just starting out in the industry?

[Name redacted resume attached] https://docdro.id/kzogpyB

[roflyear]

Hi boss,

First, you can view your name in your GitHub. Might want to remove that for HN.

Your GitHub activity is also private. I would just remove the link if you don't want to make it public.

I also don't like your GitHub picture. I would use something else or no picture. Put a BIO in your GitHub if you're going to keep it.

Regarding your resume, I would put the awards near the bottom. Start with any job experience, then education.

Limit your resume to one page.

Regarding experience, I would like for you to expand on the work you have done. This is the most important thing to me. I think this is too light. Be generous with yourself regarding your work. Tell us a little about what you did & what parts most interested you about the tech.

Chinese & English is good. You can probably put this in your header, along with some other highlights. You may even move some awards to your header, as in next to or below your name.

Projects is good, but I really want a list of your proficiencies, and probably even more important, what interests you as a new developer.

Save anything else you want to highlight for your cover letter. Write a really good cover letter. I know. It's super annoying. Keep it to a paragraph or two and be happy with it before you send it. Proofread.

Hiring has slowed down a lot, especially in tech. Startups along with large companies are really just not hiring much.

But, you should still be able to get some interviews. If you're not, you're doing the right thing here - get as much feedback as you can. And follow up with those emails a few times.

[dromedariusCase]

Thank you for the long response,

About experience, the thing is I don't have any... and I don't know how to get my foot into the door to get some. Any tips?

[mostlystatic]

I'd consider expanding more on the freelance work you did through Upwork. What problems did you solve for your clients and what technologies did you work with?

[roflyear]

Try to see if anyone you know is looking for an intern.

[codegeek]

To get a job as an entry level person, you either need to demonstrate that you have all round skills and you can fit into a team OR you need to target specific companies/teams that could utilize your existing experience (.e.g Java developer)

To do that, you first need to differentiate yourself from the 1000s of other entry level applicants. Some tips:

1. Determine if you want to apply for a specific type of role. As an entry level person who just needs a job, this is hard. But think about the employer. THey want to get Resume from people who could fit into what the employer/team is doing. So lets say you decide to find employers/teams where Java is heavily used. Go apply there.

2. Write a really good Cover Letter and do not send it generically to every employer. A generic Cover Letter is as good as No Cover Letter. Research the team and send them a unique one along with your Resume. Yes, cover letters can work in 2022 at least for entry level people.

3. Go on Linkedin and look for the companies/teams that sell product/service in areas you have interest in. If your skills match their current product/service etc, reach out to someone like "Director of Technology" etc directly. It can never hurt but only help. Be specific. I would say something like

"Hey John, I hope you don't mind me reaching out but I was wondering if there are internship opportunities in your team. I see that you do xyz and I am very interested in this field and have some experience with tools in the area as well. Can I email you my detailed Cover Letter and Resume ?"

Get creative if you want to separate yourself from the others just like you. There are jobs out there but without experience, they are always harder to find because you need to sell yourself more.

[dromedariusCase]

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to respond. I really do appreciate the advice.

I honestly have no clue what to write for a cover letter. Everything that I write just ends up sounding fake / makes it obvious that I just want a job for money's sake (which for me, at the end of the day, is what it comes down to).

I actually received the opposite advice from some others I asked, where they said to just use the shotgun approach and send as many applications as I can. I'm struggling to understand what order of magnitude of openings to apply to, should it be tens? hundreds?

Thanks again for all the help.

[drakonka]

I noticed this divide in the given advice as well: some say to carefully tailor each application to the job, others say to fire and forget. I think if you're sending 200 applications out the fire and forget way might be more manageable. Personally, the former (tailored applications) has worked better for me (so far).

For some context, I've been doing this for around 15 years, which might make my thoughts pretty irrelevant since job hunting as a junior now is surely different than job hunting as a junior a decade ago.

Nevertheless, I have not sent 200 job applications in my life. How people manage it is beyond me. My approach is usually to send a very tailored cover letter, and a reasonably tailored CV (when a CV is required - lately they just pull it from LinkedIn... which in my opinion can make a custom cover letter even more impactful when you're actually looking).

