Finding a development job without experience

tensorproduct

Hi

I'm looking for a software development job in Ireland (preferably Dublin, but willing to travel) but so far I have had no luck even getting a response to any of the CVs that I have sent out.

Almost all of the jobs that I have seen advertised require 5 years experience, but I have only just over a year experience of real programming. I have just completed a masters in computer science, prior to that I worked for years training to be an actuary, which give me plenty of professional experience in an only tangentially related field.

I'm eager to learn as much as I can about programming, development and computer science. I am taking advantage of my current unemployment to learn new languages and to embark on small to medium projects just to keep myself sharp.

I'm starting to get discouraged by the lack of response that I've been getting. Can anybody offer advice?

Is there any recruitment agency that specialises in software development roles? I have tried contacting Eolas, but they have not responded to any of my emails or calls. In contrast, English recruitment agents have been actively contacting me for weeks and have arranged multiple interviews (though my lack of experience still counts against me).

Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers
Barry

MacBoogerBalls

You apply for any Testing / Support roles?

tensorproduct

Not yet. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that those are software development roles.

Do you think that those might be a necessary first step to getting into a proper programming job?

srsly78

In the current economic climate you have to do whatever it takes to get a foot in the door. Contrast this to the 90s, when even college dropouts could get jobs easily in development.

Just keep applying, the first job is always the hardest to get.

Boom_Bap

I was in the same boat as you OP. Looked for a developent role straight of compton* college and a year later no bites.
Moved into a tech support role for industry experience, 11 months at that and still no development roles cropped up.
I then found an excellent software support role (in the development dept) and pretty happy that I avoided becoming a developer. I've had many oppertunities to move into programming, but I much prefer what I'm doing now, and been at it for 7 years now. I still have access to the code-base accross all our products, finding bugs, locate the problematic lines and then tell a developer to fix it. I still need to knock up some scripts from time to time as well, so I get to use what I learned in college.

So dont overlook other opertunities to get your foot in the door of a company.

*I had to throw in a hip hop quip

srsly78

Dude support is the equivalent of unskilled labour in IT. All the QA/support guys I talk to basically couldn't hack being developers.

awec

Get involved in some open source work. Even though you won't get paid it is at least something measurable and actual that you can put on a CV and discuss at interview.

You can start your own projects but this will take longer before you have something to show for it. The benefit of joining an existing project is that it (sort of) demonstrates a bit of team work (I say sort of, because chances are you will never meet, discuss or have anything to do with other contributors).

tensorproduct

srsly78 wrote: »

Dude support is the equivalent of unskilled labour in IT. All the QA/support guys I talk to basically couldn't hack being developers.

That's kind of what I thought might be the case. If a job in support or testing could be said to be a genuine path to a development position, then I would have to just grit my teeth and take it, but I haven't seen much to suggest that it would be.

jgh_

awec wrote: »

Get involved in some open source work. Even though you won't get paid it is at least something measurable and actual that you can put on a CV and discuss at interview.

You can start your own projects but this will take longer before you have something to show for it. The benefit of joining an existing project is that it (sort of) demonstrates a bit of team work (I say sort of, because chances are you will never meet, discuss or have anything to do with other contributors).

I second this. Get on github and contribute to projects, or do something that interests you and put it up there. Get on StackOverflow and contribute questions and answers. Get on LinkedIn. Start a blog documenting your development progress. There's lots you can do to improve your standing. Github is probably the first thing though. More and more employers are looking for/at it

ChRoMe

srsly78 wrote: »

Dude support is the equivalent of unskilled labour in IT. All the QA/support guys I talk to basically couldn't hack being developers.

While thats a pretty harsh way to put it, I have to admit its true, unskilled is a little over the top though.

Dave!

jgh_ wrote: »

I second this. Get on github and contribute to projects, or do something that interests you and put it up there. Get on StackOverflow and contribute questions and answers. Get on LinkedIn. Start a blog documenting your development progress. There's lots you can do to improve your standing. Github is probably the first thing though. More and more employers are looking for/at it

This!!! Plenty you can be doing to make yourself stand out. And make sure you reference these appropriately, probably in your cover letter (which should be very good also).

Is your CV in good shape? Talk to a recruiter or 2 and get some feedback. Worth registering with a few of these anyway. Theyre not all time wasters.

If you do any web development, you should put together a portfolio website. I've gotten most of my jobs in no small part because of my portfolio.

Bottom line is the employer will be looking for something tangible that demonstrates your knowledge, and that you know what you're talking about.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

There's a few iOS & Android shops in Dublin looking for people on Jobbridge. I know it's kinda slave labour but it'd be a good way to get your foot in the door. And a lot of these jobs wouldn't be on the job websites, because most people loathe recruiters. They'd be advertised on Twitter and company websites. Spend the day doing serious Googling and use the time features to catch new jobs posted on company sites.

