Ask HN: Will I ever find a job?

[dwgdev]

Hello, I have graduated for 3 months already. I have a B.S in Computer Science... until now, I just got 2 interviews after sending 180 or more applications and countless cover letters.

Since I could not find a job, I started to work on my personal project and I decided to share with the public:

https://github.com/woguan/Legend-Wings

I am losing my hope to get a job, and I feel like I must find a work not related to computer science. What do you think of my project? Is it good to show for recruiters?

Owner of Alibaba said he got rejected like 20-30 applications, rejected for applying for Havard, rejected to work at Fast-Food. I am getting close to him? I sent countless applications, cover letters, but I just got 2 interviews... Both of them told me I have no professional experience.

[rickyc091]

So I did a quick audit of your GitHub and minimal experience is definitely a correct assessment. But, don't worry! That doesn't mean you can't get a job. You'll just need to work harder or join a company that has the capacity to train you.

Legend Wings is nice, but the last several pages of commits are all just updating the README. I see that you committed your most code on the initial commit, however, I was also able to copy and paste and find exact code matches on StackOverflow. Forgot to mention, I use to be a teaching assistant so students would do this all the time.

Next up, you have a lot of boilerplate on your GitHub. You have a blank repo called VaporServer. Employers will check your most recent code as a basis of your skill. I'll ignore that one and look at the next one, WebJS (2 weeks ago). You were learning to use express and setting up a boilerplate.

The rest of your repos are tutorials or homework assignments. CalendarData is just a repo with a JSON file. Lots of forks aren't necessary good since the first thing I do is look for individual commits. Being that you come from a university I know there are a lot of group projects, I can't tell if you are the one working on the project or your peers.

This is all the information I gathered looking at half your repos more carefully. A recruiter will spend even less time than I did.

My suggestion would be to clean up any boilerplate repos or forks that don't really give much information or actually make things worse. CalendarData from April shows me that you probably don't know SQL. I can also tell you are starting to dive into node.js meaning you probably don't have backend knowledge. I noticed firebase implementation in your swift code so knowledge of APIs are good.

I would also try to find an internship as starters to get some experience and/or look for a job where they focus solely on the academia / whiteboard challenges. I'm not a big fan of those, but they have their place especially for college students without much experience. Just brush up on your data structures and algorithms and you should be good to go!

Good luck! Don't worry too much, it'll all work out in the end!

[dwgdev]

Wow.. that indeed was a very very good advices. Thank you so much for your time to give a very detailed list in the areas that I must improve.

1) I did not understand about "most code on the initial commit". I have been updating the code basically every day. Is it because I have a dummy account? Like the accomplishment I wrote in the README, I recently put the dates I accomplish them.

2) About the repos, I think it has a lot because I recently cancelled the subscription. And I can't put them back to private. I will consider paying for the subscription and add back to private.

3) CalendarData is a repo where I can modify it with my app called: "MyAgenda" which is private since it contains a key to make HTTP requests via Basic Authorization.

I will definitely rework my GitHub page. :)

[agumonkey]

Very nice to give these advices.

[troydavis]

Are you applying for a job that's conducted in English, particularly in a country where English is the native language? Your HN question is phrased awkwardly and has more significant grammar errors than I think is typical. A resume with similar errors could easily get disregarded before skills are even considered.

Ignore this comment if you aren't applying in English or if the teams are in locations where English isn't the native language.

[collyw]

I graduated in the dot com bust of 2001. It took me over a year and a half to get something permanent. The usual excuse was "no experience" but how are you to get experience if no one will try you out?

Two things I found that helped.

A lot of big companied have more involved interview process. Filling out forms with a lot of questions like "give an example of when you showed leadership" or "overcame a difficult situation" and other such BS. It took a lot longer to fill out those forms than sending out a CV and cover letter. But it did result in a greater chance of getting an interview. Keep a note of the answers to the questions as once you have done a few, you can usually tweak and reuse the answers in other application forms and it gradually becomes less and less effort.

Second thing that really seemed to make a difference was doing some temporary work. First was manual some testing for a company (pretty boring, but I did create a small Access database to log issues). The second was a bit more interesting Visual Basic work, but paid pretty much minimum wage.

Even after that it took a while, but having some experience on my CV worked a lot better than having none. I reluctantly had to change location to where the majority of jobs were - close to London.

Having your personal project available is good, but it is a game. Maybe look at producing something more business oriented. Databases might seem boring, but they pay the bills.

[user5994461]

>>> Hello, I have graduated for 3 months already. I have a B.S in Computer Science... until now, I just got 2 interviews after sending 180 or more applications and countless cover letters.