For the cover letter, I take points straight from the listed job description. There are usually "must have" and "nice to have" points listed there, both technical and personality traits ("go-getter!", "self-motivated!", whatever).

In my first couple of junior jobs, I started with a brief preamble (name, what I do, etc...) I also include something showing that I did some research on what the _company_ does ("I was very excited to read about Company-X's unique approach to Thing-X"). This was followed by covering each desired point they mentioned in the job description, with a sentence or two about how I meet that requirement. For points I did not fulfill, I mentioned the _closest_ experience I could, and mentioned something hand-wavy about expecting to have no trouble hitting the ground running and learning-thing-x quickly on the job. For junior jobs, I think you can leverage the "passionate, quick learner" thing quite well where needed.

But like I said - I am not sure how relevant this approach is for juniors today. When I applied at a large company years ago, I had one phone screen and one in-person interview before being given an offer. When I interviewed other candidates at the same company a couple of years ago there were multiple rounds of interviews, assignments, discussions with HR, followup panels, etc. I have no idea if I would've been given an offer at the same company if I'd been applying as a junior eight years later.

[gardenhedge]

It looks like you're not finished your degree? If you're finishing this year put a date in. If you're not finishing this year then that is why you aren't getting any offers.

[dromedariusCase]

I'm finishing my degree in the year 2024, I'm actually class of 2025, but I think I rat-raced enough in HS with AP tests that I can probably graduate in 3 instead of 4 years. Are internships mostly for graduating students? I thought they were everyone above 1st year.

Should I just look for junior-dev jobs to do while in uni instead?

[gardenhedge]

I totally missed the word 'intern' in your post. I don't know much about applying for internships to be honest. In my company (not big tech, not USA) we normally take people through organised agreements with colleges

[woopwoop24]

advise another engineer gave me, when i was younger, was: "be confident and expect you are 100% the candidate they are searching for" e.g. don't say something i would like to hear back or whatever, say something like: "i am happy to tell you more in phonecall or face to face" expecting that the person on the other end wants to meet you, or even more so has no other choice than to pick you after reading your resume.

ps. looking at your resume i would also restructure, not leading with awards and what is "Wrote Software for Upwork " supposed to mean? also a lot of your github repos lack proper readme's. And i don't know what you put in your cover letter but i cannot see what you want to do or learn or what you are burning for.

[clusterhacks]

You are at UCSD - surely they have co-op and internship recruiting programs on campus? When I was an undergrad (longer ago that I want to admit), I did several co-ops and a summer internship. These programs are often hiring pipelines for employers. All my job offers, even after doing a MS in CS after my BS in CS, came from companies I had worked for already as an undergrad.

Also, (and I have suffered for NOT doing this better), reach out to colleagues or even recent UCSD grads from the CS program and ask for referrals. Just be low-key about it - you aren't asking for any "big" favors or nepotism-like stuff, just maybe an internal referral to their company? I think people should do this more often. Employers often offer current employees a bonus for every hired referral so those folks may get something out of it too.

Lastly, submitting resumes online seems to often be a blackhole of nothingness. Because I'm not Mr. Professional Network I have almost always applied using online submissions to jobs and haven't always had a good response rate with that method. But my longest (and current, maybe forever) gig came from a referral from someone in my social network.

[EDIT]: I noticed one of your other comments that implies you could maybe graduate sooner rather than later. This may be a controversial idea but think about taking LONGER. Double major or really think hard about getting into some big name company internship programs.

[jjice]

Some resume tips (not a professional, just a software engineer who has looked at lots of resumes):

- Keep it to one page. Not a hard and fast rule, but generally recommended. The times where 2 pages is generally more acceptable is when you're a senior engineer with serious breadth of experience.

- Maximize space on the page. Goes along with the previous point, but your resume can be tight. I personally used a smaller font with less spacing.

