Finding a job in development that suits your interests and skills may sound like a tough challenge. But it doesn’t have to be with the right approach. As we have seen a lot development jobs already, we’ve picked out the most important do’s and don’ts when applying for a development job.
We firstly asked about the experience of one of our CodeHivers, Mark, Computer Science student:
When I was applying for the job I was really afraid that my skills wouldn’t match up the vacancy requirements. Once I first met the hiring managers during an interview, it all felt much better because I was completely transparent. Eventually I got the job and I think I’m making a great contribution to the company, especially after a few months.
Update your resume guided by the relevance of the job vacancy
So let’s suppose you’re currently following a Computer Science Bachelor and you like both data science and development and have experience with both. You come across a vacancy that is looking for a Java developer. Then it could help a lot when you list all the important Java projects that you have done in educational, business and own project environment. It shows that you truly have done some projects already. As though this sounds very simple, it can be very effective as at first the only thing that a company will see, is your resume.
The vacancy lists specific platforms or coding languages
When a vacancy comes online that’s looking for someone with specific platform experience or coding language requirements it usually also states how much experience you need to have with it. If you are not very familiar with the platform or coding language, it probably means that a lot of other people will also have this issue. When you are still very interested in the vacancy and you are very eager to learn more about it, it could be an option to carefully read into it. Once you have done that, you can still apply for the job, be transparent, but thoroughly expressing your interest and eagerness to learn more about the specific requirement. If you are able to transfer this during an interview too, you might have a good chance of eventually landing the job.
Be able to describe your previous project experience
Once you are invited for an interview, it is important that you are able to describe the projects and achievements that you have done so far. This can be much easier if you prepare it in advance. So if you list a certain back-end development project in NodeJS on your resume, make sure that you are able to describe which features you were able to build and what your responsibilities were.
Ask questions and be curious about the job
An interview is not only a selection process for the company, but also for you. If you are hired, you will be spending quite some time at the company. Therefore you have to make sure that the job description sounds fun to you. If you are having a good time, the company will also be happy. Therefore it is very important to be pro-active and get to know the job in advance as well as possible.
Don’t hesitate to share your personal projects during an interview
A lot of students tend to think that only business or academic projects are relevant for the company. In contrary, personal projects are maybe the most important projects to mention as this shows your true enthusiasm for the job activities.
Of course the importance of those tips differ per situation. However, we have found that following the 5 tips above can help you significantly. Feel free to contact the CodeHive team for any questions or for help with finding a job via Whatsapp (+31 6 17789531). We’d like to help you personally.