The only explanation is that your resume is terrible. Please make an anonymized version and send it here for review.

That is keeping in mind that the available jobs vary a lot by location. It's easier to find a job when living in SF or NY than anywhere else in the USA, yet there is nowhere where it should be as bad as 2/180 interviews.

[zepolen]

The explanation is that a fresh graduate provides zero or even negative value to a company initially.

[vfulco]

I run a Shanghai based firm creating English resumes, doing interview coaching, and LinkedIn Profiles, amoung some other products, for both Chinese and foreigners. Our business is RMB and USD oriented. I typically charge for a general resume review. Send me your resume and I will give you a brief review for free (dwgdev only) so you can DIY it better. My email is vfulco[@]weisisheng.cn. Give me 72 hours as I have a full schedule the next few days.

[thinbeige]

Nice business, out of curiosity:

- How much do you usually take per review?

- How do you generate leads? Which platforms do you use?

- Do client recommend you to other clients?

[seanwilson]

I didn't look much at the code but for what it's worth your project looks really cool. The screenshots/gifs and readme made a really good first impression. Having the motivation to pursue side projects and actually finishing them is a massive plus for me.

[thinbeige]

iOS developers do not face a huge demand like they have seen years ago. Still you should be able to get more than two interviews.

- With which other languages, frameworks and platforms do you have experience?

- Are you willing to relocate?

- Are you citizen of an EU country?

Without knowing too mucch about you: Look that you offer more than just iOS. If it's just iOS you need to put your app to the app store and it ahould be really polished and get some ratings. Now, your app looks ok but it still has aome room for improvement.

If still nothing works out, try some freelancer gigs and maybe you find a long-term client. Being a freelancer is a lot of hassle in the beginning but once you have some reputation earned as a freelancer you nake more money than being employed.

EDIT: I looked again at your game. I think this is a huge project and can take months. Rather build a small typical iOS indie game. The ones with reduced visuals and sounds focussing on just one core game mechanics. Something where you can build the core of the game in one day. Polish it, make a start screen and put it to the app store as said. A work-in-progress on Girhub with many todos isn't attracting anyone. A very simple game you can finish in 1-2 weeks. Or: build not a game but instead an app, I could imagine that game dev iOS jobs are lower paid.

[morbidhawk]

> iOS developers do not face a huge demand like they have seen years ago

This is an apt observation. The number of jobs are seriously lacking for Objc/Swift, I was lucky to do an internship in iOS but could never get into another interview after that for the bleak number of iOS jobs available that I applied to. I transitioned into .Net web development and I have been given a lot more opportunities since.

Also, Apple also has a way of creating a walled-garden for their developers. Some of the best practices back when I was an iOS dev involved Apple-specific technologies like AutoLayout constraints and CoreData which doesn't give as many marketable skills if applying to non-iOS jobs.

[a-saleh]

The complain of your interviewees about `no professional experience` hits home. Try to look at your past experience and list anything that would translate as professional experience.

In my case, having a root account on a few public-facing web servers translated to "Linux sysadmin, 3y experience", helping out a classmate with his freelancing project "C++ and Qt framework, 1y experience", e.t.c.

Second, if you want to continue in your studies, you should be able to get a paid internship in some local corporation. It is then easier to transition to full employment with one leg in the door already. That is how I got to company I work for now :)

Or you might go even further into academia, i.e. if you enjoyed writing your thesis, your advisor might help you with a teaching-assistant job, or a faculty sysadmin job and some universities even have their own developer departments (mine had one developing their university information system). Or maybe even a research fellowship.

And last, ask your classmates.

Some of them might be freelancing, and you might be able to get client/work from them (i.e. a friend of mine had a a mobile-app shop, and once he needed to finish one more app in the pipeline he had people for, and thats how I paid for half of my wedding :-)

Some of them might already be working, and if they remember you as a guy they would like to work with, you might be able to get a round or two of interviews head-start :-)

Ok, I think I might start with my friends/classmates first :-) That is how I got to the "Linux sysadmin, 3y experience" anyway :)

Good luck!

[dwgdev]

Hi,

Since you have mentioned freelance, I do actually have an account at Upwork. But I did not complete my full application yet. I just keep thinking, I do not have an actual job, and I have not delivered a project. Summing up these two issues, how possibly people would "believe" me? There are so many high profiles in there.. what are the chances I might be asked to do a job? I am considering to be a freelancer after I get an actual jobs, and have a couple years of experience to proof I can do it.

[charlesdm]

Are you sending customised cover letters etc to those employers? Generally, you don't want to be sending the same thing to 180+ companies, and you want to make sure you actually know the company you're applying at.