H3llR4iser

Sorry to break this, but you have to be willing to move. Dublin, as much as an hotspot asit is for development and anything IT related, also suffers from the typical problem that comes with such status: crowded market and fierce competition. If a company is looking for a developer, they won't even consider your CV simply because they know there WILL certainly be somebody with more experience available and, in the current state of the market, they won't even have to pay him/her an eye and an arm.

If you have the opportunity to go for interviews somewhere in England, do it - try to either get a phone interview first (then if they want you to go over for an eye-to-eye one, it means you have good chances of getting the job), or try to cluster interviews to save on travel costs (e.g. stay over a couple of days where you have 2-3 interviews planned).

Also try other places in Ireland - Cork is probably just as crowded as Dublin but other areas might actually have more difficulties sourcing developers; A couple of years in Connemara or Donegal might put an end to the "rookie" definition coming with your CV

Other than that, what has already been suggested is the way to go - volunteer jobs might also be an idea, just in order to have something to show on your portfolio/CV.

ChRoMe

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Sorry to break this, but you have to be willing to move. Dublin, as much as an hotspot asit is for development and anything IT related, also suffers from the typical problem that comes with such status: crowded market and fierce competition.

Except most of that fierce competition are completely incompetent. I know several people back in Dublin that have been looking to fill developer positions for 6months +.

They all complain that the quality of applications are appalling, and they are defo interested to take things like experience/hobby projects over certs/degrees.

matrim

tensorproduct wrote: »

That's kind of what I thought might be the case. If a job in support or testing could be said to be a genuine path to a development position, then I would have to just grit my teeth and take it, but I haven't seen much to suggest that it would be.

A support / QA job can be a step to development. I've done it in the past. The thing is that you have to make it happen yourself and not wait for it to be handed to you.
Let the company know you want to do development.
As part of the support / QA role write code to automate stuff, tools to help do the job. And try to get these known to the dev manager.
Get involved in open source development outside of work etc.

Basically, do the QA / Support job to get money and gain some experience but do as much development as you can both as part of the role and yourself.

I found it took a while to get the initial break into development but I now find that having the support experience as well as dev experience gives me a better chance with some jobs.

jgh_

ChRoMe wrote: »

Except most of that fierce competition are completely incompetent. I know several people back in Dublin that have been looking to fill developer positions for 6months +.

They all complain that the quality of applications are appalling, and they are defo interested to take things like experience/hobby projects over certs/degrees.

Same experience everywhere I've been - most applicants are crap. You just have to be able to show that you're passionate about the things you do, and you're able to tackle new problems and succeed.

tensorproduct

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Sorry to break this, but you have to be willing to move. Dublin, as much as an hotspot asit is for development and anything IT related, also suffers from the typical problem that comes with such status: crowded market and fierce competition. If a company is looking for a developer, they won't even consider your CV simply because they know there WILL certainly be somebody with more experience available and, in the current state of the market, they won't even have to pay him/her an eye and an arm.

If you have the opportunity to go for interviews somewhere in England, do it - try to either get a phone interview first (then if they want you to go over for an eye-to-eye one, it means you have good chances of getting the job), or try to cluster interviews to save on travel costs (e.g. stay over a couple of days where you have 2-3 interviews planned).

Also try other places in Ireland - Cork is probably just as crowded as Dublin but other areas might actually have more difficulties sourcing developers; A couple of years in Connemara or Donegal might put an end to the "rookie" definition coming with your CV

Other than that, what has already been suggested is the way to go - volunteer jobs might also be an idea, just in order to have something to show on your portfolio/CV.

I never said I was just looking in Dublin. I've been actively searching in England, and have already had phone interviews, taken on-line tests and travelled over for one face-to-face, My main issue with Ireland is that nobody seems to want to respond to any phone-calls or emails. That goes for both recruiters and companies. In contrast, the English recruiters are calling me several times a day and have done great work to get my CV in front of hiring managers.

I'm aware that there are fewer jobs here, but I'm becoming convinced that the recruitment agents in Ireland are just useless. I really started this thread to find out if there was any decent agency out there that I should be talking to.

In the mean time, I'm doing everything I can to beef up my CV. I haven't yet contributed to any open source projects, but I'm researching it right now. I have a couple of my own projects that aren't yet developed enough to be bragging about, and I'm sitting a couple of coursera.org classes as well.

jgh_

tensorproduct wrote: »

In the mean time, I'm doing everything I can to beef up my CV. I haven't yet contributed to any open source projects, but I'm researching it right now. I have a couple of my own projects that aren't yet developed enough to be bragging about, and I'm sitting a couple of coursera.org classes as well.

I don't think the projects necessarily need to be in a finished state or anything, just make a github account and throw them up there - at least then people will have something to look at anyway.

tensorproduct

jgh_ wrote: »

I second this. Get on github and contribute to projects, or do something that interests you and put it up there. Get on StackOverflow and contribute questions and answers. Get on LinkedIn. Start a blog documenting your development progress. There's lots you can do to improve your standing. Github is probably the first thing though. More and more employers are looking for/at it

All good ideas. I suppose that I'm trying to figure out if I would be better off swallowing some unemployment for a while, and do as much of this stuff as possible while job-hunting, or taking a support/QA job to get my foot in the door of a tech company but leaving less time for doing my own programming.

tensorproduct

jgh_ wrote: »

I don't think the projects necessarily need to be in a finished state or anything, just make a github account and throw them up there - at least then people will have something to look at anyway.

