[patio11]

1) Inexperienced Joe's most pressing problem as a result of inexperience is attempting to find a job by looking at job ads. Joe does not yet know, but should learn, that most jobs in fact have no associated ad, and that jobs which do have ads are disproportionately jobs you do not want to apply for. Instead, Joe would have been better off attempting to get his name in front of people who have the authority to hire junior programmers, who are a) legion and b) overwhelmed with their current inability to source candidates who are capable of producing working programs/systems/etc.

1b) Not posted job description anywhere accurately represents all parts of the job, and for the right candidate, companies are willing to ignore virtually anything. The right candidate is "anyone who can convince the decisionmaker that they're the right candidate." Decisionmakers at many companies value grades a lot less than Joe, in his inexperience, believes they do.

2) There actually do exist many companies which invest, heavily, in being the first job you'll ever have. Fog Creek and Matasano spring to mind, and I'd work at either. Both of them do it in part reaction to the fact that if they didn't experienced talent would be available too infrequently and priced too high for them to hire the quantity which they want to hire, which strikes me as a common enough problem that other companies probably adopt quietly the policies those guys adopt publicly.

[Cyranix]

Adding to (1b): it's not just that companies will ignore some aspects of the job description as posted. For some companies, that description isn't intended to represent the expected contribution of a single employee -- if you read between the lines, it might be a description of a new team or of a new long-term initiative. The company might post it as though it were a job opening for an individual out of laziness, out of ignorance of what skills are actually needed, or in the hope that one magical developer will be able to do everything on their wish list.

Ultimately the company will want most, if not all, of the listed skills covered. However, if you can convince decisionmakers that you can successfully start addressing a subset of their needs today, as `patio11 says, then the company may recalibrate their posting to find someone (or multiple someones) to cover the remaining duties or provide training to you (or to existing staff) to shore things up.

The lesson is not to take a job description at face value. Setting aside the fact that some postings are written by people who don't actually understand the role, companies will always try to hire the most talented people for the least amount of money, as they ought to. But if hiring that one mythical ultra-developer is "shooting for the moon", then hiring someone who can effectively make inroads into the company's growth areas is "landing among the stars".

[louischatriot]

I totally agree. I'll add that Joe should first ask his friends working at tech jobs if their companies are hiring. "this candidate is respected by someone we employ and know is good" is actually the most important criteria for the decision maker. I was hired that way.

[j_baker]

In regard to #1, this goes back to Joe having not attended a great school. The MITs and Stanfords of the world have career fairs with all the top employers in attendance. If Joe went to a public university in his home town, chances are good Joe's not going to come out of college with a good network so that he won't have to search job ads.

I agree on #2, and it's a shame more companies don't hire this way.

[zalzane]

>that most jobs in fact have no associated ad

so what should he do then; go into google maps and drop off a resume at every nearby engineering firm?

[patio11]

No -- you might as well drop off a ream of paper at the recycler's, as that would cut out the middleman.

It isn't difficult to meet people who have authority to hire people. Go to meetups/tech events/conferences in your area. Demonstrate value; ask people if they/their firms are hiring or if they know anyone who is. Some people who go to meetups/etc do not have hiring authority, but they often know who in their organization does -- ask them for a warm introduction.

There exists a series of tubes between every engineering candidate and every firm which hires engineers. It isn't like there is a Super Secret Hacker News For People Who Actually Hire People. Same HN. Same Twitter. Same email (probably your best bet for a cold contact). Same phone system. Same Github.

(Passively adding stuff to your Github is a low ROI way to get offers. Find a project managed by your target company, fix a bug or send them a pull request, then try to escalate to a discussion with a decisionmaker in engineering -- coffee or a Skype chat or whatever.)

[toomuchtodo]

This is excellent advice. Any thoughts on perhaps doing a tutorial series on how to better connect yourself with hiring decision makers? Similar to your web app training.

Disclaimer: I'm a subscriber on your mailing list, watch your videos, etc.

[patio11]

That's more of Ramit Sethi's beat than mine. FWIW, I think he has really good advice on it.

In terms of why that doesn't make a huge amount of business sense for me:

1) I'm pretty busy (and behind on current commitments due to illness), so adding a new product line seems like a poor decision at the moment.

2) In general I would prefer to go up the value/sophistication chain rather than going down it. No offense to people looking for their first job or a career upgrade, but the amount you're willing to pay for that is not nearly the amount of money a software company CEO will pay for a $X million bump in sales, and I know I can successfully deliver that in at least some form factors. It's also likely worth less than nailing my response to this RFQ from a hospital chain for telephony services. (I write for non-monetary reasons, too, but things have to catch my fancy for that and job searches mostly don't.)

3) I'd generally prefer to talk about things I have experience in doing rather than things I don't. While I can do some extrapolations from experience, first principles of marketing, and things I know from industry participation, when it comes down to it I have a lot more experience selling software than I do on either hiring or getting hired as a FTE at (American) software companies.

[louischatriot]

That's actually a pretty good idea (and I am being serious). These firms are always looking for good engineers (I didn't say "experienced") and have a hard time finding ones. This is especially true for smaller companies that don't have very strict hiring process.

If a guy walks in my company's lobby to ask if we are looking for engineers, I'll certainly give him an interview.