How I Got My First Dev Job

I finished a remote bootcamp in summer 2017. It wasn’t that good, truth be told, and neither my technical ability nor my portfolio got me any attention. I registered on all the usual non-tech job boards (indeed, jobsite, etc) and updated my LinkedIn profile. I also went in person to some high street recruiters such as Reed. All this goes to say that I hadn’t really realised how separate the tech job world is at that point.

After a while I found more tech-specific job sites such as AngelList and began setting up profiles. I began scouring the web for Ruby on Rails jobs in London and really ramped up the amount of applications I submitted. I tracked these applications through Huntr where, having just checked, I can see 82 roles. I would say I applied to over 100 as there were more I’d forgotten to track. By this point I started to have some ‘success’ in having screening calls as well. A redesigned portfolio was really helping my case, as was an active Github profile.

A lot of the time the recruiters would like me but as soon as I spoke to someone technical they’d highlight a chink in my armour. One that kept coming up was a lack of testing experience and demonstrable ability so I set about practicing to be ready for the next interview, wherever that would come from.

I registered for siliconmilkroundabout (SMR for short) and continued networking in person, applying for jobs that I had no hope of getting purely to access their tech tests. I had realised that tech tests were basically the standard for employability in London. Irrespective of all the online tutorials and guides that promised job-readiness, the single most important metric was my ability to complete a tech test without having to spend hours learning something new beforehand.

The week before I was due to attend SMR a couple of promising opportunities arose and I finally felt prepared for all the tech tests I took. A combination of all the excruciatingly difficult tech tests I’d taken before and my own practice had rounded me out into something mildly employable. I attended SMR and made a load of new connections, with many companies sending me tech tests the following Monday. As it had turned out, one of the opportunities from the previous week offered me a role, sparing me tens of hours of tech tests. It was the company I was most keen on joining so accepted the offer and joined in Jan 2018.

Overall, it took me about four months between applying to getting my first job. In those four months I tried my utmost to code every day with purpose - learn skills that I was seeing pop up on job boards most, master skills I was encountering through tech tests and frantically researching anything that a recruiter (external, internal or technical) had mentioned that I wasn’t sure of. It wasn’t easy but I got there.