Getting your first job as a software developer without any work experience

Getting a job in the tech industry as a developer without any work experience is difficult. Software developers with great potential tend to get rejected without even getting an opportunity to prove themselves. Work experience whether, it’s an internship, full-time, or a contract job, is relevant, but things like appropriate skillset, hard work, dedication, and others always come first. There are a lot of software developers without any work experience that got noticed by tech giants (MAANG) and got hired as entry-level software developers because of their skills and dedication. I will let you know about all those approaches and skill enhancement that might help you secure your first job as a software developer.

1. Apply for an internship: one of the fastest ways to skill up is through internships. When searching for an internship opportunity, don’t set earning money as your number one priority. Apply for both paid and unpaid internships. Internship roles are not permanent roles what you need is real-world work experience, and the idea of how to effectively work with a team using version control software, and other tools to speed up your productivity. An internship role gives you a broad understanding of how various groups in a team build products. You would get to understand the role of a product manager, scrum master/agile coach, product designer, software developer, QA engineer, and DevOps engineer.
2. Build projects: think of products ideas and make them come to life. The product idea doesn’t have to be unique or so perfect. You can take your favorite product and try to recreate it. While trying to build things, you would run into a couple of issues, and resolving those issues would help give you a confidence boost and make you more “self-dependent” as a developer. Self-dependent in this context means you can identify issues within an application and fix them yourself. You might ask yourself why you need to build projects? When you finally get the opportunity to get interviewed by a company without any work experience. One of the questions they would ask is what products have you built in the past? At that point, you can showcase the products or packages you have created to the interviewer.
3. Attending meetups and conferences: to succeed in any niche, you need to have like-minded people in your circle. Tech meetups and conferences are one way you can connect with software developers and learn about new technologies and better practices to help improve your productivity. Connecting with new software developers is very relevant as they can recommend you or send you job openings to help speed up securing a job. You would also learn a lot when you get to meet with developers. Going out to connect with fellow developers is worth trying out. One developer can turn your career around for the better, you might be lucky to meet that developer at a meetup or a conference.
4. Contributing to open source: open-sourcing your project and building packages help you grow marginally. If you have a unique business logic you frequently use, consider abstracting it into a software package. You get to learn about software versioning, contributing via pull requests, and the concept of releases. Open source is one of the ways you can showcase your skills to everyone since your source code would be generally available for everyone to see your level of proficiency. Some job applications require their applicants to reveal the source code of some projects they have done in the past.
5. Take paid courses and get certified: taking crash courses is a good idea, but most crash courses abstract only the relevant information. Spend money on courses related to your niche and get certified. Certifications do not guarantee a job, but it gives you an edge over other applicants. Platforms with some of the best tutors are Udemy, Pluralsight, Coursera, and Udacity.
6. Connect with developers and technical recruiters on LinkedIn: Linkedin is primarily used for professional networking and career development and allows job seekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs. Build your professional profile on LinkedIn and showcase your qualities, and attempts the various skill tests that match your skills. Depending on your Linkedin connections, people share job openings on their timelines. The platform also provides a job section you can easily apply for jobs.
7. Apply for jobs: you can also try applying for junior roles and entry-level roles, the salary might not be appealing, but all you need is work experience. 6 to 12 months of work experience in a good organization can transform your career as a software developer. While applying for jobs, prepare your mind for rejections. During every interview, try to note the questions you could not convince the recruiter, and read up and get a better understanding of those questions afterward. Before every interview, try not to cram the concepts, instead understand their use cases, and you can also try having a mock interview to give yourself a confidence boost. One way you can get the best roles as an entry-level software developer, learn data structure and algorithms. Hackerrank and Leetcode provide a free platform you can practice the real-world applications of these algorithms and data structures.