- List fewer, but your most prideful projects. Interviewing and reading resumes leads to fatigue fast. When I have to read resumes, I have to read a ton, and they all start to blend in.

[f1shy]

I think margins and font size are ok. But it should be one page.

[dromedariusCase]

Thanks for responding with some tips,

Any examples of what would be an impressive junior developer resume? I think I'm lacking a lot of content which is why I added so much filler.

[jjice]

Honestly, junior resumes are hard. There's a lot of them and there isn't a ton to me that jumps out. Prior experience (catch 22, I know) is always a big plus, but a few concentrated projects you're proud of is nice.

I personally don't care about projects that are listed as class projects, but something that someone went of of their way to explore.

[f1shy]

In line with the other comments, which I find extremely good. Just follow the KISS principle: first experience, then education, last languages (with skill level). Awards, Projects and further comments, at the end, if there is place for that in one page. Maybe if they are asking for somebody with BLAS experience you can add that specific point, but if not, maybe better do not even mention it. Mind you: you are searching for a junior position, nobody expects a 10 pages resume for that. One must be more than enough, please do not clutter one page with smaller font or something like that... what we say is, keeping all the same, reduce to one page.

Eventually after your name, you can make a little statement of your motivation, like a personal "mission and vision" but be careful, that can be dangerous if you do not know what you are doing. I wouldn't do that for a junior position.

In your cover letter, keep it also short and simple: make emphasis in your motivation to work there and what you can offer.

The github profile does not add much, tbh.

Last but not least, but that is a very personal preference: I do not like the title "Resume" it is pretty obvious what it is, I prefer the format where your name is there.

[MisterSandman]

As someone applying for internships rn and has talked to recruiters, the expected order is: Education, Experience, Projects.

Not a huge deal at all but if you're from a decent university then making it standout is important. (This is for inter ships and new grad)

[dromedariusCase]

Just wanted to interject and ask, Am I from a decent university?

I've been thinking about trying to transfer to one a bit better but I dont know if it's worth the time / money

[web99]

Start contributing to open source projects you like, and write blog posts on topics you learn about.

Then reach out to engineering leaders at growth stage startups. They are always resource constrained. And generally speaking they hire for potential at the entry levels based on demonstrated passion for coding and systems design via Github and/or blogs.

And yes, fix your resume with the other tips in this thread.

[VoodooJuJu]

How would you search for a "growth stage" startup? Any telltale keywords or signs?

[muzani]

The timing is terrible. And junior jobs have always been extremely hard to land, even in a strong market. A lot of very good people are being laid off and haven't found jobs yet, and you're competing with them.

I graduated from a really good college, into fairly weak market and had to take PHP jobs that didn't fully cover the bills. I'd suggest just sucking up your pride and taking a low quality job. Just work hard, build connections to others in the industry, and hop on to better work once it recovers.

Or try another field; I graduated with a degree in telecommunications engineering, but the telcos were becoming stagnant. So we rode on the mobile/web dev boom.

There's also the possibility that it may not recover, that FAANG in general peaked and are on a decline.

[woodruffw]

Just a heads up, your resume links your GitHub, which reveals your name.

I work for a smaller company so my approach to resume review might differ from others, but a couple of things stand out:

* As an interviewer, I'm not especially interested in the fact that you took "Modern Physics" or organic chemistry. These might be relevant to a particular role, but in the context of a generic resume they come across as filler.

* Your projects and work experience are grouped by language, rather than chronology or complexity. I'd prefer either of those, since they tell me more about what I should ask you about. By the same token: it's good to list your own "level of proficiency" with each language, so that I can confirm that against my expectations.

I would restructure and reorder your resume entirely: your past experience is a little thin, so start with a personal statement (who you are, what you're interested in doing), summarize your projects and work experience, and list your awards and comments at the end.

Edit: And, to be clear: you aren't stupid. Resume construction and follow through is arguably harder than any junior role you actually end up in will be.

[hdchenhao]

加油，老哥。新加坡那边有比较多的中国企业在当地招人，对会中英文的人员比较友好吧，可以尝试看看。