I hate to spill the beans so early but companies do hire “junior” developers or as I’d like to call it early career developers. The only catch is that companies are playing the classic game of playing hard to get. That is unless you’re some kind of a super genius unicorn programmer. But for most of us early career devs we rely heavily on internships, referrals, and noteworthy projects to get us a real shot with a company. Otherwise, if we went to a mass job board and tried to “cold apply” to a job posting we’d be eaten up by resume algorithms before a recruiter even has a moment to give us their notorious 1–3 second glance.
So if companies are playing hard to get then what’s a newbie developer to do? Well, like I just said internships, referrals, and project collaborations are key. In addition to that going to local meetups, signing up for hackathons either online or in-person and actually talking to your LinkedIn contacts helps. If you really want to step it up a notch you can always provide tutoring either virtually or in-person. Even setting up a YouTube channel with tutorials you’ve done makes you more marketable and attractive to prospective employers.
Okay, all that sounds nice and very PC (no pun intended) but here’s the real scoop. Companies also like you to have a competitive edge; what are you bringing to the table? I…
