I don’t normally post but I’ve been getting kinda anxious about this as graduation gets closer.

I started seriously looking for jobs in mid-March and have sent out around 25 applications so far with the oldest being a little over 3 weeks old, and the only responses I’ve gotten are what seems like 2 auto rejects I got almost immediately after applying with no other contact otherwise.

My undergraduate was in chemical engineering but I did a master’s in data science bc I wanted to pivot into more-techy jobs. Idk if my lack of a cs undergrad is hurting me a lot or what.

Maybe this is normal and I’ll start hearing back from places soon but I just wanted to hear someone else’s thoughts.

  • Janked [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    If you're going for a first tech job with no experience, you might need to do more to stand out with your application.

    It's stupid and bullshit, but people really hate paying software engineers and data viz as much as they do, so they want to find the person with the most experience that will take the lowest level job possible. Plus they are obsessed with knowing people can already do the job because they have no desire to put any effort into training or mentorship.

    If you're applying for these jobs with just a resume and no projects or portfolio listed or any practical experience, you probably won't hear back.

    If you do have those things, don't worry about it, two weeks isn't a lot of time - I applied for 70+ jobs and heard back from less than 10 and I have 3 years of good professional experience. You might want to try a recruiter too, lots of them are bad, but a good one could help you get a foot in the door.

    • eduardog3000 [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      If you’re applying for these jobs with just a resume and no projects or portfolio listed or any practical experience, you probably won’t hear back.

      :sadness:

      • Janked [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I know, it sucks. But you can work around it. If you do have projects, put them on your resume. If you haven't already made something from scratch all the way through, it'll be good experience to do that and put that on your resume.

        Job hunting is hell, unfortunately, even after you've "learned to code". Getting the first tech job is always the hardest, but once you're in things get a bit easier.

        • eduardog3000 [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          If you haven’t already made something from scratch all the way through, it’ll be good experience to do that

          Yeah, that's the problem. I have a ton of projects... that never really got off the ground.

          Getting the first tech job is always the hardest, but once you’re in things get a bit easier.

          Thankfully I already have my first (through a job placement program). But it pays relatively low for the field (though still pretty good) and I'm not too happy with it in general. So basically my entire resume is "these are the technologies I've used, no you can't see any examples" and "I've worked at xyz for a couple years".

          • meme_monster [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            What's kept you from completing any projects? Surely there's something you produced of minimal value right? An alpha release? Something you got running on your machine?

          • Janked [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Makes sense, I would work on either polishing up and finishing some of the projects you started in the past, or reduce your scale a little bit on what the projects you're doing are trying to accomplish.

            You don't even need to make anything new, just having a deployed CRUD app would be much better than nothing to show.