Also, depending on the company and its size, you might want to reach out directly to engineering manager X at company Y, instead of sending it into the pit of despair that is HR.

[dwgdev]

I really did not want to do it. But after some pressure from people who has a full-time job... they told me just because I am qualified for that job it does not guarantee me a job. And most recruiter would just toss my resume away within 5s for not having experience. Because of all the pressure, I decided to send multiple applications.

In addition to that, I was asked to even apply for jobs that I am not totally qualified for. Like... If I am qualified for 50% of what they ask, I should submit my application. But again, I used to only to apply for position that I met all qualifications

[thinbeige]

> you don't want to be sending the same thing to 180+ companies

Would disagree. If one has a good generic cover letter plus CV and a very good and wanted profile this would work.

Why? Because it's a number game and better send many standard applications than few individual ones. Leas work and better result.

[ccrush]

Dice.com

Post your resume on there. Be blunt and honest with the information. You have 4 years of academic experience. You probably can qualify 1.5 to 2 years of that as programming. You probably did 2 semesters of Java, C#, or C++. You probably did a semester of assembly language and another of some web development. Did you do a class on databases and SQL? Put some stuff on there. As soon as you hear back from recruiters, start telling them who you are and what you're looking for. They are not hiring you, so don't try to impress them. They are selling you to a company for a small payout. You are their product. Tell them you're fresh out of school and have an open source hobby project and you are looking for work. Save their contact information and bug them weekly until they get you a job. Do this with all of them. Don't tell them you've been searching for 3 months. Their job is to get you a job.

[deepaksurti]

The fact that you have shipped a game, should make it relatively easy to find a job, as shipping a game end to end is really praise worthy. However, note that I am not sure if the jobs you have applied to value this. And definitely as others have pointed out, your representation package (resume, cover letter, comm skills) need an upgrade.

Here are some very specific action points for your project though:

1. Please move all your TO-DOs etc to Issues page, your README must talk about your game, any relevant documentation, installation steps, contribution process etc.

2. Comment your code exhaustively.

3. Add design documentation, which describes in detail your game design, host it on readthedocs and link it to your README. That is one way to clearly highlight both your communication and design skills.

4. I am not sure if you have shipped to iOS store, if not ship it. If you have already done so, apologies for my oversight.

5. Have a separate github.io website just as your game's home page, with download buttons for the app store. Have a reverse link to your GH repo as well on that page.

Now take the above and add a cover letter which describes your motivation to make the game, the fact that you shipped it and what you can contribute to as a developer through this experience; but don't be verbose. Be specific in terms of contributions you can make, that will need you to study the company and the job you are applying to and it will reflect in the cover letter.

I would strongly recommend you apply to game studios where your skills will be relevant. I am not sure if those TO-DO list and other bakery maker nonsense app makers are anyways going to value your skill, the ROI is too low to even bother.

Please check the past 6 month HN Who's hiring threads, for job postings from game studios or something relevant. Ex: Many times there are positions like asset pipeline developers where someone who has shipped a game end to end is a great fit.

I think you need to course correct, else you will keep seeing the same results. Wish you the best.

[dwgdev]

Hi deepaksurti,

1) I am thinking to create a web/blog to put those in. I thought that it might interested people to know what are the new features I am working on or will be working on. Beside the To-Dos, I do not know what else I can talk about the project

3) This is a good idea. Like I mentioned in (1), I will see if I can make a good looking blog and put the link on README

4) I did, but I am not so proud of the product. It has over hundred downloads, but I lack graphic skills. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dodger-me/id1069760106?mt=8

[reboog711]

I didn't see anyone say it yet; so I would recommend looking for local user groups / networking events. The personal connection can help a long way to getting an interview.

Go to everything you can find that is related to programming / application development /web development, even if it isn't in a technology or topic you know or care about.

[dwgdev]

Thank you! I think one of my biggest issue is that I am not very socially active.

[alkonaut]

Don't send hundreds if applications. Find jobs you want and positions where you are a good fit (know relevant Lang platform at least from school or hobby project etc). If a position asks for an experienced person - don't bother applying! Send a small number of very good applications.

A junior position at a mobile games place should definitely be a good fit if you can show a portfolio of such personal projects.

Find people to review your resume and letter. Pay for that service if you can't find friends or people e.g here on HN. Make sure to find people in your own job market to do this - so if you are looking for work in Germany then find Germans to ask for help. What's expected in an application is very regional.

Go to meetups and talk to people.

Finally, when you are rejected after an interview, ask someone for feedback on your application and interview. Ask them to be open about what you could improve. It could be something trivial like spelling.