Fair point. Thanks for the tip.

Boom_Bap

In defense of a support role, there are some out there that don't just encompass logging calls and escalating. My role being one of them, I get to travel the world, get involved in politics, get involved in strategy for the products, work with PS/QA/DEV/Tech Writers, help out with Sales demo's.......and the main bonus is that it's unpredictable as to what I will be doing on a daily basis.

If you do the QA/Support route, you familiarize yourself with the product and how it is used in the outside world which would help getting accustomed to developing it. If a company you work for starts looking for developers, you have a foot in the door and an advantage. But that all depends on that type of role becoming available. If it doesn't happen, at least you would have industry experience and be able to demonstrate being part of the life cycle.

The open source route is also an excellent suggestion.

tensorproduct

Boom_Bap wrote: »

In defense of a support role, there are some out there that don't just encompass logging calls and escalating. My role being one of them, I get to travel the world, get involved in politics, get involved in strategy for the products, work with PS/QA/DEV/Tech Writers, help out with Sales demo's.......and the main bonus is that it's unpredictable as to what I will be doing on a daily basis.

Well, I came from an actuarial job where I contributed a lot of stuff in a lot of different ways, and got to do some coding on the side to make the job easier. An IT support job sounds about as close to development as that, and I left it for a reason.

I don't mean to knock the work you do, but it's definitely not what I'm looking for. I would only consider it as a stepping stone into dev work, and even then that is plan B.

Boom_Bap

tensorproduct wrote: »

I don't mean to knock the work you do, but it's definitely not what I'm looking for. I would only consider it as a stepping stone into dev work, and even then that is plan B.

No offence taken at all!
What I am getting at is that I used this as a stepping stone to get into a development role, have been offered the development role multiple times now, and have turned down the chance.

tensorproduct

Boom_Bap wrote: »

No offence taken at all!
What I am getting at is that I used this as a stepping stone to get into a development role, have been offered the development role multiple times now, and have turned down the chance.

That's fair enough, and I would consider a support role if that was a possibility. I'm not inclined to lie though, so if I was interviewing for an IT support role, I would be honest about what I was really interested in.

Maybe honesty isn't the best policy.

tensorproduct

Thanks for all the replies guys. I will continue as I was, but start putting all the little things that I'm working on up on github, and try to find an open source project that I can contribute to.

Boom_Bap

tensorproduct wrote: »

That's fair enough, and I would consider a support role if that was a possibility. I'm not inclined to lie though, so if I was interviewing for an IT support role, I would be honest about what I was really interested in.

Maybe honesty isn't the best policy.

To be honest, when I was interviewing for this role, I was honest in saying that my goal was to get into development.

And you also have to differentiate between the types of support role...

Tech Support - headset blaring non stop - I've done this, it's horrible.

IT Support - I've lost all my outlook contacts, fix it IT man. It's what my friends think I do

Software Support - Supporting a companies erm, software.

Mixed in with all those there are also the different tiers of support, 1st, 2nd, 3rd level. 3rd level software support roles would generally involve bug fixing and coding. If all else fails in getting a developer role, or if you want to work while looking for the developer role, 3rd level support is an avenue for you.


There is also the QA route, again to tide you over while looking for a development role. Some QA departments will be looking for people that can debug and step through code and do some scripting.

Again, all i'm alluding to here is different avenues for you to get into development, not glorifying QA or CS work!

jester77

srsly78 wrote: »

Dude support is the equivalent of unskilled labour in IT. All the QA/support guys I talk to basically couldn't hack being developers.

I would have to disagree with this. The QA guys where I work are skilled and good developers. They write automated tests in Java, Ruby & Objective C using frameworks like Selenium, Robotium, KIF, Capybara and Cucumber. They are far from unskilled.

OP, QA is a good option for getting into serious development and not something you should ignore.

ChRoMe

jester77 wrote: »

I would have to disagree with this. The QA guys where I work are skilled and good developers. They write automated tests in Java, Ruby & Objective C using frameworks like Selenium, Robotium, KIF, Capybara and Cucumber. They are far from unskilled.

OP, QA is a good option for getting into serious development and not something you should ignore.

Really depends on the problem domain the developers are working in. For example the majority of consumer facing web applications, QA is going to be doing horrible jobs such as checking copy and layouts.

Certainly using Selenium for automating web based tests is good for QA efficiency, but its not even close to comparing it to development.

Are you referring to you QA guys writing actual unit tests in Java/Obj-c etc?? If so I find it bizarre the developers themselves are not doing that.

dazberry

A few years ago I was in a rut, having spent a while trying to move out of a legacy development role, and really getting no-where (legacy = no experience apparently), I took the first job that came along, which happened to be a developer support role. Was actually put into QA and died a little inside, and left after 9 weeks.

D.