I graduated in May with my associates degree, and sadly after applying a bit nothing, not even a reply email. I am convinced I am just unprepared for this industry, I will admit I don’t have a GitHub with 1 billion contributions, and a bunch of connections. but can I seriously get nothing. I can’t afford the 25K needed for my bachelors. I am honestly considering put in my applications to target or whatever and giving up.
I would say take a good look at what your resume looks like. Usually no responses back is an indicator something is wrong with your resume and causing issues.
Are you filling out the cover letter / “Say something about yourself” section on every application? I largely just throw ChatGPT at the problem and then do a second pass over it to make sure it looks good before submitting
Resume should be kept very short and sweet, with 90% of its content being focused on specifically name dropping key technologies by name you have used so automated systems pick it up. If you are a MERN dev for example, make 100% sure that “MongoDB”, “Express.js”, “React” “Node” and “NPM” are all verbatim somewhere on your resume.
Typically your resume should be quick and easy to scan from the top left corner to bottom left corner and convey most of the info. Id’ recommend watching some videos and read some posts on how to make a solid resume.
Other than that, I strongly recommend having a github that has a fully functional simple application on it that you have made on your own time, with numerous commits and a well fleshed out readme, ideally multiple paragraphs.
Just as an example, I have numerous projects on my github and most of them have some semblance of a readme. Try and include:
I made a solid resume just I have no work expereince since I never really worked in high school due to my controlling dad. Other than that I do fill out the cover letter section is a very similar manner to what you said
From my experience, usually a lack of responses means the resume has some form of issue going on. Formatting, font choice, etc etc.
Resumes are largely automatically parsed by machines nowadays, so 99% of the filtering happens by code, not a human, which means you really wanna optimize the resume for being picked up by machines properly. It can be tricky.
Some people unironically copy paste the entire job posting into their resume in the smallest possible font, white color, to “hide” it in the resume, but it still gets picked up by automated machines and as a result floats their resumes up to the top. Something to consider researching.
You sound like you’d prefer to take the easy way out.
Typically, if you went to college, you learned to learn. If you didn’t, finish your BS and learn to learn.
Conversely, you didn’t learn to apply for jobs or interview. Put your learning skills to the test and learn to apply and interview.
It sounds like you’re in a rush, and potentially a money crunch. It’s not defeat to take a small job, but you should be able to apply on your off hours if you really want it.
I worked for a messily $10/hr + applied to 10 jobs a day until I got an offer a year later for $40k starting. I took it on the spot, went into debt, but now 8 years later, make over $120k and I’m debt free.
I’m just considering what the modern landscape of min wage jobs are, you pretty much work 24.7 for min wage, so in considering I won’t have time to maintain anything else cause I’ll be at work
Well, you’re still young, so you probably have to find something to cut costs like finding a few roommates or living at home with parents.
Also, if you have a cs degree, you should be able to at least work in anything that requires Excel like accounting/book keeping/data entry/data analysis, which should get you past $7.25/hr.
Also, check local (assisted living/long term) pharmacies for data entry jobs. I know they’re at a deficit, and pay starts around $17/hr.
I think a studio somewhere is about the best I can do, living at home is kinda ugh, and I have been doing that for the past few years and living here has been sadly a hot pocket for my mental illness. keep mind if I did leave it would still be in the south. I am just kinda considering a min wage job since I don’t really see a way to get into tech now, and I need a lot of thing to survive sadly including ADHD meds and likely something to stop my depressive episodes from getting this bad. After that I will likely be okay to kinda work on software dev stuff in my free time and maybe do an online bachelors part time while trying to build the portfolio I did not during my years in college. I doubt it will be pleasant working at Target or something and living in a studio apartment I almost not afford but it’s better than nothing
Target should be on the more pleasant side, and they’re not minimum wage. $7.25 is minimum, and that’s fucking rough. I did that in early college, but had family I could stay with.
Good luck and make sure they give you full time (and health insurance).
Is this for a software development job? You should look at contributing to open source and also find a personal project to work on that shows off your skills.
I just feel like none of this is reasltic given I will be working most of the time, and unable to maintain anything. If I’m only home 1-2 hours a day how can I maintain anything
Do you work 7 days a week?
Because most people usually still have some semblance of weekends off, and usually it is on weekends that I maintain my personal projects.
Yes, you’ll need to work a full time job, live with roommates, and make ends meet while you assemble your portfolio on Github, ideally.
I primarily applied to a couple jobs a day, every workday, on my breaks at work on my phone. It’s pretty easy to just pop open LinkedIn on my phone during breaks and fire off a couple applications with ChatGPT generated cover letters.
On weekends I’d apply to more, but mostly put my energy into meal prepping for the week to conserve energy on one of my weekend days, and then the other just focusing on my projects.