[dwgdev]

Hi,

I used to send 1~2 application each week between the time when I was still a student and couple weeks after my graduation. But as times goes by, I started to increase the rate.

[MechEStudent]

1) when there is a position description it takes ~5 person-hours to make. Spend at least 1 person-hour to make your cover letter and resume for it as a sign of respect to folks who made the position description. Those keywords are important. If you don't have enough then your resume doesn't get past the computer. It is how you can know if you should apply.

2) you need a phone number to go with the submit. Call and confirm that your stuff was received in good order. Ask if there were any questions. This means you have to find real openings with real companies, not just fight the computers. Talk to a human being.

3) you need to put in 20 resume's a week. That makes it a part-time job. You should call-back a week after you submitted to learn about the status of the application. If you were excluded for some reason, find it out. If they didn't like the cologne or paper type then you can buy a different quality of resume paper or wear an unscented cologne. That is a "cheap price of entry" for your next interview going better.

4)you really might go strong on learning how to make a great resume. criteria change over time. What was amazing a decade ago is not very great now. Most colleges have departments that are built around enabling you here.

5) look for jobs via networking, not just monster.com. I strongly recommend stack-overflow careers. They are an excellent resource.

6) make a strong linked-in profile. Make it complete. Get recommendations from professors you worked for, or team-mates you worked with. It is a resume as well. Make sure you hit the "I am looking for a job" switch in your settings that will have recruiters calling you.

7) review your other social media for unprofessional content. Facebook or myspace could be messing you up. What does one find when they google your name? Is there someone with the same name who is ... the professional equivalent of a pile of poo? Then you need to include your middle initial or give yourself a clear differentiator.

[dwgdev]

I am taking a short break to learn my mistakes. And your post is very interesting.

1) I have never spent over an hour writing a cover letter. I think the longest is 30 minutes, and in average I would say 10 minutes (Not including the time I spent looking their website)

2) I do include my phone number in both resume and cover letter. I have double checked it as well.

3) Yes, I need to work on this. I am quite inconsistent, some weeks I send only 5 where as others I send over 20.

4) I will definitely work on this

6) I have recently working on my LinkedIn profile to make it more professional.

Thank you for your advices.

[richardknop]

Where are you based? If you are in some small city, expand your search to other areas. Send CV to companies based in large cities. As iOS dev you should be able to find a job pretty easily as there aren't enough mobile developers.

Edit: According to your github profile you are based in Dublin. So that's very strange you should easily get dozen interviews in 3 months.

Here are some iOS jobs in Dublin: https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&q=ios&l=Dublin%2C+Irel...

Edit 2: Are you a EU citizen? This matters because if you don't need a visa then finding work in Europe is very easy for software engineers. If you need visa sponsorship then that might be more complicated!

[morbidhawk]

> I feel like I must find a work not related to computer science

I'm not sure if you've already tried this, but in addition to applying to jobs related to your side project I suggest applying to other jobs that have a lot more jobs available. My guess would be the number of jobs for mobile game dev might be limited and competitive and that would make it difficult when applying as a recent graduate. Web technologies whether for front-end or backend development are greatly in demand and are worth considering.

[dwgdev]

Initially, I was just applying for mobile developer positions. But, since it did not work quite well, I have started applying to many other area

[HenryBemis]

>> Owner of Alibaba ..... I am getting close to him?

Hold your horses :) I do wish the best of luck to you, but sometimes we have to "prove to the world" that we deserve X-Y-Z and then we get "lucky" but having people believe in us.

Now, if you are going for jobs that require 5+ years of XP, then tough luck. If you are going for internships, well then again you have to compete with plenty of people. Either way, you need to get strong at something, and then conquer people's minds!

good luck and don't give up!

[CCing]

I saw that you're from dublin but you looks asian. Sorry for the question, but is important for understand better your situation:

You're a eu citizen or you're on visa ? because could be that companies can't afford the visa cost(money and time)

You can legally search for a job in all europe ? if yes, send cv to companies in berlin, london, amsterdam too. Have you tried to send the cv the Kings or rovio ?

Maybe you should learn nodejs/react and try to get a job in different eu countries.

[kevinsimper]

What does your applications and cover letters look like? My best advise would be to go to some meetups and meet the companies that hire, this often give you a direct entry into the company that you would not get with a cover letter.

You are very welcome to send me it and I can give it a look: [e-mail]

[dwgdev]

Many people told me to go to meetups. I know I must do this, but what pushes me back is that I have lack of social skills. I am trying to overcome this and I am planning to join an iOS group that I just found online.

I will send you my resume. Thank you!

