Be polite and professional in your interview.
They were extremely friendly and very accommodating. I am also grateful they saw me as valuable and look forward to helping them kick butt in the industry.
Take a chance no matter what the listed job requirements are. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by offering them something of value. YOU.
Not working for my kid with a Computer degree. She keeps applying for it all, but no takers. One of her classmates quit looking and got a CDL to start trucking.
She needs to be constantly coding. No downtime. I have no college degree but got a fantastic remote job, and have been in it 3 years now - all it took was self teaching myself to code for 3 or 4 years (the reason I dropped out is cause I would skip class to build my video game). Anyways the point is you have to get really good at coding to be hired.
She needs to get good. Computer degree means nothing.
She needs to learn industry relevant skills. Look for programming bootcamps near you; they will teach industry relevant skills.
She's doing that! She's already got a bunch of industry standard things in her portfolio, but no one will look at it because she doesn't have a company on her resume. She always is working on another coding project. She codes pretty well, can do C, Java, Python, etc. Completed her degree.
So true. Programming is an art that takes years to learn. I don't know how much the process can be accelerated by training classes.
My hubby is an IT manager who has been programming since he was 12. Learned C code programming doing text based games in college while getting his Comp degree. He looks at Coding Boot camp on resumes when hiring and throws them in the trash. They just don't measure up to what he needs done as he needs a lot of OOP and they don't do that there.
Ironically, he can't hire his girl because of nepotism. He says she is a B level programmer. My kid has played around in Linux since she was 3-4 years old.
She’s not applying for the right jobs.
Tier 1 help desk typically makes a mistake on at least half their tickets. Wrong name, bad email or phone number, stupid problem description that is just wrong. That’s pretty much their job - recording that somebody has a problem so somebody better can fix it later. In short, anybody with common sense can be a top performer almost right away.
6 months in and getting a decent amount of first call resolutions and she’s earned a bump. Within a year she’s actually fixing problems by picking up the tickets after they are made and she’s marketable in any help desk.
She's been applying to entry level developer and related jobs. Funny how they all require 1-2 years of experience, and sometimes she gets a nasty email saying didn't you read the ad? You don't have any experience.
I'll ask if her she's been applying for help desk jobs too.
A year of IT experience would help. Not sure if she has any work experience at all. A lot of kids these days barely have any work experience when they graduate college. That’s why my nephew spent $50k on a degree and stocks boxes. By that time I had a couple retail jobs, a lot of restaurant experience and dozens of job interviews under my belt. I had solid references and could interview well.
The challenge is going to be keeping her dev skills sharp in the face of a shitty soul crushing helpdesk job. She needs to find opportunities to code. It could be volunteer work or a silly web app. Something where she can practice the craft, gain experience writing progressively complex code, etc. that way she can show her work on GitHub and let devs assess her abilities.
Alternatively, she could have a shot at a low end web dev position. Like Wordpress can be as easy as text updates or as complicated as an integrated custom app. So there’s a lot of room for growth in that career path. Or if that’s not what she really wants she can take the experience and move in another direction.
Yes! A year of experience is what she needs. She had a year of working in the library in high school. I think she interviews well as she is INTP: all business. But no one will give her a chance. She has programmed for a niche social media outlet on a volunteer basis, has worked on developing a WordPress portfolio, she's started on a grocery/recipe app, and has been lately polishing her agile/scrum skills,. My kid is coding, but nobody wants to look at it. Thanks for all your advice!
Well, glad we're not alone! My kid has so many talents! She is also an amazing artist, and has knowledge of a plethora of subjects! I feel for you guys, this world is so jacked up!
Yes! A new day is about to dawn! My kid is confident that God is lining something up for her!