5 Secrets to find your first job as a software developer

This  post is for all those fresh graduates with an engineering or masters degree due to various reasons were not able to land a job either through their campus placements or pool campus. You must have even attended  job fairs, but such jobs are more for technical support or customer oriented services, which does not interest you one bit.  Here are five tested and proven tips to find a job in the current market.

1. Acquire skills in a niche technology :
   
   Majority of the people who look for a job in India have the similar kind of skill set, they concentrate on programming languages such as Java, PHP or C#( . NET). Yes, there is a shortage of jobs for freshers who want to be developers for these positions. In the current market there is more supply than demand.Take a scenario where there is an opening for 200 jobs for the position of Java developers targeting freshers. Incidentally, there would be a whopping 5000 people applying for the same position. In such a large scale competition, how do you ensure that you seem different and have the upper hand. An HR is going to scan your resume for around 5-10 seconds to short list you. You don’t want your capabilities or dreams to be judged in such a short time. You will need to realize that there are other technologies that are used by companies in big I.T. cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad etc . So your best bet would be to consider learning technologies where jobs are available but resources are less. In situations as such, there would be around 50 jobs but you would have around 200 – 250 people applying for it. The probability of you getting your first job is much more in these cases. Technologies like Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and its various frameworks, Python and Hybrid Mobile Application Development should be the technologies of your choice to get that extra edge. These technologies are not only much in demand now, but are quite easy to learn as well.
2. Build small applications :

   The best way to learn any new technology is by building small applications that solves a problem, Always take a project-based approach to learning any new technology. Try building small applications like an online hotel booking, a billing software or a small social networking site. If someone in your family or friends, runs a business, consider building an app that will automate their work (they will feel proud of your achievement). It is perfectly all right, even if you decide to clone an existing application and replicate the work. All you need to go ahead and do it, for it doesn’t have to be an out of the world idea.

3. Decide to work for a budding startup :

   The most important thing for anyone starting his or her career is clocking the first two years of experience. I’m sure you agree to this point as one can clearly see that companies are only looking to hire candidates with 1-2 years of experience. The best opportunity for you would be to work for a budding startup, that will be the place where every line of code you write will matter. Your work is valued and appreciated. Don’t worry about the kind of package they would be offering, but see to it that it is something that will cover up your monthly expenses and you are able to save some.

4. Personality Development :

   I cannot emphasize the importance of this, startups or small companies look for resources that have a good attitude, excellent communication skills both written and oral and are team players. If you feel your people skills needs to be improved, I recommend you to read “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. This was the first book that I read when I started off my career.

5. The willingness to learn and the ability to learn :

   This is by far the most important advise I would be able to give you. Those of you who feel that college is a done deal and there is nothing more to study, I’ve a bad news for you. Your next phase of your education has just begun. Earlier, you probably had to spend 6 months to prepare and write for an exam, but now you are expected to learn technology and concepts at much faster pace. Technologies keep getting upgraded and you need to upgrade and master them too.

It’s a myth that there aren’t sufficient jobs for freshers, there is plenty of jobs and the jobs go to the one who is skilled. Upgrade your skills to start your career as a Software Developer.