[dwgdev]

Hello everyone,

I want to first thank you all for your useful information, and the time to tell me steps to improve.

I did not expect to receive that many comments. I have read all of them already, and I will answer to some of the comments. Please, do not feel your comment is not helpful if I do not reply to it.

Thank you all again.

[stephen82]

I have just checked your project. It looks really cool mate, well done!

Keep on working on it, improve its performance whenever is necessary, and start documenting it via blog posts.

This way you will start gaining traffic to your blog and sooner than you think you will attract some recruiters.

[leke]

Nice game demo. If you are having trouble finding a job with work of that quality, then I've got no chance, lol. Good luck, I'm sure that's all you are lacking right now. I'm going to send you good vibes right now.

[paktek123]

Applying to the right places is also key, many job boards simply post up fake jobs for their numbers. Stackoverflow and university job boards are normally legit places to start from. Don't even get me started on graduate schemes.

[jnardiello]

Very very very strange. CS is exploding and everyone is hiring. Where are you based? Can you be more specific on what you would like to do? We are hiring - interns/junior too :)

[stefanos82]

It would be better to say "many are hiring" in place of everyone.

I'm a Computer Science myself with professional experience in IT since 2004 and I'm unemployed for 2 years now and I cannot get passed a decent interview without being labeled as "overqualified".

Right now I'm in the process to change path for good and become Security Guard because I have no other choice.

Technology works for countries like US, China, and such big industries, but not for tiny islands like my country I'm afraid.

My suggestion to original OP would be to find any job for now to make a living if he or she has no other financial support from family and work on his / her side projects until they gain momentum they deserve.

[ceautery]

You could also finish your game and get it into the app store. I'd pay a few bucks for that, and judging by some comments here, other HN-ers would as well.

[gernest]

I will share my story with you. Hopeful it will inspire you to keep trying and never give up.

So, I graduated in 2013 with BCom in Finance. I'm short sighted( chronic one, have been like this for more than 10 years), I have hearing impairment and to top it up I wasn't that good with my grades either so poor GPA.

For context, I had to pay TSH 10000 for someone to open an email for me so I can apply for college loan, meaning I never had any kind of access to computers until I was in college.

Fast forward, I graduated. The only valuable thing I had is a Laptop my sister bought for me since I couldn't attend lectures( can't see , can't hear and no one cares anyways) and I have to give myself the an education and needed to survive 3 years. This opened doors to the world of the World Wide Web, I read Wikipedia, mastered the art of googling and all those tricks to get the right information.

So, back home after college. There was no way for me to get a job, because.

* I can't last past the first screening , I had issues with communication

* I sucked at finance. I self educated myself so I was picky on what to learn, the jobs on the other hand were looking for people who had high grades and balanced accounts in their heads( pun intended)

It was me and my laptop, I gave up the prospect of being employed. I was too depressed to leave my room. So, I started programming to kill time and keep at bay the thought of suicide.

I started with PHP after playing for it for a while I wasn't that impressed I moved to Python, then Ruby then Erlang. Along the way I was learning and experimenting with all kinds of technologies I can grab for free on the internet be it CSS, HTML, Sass, etc.

Back then there was chronic power outages, so blackout were daily.

My routine was

* Leave the lights on, * Wake up when the lights are on( the power is back), and start coding. * Sleep when the power goes off ( blackout ) * Repeat the above steps for days in days out

I was earning 0, I decided to look for programming gig, I was depressed even more. there are only PHP shops here, in one occasion the lead engineer of one shop told me python was not a programming language.

When all hopes were lost, I came across this language called Go( Golang ). The way I was productive in it inspired me to think about building my own apps one day. So, I started sharing my projects on github. I was writing thousands of lines of Go like crazy. Just chasing the dead dreams. I can't remember how many unfinished ideas there was.

It was't until 2015 I decided to sum up my Go experinece into a little project I called utron. Utron was MVC framework for Go, which I hand rolled and loved, It caught attention of redditors and landed here on HN.

I landed my first gig november the same year. I moved to my own place and I have been independent ever since.

SUMMARY: Time is generous to all of us, keep doing what you feel is the right thing to do.

CONTEXT: I still program in Go, I'm probably the only professional Go programmer in my country (Tanzania) according to Github, folks here have no idea what I'm up to but that never stopped me from believing.

[dwgdev]

Thank you for sharing your awesome story

[crispytx]

Welcome to the real world :)

[kapauldo]

Please apply to our job posting https://buffalo.craigslist.org/eng/6186221427.html

[AngelCruz]

Please compare your Github portfolio to someone who is employed in the field which you are trying to enter.