Ask HN: How long did it take you to get your first dev job?

Even when I got to the senior level, I did up to 3 interviews per day (NYC).

The fact that you only got 1 interview means your resume is very weak, and you never did any extra curricular projects.

In cases like that, at major US universities, some big companies (each of whom can hire dozens of students every year) are in a race: they know that they will overlap in which students they want most. So they offer early, and they play games like the "exploding offer" we have discussed here before.

With those companies, recruitment of a spring graduating class will be complete before the start of winter.

After graduation, things should get easier once you have 2-3 years of work experience (i.e. one industry standard job lifetime).

Small companies may be more flexible and/or random, because they are less systematic and probably only hire one person (or no one) each year from most schools.

I believe that my first job out of school took about three months.

It's important to remember you are likely not qualified for any job that you applied to. Of the companies that are most likely excited about new college graduates, many list job openings specifically for new graduates.

This should not discourage you though, it is probably in your best interest to only apply to jobs that you are not qualified for.

Also the way that you find companies can dramatically impact your hit rate. If you look at primarily sources like job posting boards, then you will have a very high signal-to-noise ratio to defeat.

try to come up with new strategies for finding companies that interest you.

Also, as other people have said, I believe that it is a good idea for you to get professional feedback on your cover letters and resumes. Both of these must be completely understandable by both a technical lead and an HR representative. This is a non-trivial goal to meet.

- The more interviews, phone screens, etc. you have, the better you get at them. Better studying than studying.

- Having a competing offer, even if you don't plan on taking it, is going to make companies you DO want to work for process your application far more quickly...and maybe even be more likely to hire you.

- It takes longer to figure out you probably won't want to work for a company than it does to do the minimal amount of research necessary to whip up a cover letter and send it in. Worst case, they want to interview you, and you get additional interview practice. No point doing the rest of the research on a company until you're at least to a phone screen.

- You'll be surprised at companies you thought you wanted to work for that you don't, and companies you'd never heard of that you fall in love with.

Good luck

All that said, what sort of experiences are you putting on your resume? If you're involved in any open source projects, include them. If you've got a Github account with some small code projects, do list the URL in your resume. Every little thing helps!

You need to remember that your resume needs things to help you stand out from the crowd.

Also I put a lot of effort into making my resume the best I could. Don't neglect this. It is the #1 most important thing you need to do when searching for a job.

You mentioned your intern experience being at 'lower tier' comonies. Are you maybe being too picky in where you are applying?

I'm not a typical example -- my experience here is over 20 years ago, I had no formal training in CS/engineering, and I was looking for work in an area that no one had open positions for (what people called a webmaster position in '95, but this was '92). I worked as a temp for a year until I got lucky with contacts / networking and found a company that needed my skills. I did very well for myself once I was able to demonstrate my expertise -- and I believe that's as true today as it was 25 years ago.

For anyone who came here to share advice about my resume, here's a link via my VPS: http://162.243.149.58/Resume.pdf

And don't be afraid to experiment, tweaking your resume and cover letters. In the meantime, build little projects that are interesting enough to put on github and your resume.

The total time it took varied by company, but was generally one-two months. Most companies moved quite quickly, regardless of their ultimate decision. The longest lapse was between the initial contact and the first interview, usually. Of the companies I interviewed with, two were big Silicon Valley names, one was a small consulting org, one was a big insurance corporation, and the other two were fairly large private software companies (but not Valley companies). I went with one of the last two. Three of the companies I interviewed with actually contacted me first; interestingly, all of them made me offers.

I have a good single-page resume, and a personal site with more detail on it. More importantly, though, I'm good at the non-technical side of interviews, which helped me everywhere except the companies that do nothing but demand you regurgitate rote CS knowledge (read: Google). One trick I did was a short (<5 minutes) live demo of a personal project while in interviews, sometimes with a (very brief) code walkthrough. Not everyone cared to see it, but usually if they did, it was well-received.

But me talking about me won't help you. Let's talk about you. You're anonymous on here, your profile doesn't link to any identifying info, so be real:

Are you a student or recent grad, or are you self taught? What's your story? If you're a new grad, what was your GPA? If <3.0, can you explain why? Any red flags on your transcript? If not a new grad, what's your past experience? What do you do to demonstrate your abilities? What does your resume look like? What do you mean by "lower tier" jobs? Have you studied up on basic CS for those awful algorithms questions? Can you show some good past projects? Are you following up on these opportunities, or just waiting for someone to get with you? Are you being upfront and forward with your HR contacts? Why do you have to be in Vancouver? Would you move if the price was right?

What I'm getting at is you need to take a hard look at your networking/interviewing practices and see where the gaps might be. If you put the answers here, I am sure people will help you. Do post your resume as well.

  Venture-Capital Investment by City

  Rank	Metro	Venture Capital Investment (millions)	   Share of Global Venture Capital Investment
  1	San Francisco	$6,471	15.4%
  2	San Jose	$4,175	9.9%
  3	Boston	        $3,144	7.5%
  4	New York	$2,106	5.0%
  5	Los Angeles	$1,450	3.4%
  6	San Diego	$1,410	3.3%
  7	London	        $842	2.0%
  8	Washington	$835	2.0%
  9	Beijing	        $758	1.8%
  10	Seattle	        $727	1.7%
  11	Chicago	        $688	1.6%
  12	Toronto	        $628	1.5%
  13	Austin	        $626	1.5%
  14	Shanghai	$510	1.2%
  15	Mumbai	        $497	1.2%
  16	Paris	        $449	1.1%
  17	Bangalore	$419	1.0%
  18	Philadelphia	$413	1.0%
  19	Phoenix	        $325	0.8%
  20	Moscow	        $318

I would say if you can speak to your relevant experiences and are able to tie that into the position, most times the 2-3 years of experience or BS in CS or engineering is a soft requirement.

That being said shoot for doing 4-5 applications per day, and if an interview goes poorly, brush it off, and get ready for the next one.

I created categories, or staging points for each application in asana, and treated the job search like work. (Applied, emailed, follow up thanks, phone screen, phone interview, onsite, etc)

Depending on who is doing the hiring the process could take an hour or it could take 3wks+ if its a big organization.

Edit:

Also reframe any "problems" as challenges, and instead of making negative comments try to pull out the positive from any given situation when asked about something.

GitHub has generated several leads for me too.

Want me to have a look at your resume? There might be something you can improve that's causing you to not receive calls back (might just be bad luck!). I'm no expert in resumes though.

We're always looking for people to hire if we think they're a good fit.

Send me an email: lochlan (at) workatplay (dot) com

These can be low-level connections, e.g., reach out to 2nd or 3rd degree LinkedIn connections that work there, and ask for a phone call to talk about how they like the job. If you like the work, ask them to pass along your resume.