Students - Getting Noticed By Hiring Managers!

One of the great parts of my role here at SHAZAM is the time that I’m able to take to go out and visit with many of the local middle school, high school and collegiate students interested in careers in technology. My being able to talk about the ins and outs of this industry, how it has kept me engaged over my career and to get feedback from these students lifts me up. I enjoy talking to them about the opportunities that they will have and the changes that they will be able to make along the way. 

Invariably, during these discussions, someone will ask, “but, how do I get noticed?”

Great question, how do you get noticed among the many students graduating and entering the work force. Let me walk thru what I tell students, and by the way, I’ve given this same advice to my youngest son, as he is pursuing a career in technology. This will be focused on software development and test automation.

First Focus on Your Grades: The grades you earn are important for that first professional job as you enter the working world. It is an indicator that you paid attention and took the time to understand the material presented in the classroom and that you were able to translate that into working knowledge on individual and group assignments. While a low grade will not be a disqualifier in the process, it is a barrier that you’ll need to explain. Show me where you went above and beyond on classroom assignments. Did you ever take on an extra project and share it with the class or the instructor?

Programming Experience: Doing your homework is the bare minimum. You’re going to need to explain group projects, your role in those projects, how you overcame conflict in the group and how you got people to work together. If you want a step up on other candidates that your competing with, you should look to do projects outside the classroom. Let me give you some examples:

• Expand your knowledge. Find a technology that you want to play with and start to learn it. You may not become an expert on it, but it is going to teach you knew concepts and new techniques. Are you interested in big data – show me something that backs up that statement? What about machine learning – instead of just saying you want to learn it, have you taught yourself Python and PyTorch. Even if you haven’t successfully gotten your first engine up and running, what have you learned, what can you show me, what challenges have you encountered?
• Recreate a game you like. Bring that with you to the interview and talk about the choices you had to make, what you learned from the experience and how it made you better as a developer. My son, one day announced that he was going to recreate the game ‘2048’ on his own and to one up the normal game, he was going to create an AI behind the game that would play it for him. Mind you, this was during his first semester at college, he was taking general education classes and wanted something technical to play with.
• Build a mobile app. We are all carrying around smart phones. The cost of entry for development is $0 – you can download the software development kits off the internet. A couple of years ago, we were looking to hire some new team members. I remember the hiring manager walking into my office after one of the interviews talking about how they had just completed an interview with a candidate. He walked into the interview pulled out his smart phone and started talking about an app that he had just created. So, this candidate showed he was passionate about coding, that he geeked out along with the best of them and that he could learn new technology. Winner!
• Stretch Goal – Contribute to an Open Source Project. Find an open source project that you care about, study the code and start submitting changes to correct features that aren’t working correctly. Your changes might not get accepted at first, but you will learn a lot along the way and maybe one day you will have a change submitted that gets accepted.
• Stretch Goal - Contract Program. Are you good enough that you can actually go out and take on small contracts? Maybe build a web site or a mobile app and get paid for it? This is not for everyone – you better be able to back up your claim as a developer and be able to deliver within the constraints given by the company that your taking on the effort for. There are plenty of web sites out there that allow you to bid on contract jobs.
• Stretch Goal - Volunteer Programming. Find a non-profit that needs help. These small non-profits in your community typically need help to track donors, track the details of programs they are running. Can you help them out

Use Git: As a student, you have the ability to use Git Education for free and get a bundle of software/tools that will help you as a developer. If you don’t know, Git is a versioning system that allows you to manage changes to your code and allows you to recover code when you break something. Load your assignments into Git, load the projects you created for yourself into Git. Do not share code you created under contract – that is owned by the company that paid you. Use this code repository as a portfolio that you can make available to hiring managers to show them your capabilities. Be prepared to talk about these projects in the interview. Which ones were assigned projects, which ones did you take on just to learn and explore? What choices did you face along the way? How did you resolve issues? How did you test?

Understand Testing: Whether you work in an Agile or Waterfall environment, you need to understand the components of software development and the responsibilities on the person creating the code. I’m over simplifying here, but you should be able to talk thru how you design, how you plan for testing, how you code and how you test. If you don’t understand why you should figure out how you’ll test code before you actually write the code, repeat this step as often as needed. Truly gifted developers understand the need to plan their test strategy and write their tests before they code.

Join your schools Computer Club: Take on an active role in the club. Become an officer, help run events. Has the club sponsored a hacking event? Can the club sponsor a hacking event? Can the club take part in competitions at other schools? Be able to talk about your experiences in the club, what you did with the club how you helped the club meet its mission.

Establish Relationships with your Professors/Instructors: Everyone is going to need to have a set of references when they apply. As an applicant for a job, your ability to identify instructors that you’ve had along the way who will speak positively about your participation in class and with the assigned work is a net positive for you. Remember, people like myself have relationships with many of the local instructors and we’ll ask them about your participation in class, how you worked in collaboration with other students on team projects. Many times, I’ll have instructors send me a note or stop me after I’ve met with their students and they’ll tell me students that I should get in touch with, who are the ones going above and beyond on their assignments, who works well in class and is always paying attention and helping others out.

Research Companies: As a Freshman, start figuring out what kinds of companies you want to work for after you get out of college. Do you want to work for large multi-national companies? Do you want to work for a smaller company? Do you want to live in the country? Do you want to live in a large metro area? Do you want the opportunity to telecommute? Start creating a list of companies that you’re interested in and make sure you look for opportunities to connect with those companies. Follow them on LinkedIn. Regularly visit their web site to see what the company is doing. Follow them in news articles to understand what they are doing. If they have a recruiting department – connect with their recruiters or with people in HR via LinkedIn. Find out thru your research what skills and experiences that they want students to have. As an example, one of the companies that my son eventually wants to work for leans towards hiring students with collegiate research experience.

Attend All Job Fairs: Even as a Freshman in college, you should be going to job fairs to introduce yourself to potential employers. Let them know upfront that you’re a Freshman and understand that you’re probably not eligible for internships, but that you’d like to learn about their company, what they are looking for and ask them how to stand out as an applicant. Connect with corporate recruiters from these job fairs via LinkedIn. Send them a note after the job fair telling them what you heard about their company and what they are looking for and then let the recruiter know that you’ll keep them updated on your progress. Then actually stay in touch as you move thru your educational career.

Use LinkedIn: Do not wait – as a Freshman, create a LinkedIn account. Begin following companies you are interested in. Begin following people at the companies you are interested in. Specifically, follow the companies you are interested in, find managers that might potentially hire you someday, find the recruiters in the company and connect with people in HR. Build these connections so that you can see what they are posting. When you see something posted that you can contribute to in a meaningful way, jump into the conversation. Don’t reply to a post just to reply, be thoughtful and add to the discussion.

I’m not saying every student should hit every one of the above items, but if you are just going to class, doing the bare minimum to get buy on homework, that is not how you’ll get noticed by employers and find internship opportunities, let alone job opportunities when you graduate. If this is going to be your career, take it seriously and invest the time needed to not only tackle your education, but to prepare yourself for when you want to get hired!

If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile