Wanted Java Junior: where is it easier to find a job and how to please the employer?

In the articles on CodeGym, we never tire of repeating that knowledge of the Java language, due to its global popularity, provides great opportunities for employment and a successful long-term career. And this is true - there are many vacancies for Java developers, and their number is only growing. According to statistics from Collabera, one of the leading IT recruiting agencies, from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2018, the number of Java-related vacancies increased by 80% at once - from 3.5 thousand to 6.2 thousand. So, Java, due to its demand in mobile applications, solutions for IoT devices and in many other trending niches, is only gaining popularity. The demand for Java coders is growing, and learning this programming language is difficult, but possible thanks to the mass of documentation and convenient tools (including CodeGym, of course). It would seem that everything is fine, and Java developers can only enjoy life, thank fate for choosing this particular PL, and look to the future with optimism. This is partly true, but the real world still makes harsh adjustments, and it is often not very easy for young Java developers to find work. And it also happens that reality hits the green Java juniors, who in their pink dreams already see themselves as highly paid pros, in the stomach with a boot of high requirements when applying for a job. For example, the reluctance of employers to hire people without experience and extensive knowledge of a bunch of technologies and frameworks. Therefore, today we will talk about what top employers expect from Java juniors, where it will be easiest for a beginner to find a job, and without what knowledge and skills one cannot succeed in employment.

Java Jun portrait: what do companies expect from a novice coder?

So, what do companies expect from an aspiring Java developer? Often, expectations can, and will, vary greatly from company to company. And here, many people with experience recommend simply asking the recruiter or HR manager of the organization that posted the job about the requirements directly. As a rule, employers do not make a secret of what they expect from a Java-junior, and what scheme the interview will follow. If you measure the “average temperature in the hospital,” at a basic level, everything somehow comes down to two things: knowledge of the basics of Java programming, as well as the ability and willingness to learn or deepen your skills. Many experts and experienced programmers, as well as employers, note that it is the latter that is most important. When hiring a novice Java developer, the employer is usually aware that that the “junior” still has only a basic knowledge of the language and its technologies, and he only has to form an understanding of the processes in the development team and the company as a whole. However, it is almost always expected of a novice coder that he will make every effort to master all the necessary skills as soon as possible. This is where the notorious “soft skills,” such as the ability to interact within a team, work ethic, as well as motivation and discipline, come to the fore. If we talk specifically about the technical requirements for a Java junior, then here in most job descriptions there will be a whole list, but some gaps in the resume, formal education and experience can often be compensated by the willingness to learn quickly and not ostentatious enthusiasm.

• Java Core

  As for the above list of requirements, the very first in it, of course, will be Java Core - knowledge of all the fundamental foundations of Java, which includes the basic constructions, operators and data types of Java, an understanding of the principles of an object-oriented programming language and how they are implemented in Java, and also an understanding of multithreading and a number of other things that make up the “core” of this language.

  IDE

  Having confirmed the knowledge of the “basics,” the future Java jun will need to demonstrate knowledge of the IDE (Integrated Development Environment), an understanding of its main features, knowledge of the differences between the main IDEs, as well as the ability to compile, run, debug and test files, refactor code.

• Version control systems

  Knowledge of version control systems and the basic principles of their use is also required even from an inexperienced developer, because he will still work in a team.

• Java API

  Knowledge of the core Java language APIs will also be critical in an interview and will most likely help you get a job. The most important APIs that you need to know first of all are the Java Collection Framework and the Java Concurrency API.

For more information about the Java developer knowledge tree, see this material from CodeGym: Java. Action plan. In addition to technical knowledge and skills, knowledge of English plays an important role when considering a candidate for the position of a junior Java coder. In short, you need to know English, at least at a strong Intermediate level. Well, besides this, one should not forget about the importance of a confident and effective presentation of oneself along with the knowledge, skills and abilities that, at the very least, but still exist. That is, about your resume. “Junior developers should not play by the same rules as experienced coders. If you've seen enough minimalist-cool one-page resumes of experienced developers, you should not repeat this approach. Add any experience you have to your resume. Maybe you will be lucky and the employer, looking through your resume, will see in it a mention of some feature that is also used in the products of this company, ”-advises Johnny Le, Senior Developer at Instructure. “One of the great things about programming is that you can create dozens of your own projects all by yourself. So make some of your own, albeit simple, but full-fledged programs - a time tracker, a project management system, a calendar, etc. And add them all to your resume. It is important for an employer to know first of all whether you can develop this kind of product, and not who it was developed for and whether anyone uses it. So try to write your own and any complex features you hear about. This will allow you to feel much more confident in the interview, even if you do not have extensive experience in the development team,” the expert added.

Which companies are most likely to hire Java juniors?

If we talk about companies that are most active in opening vacancies for Java Junior developers, then most often these will, of course, be the leaders of the IT sectors in their countries. Companies with the highest turnover and high demand for skilled developers can afford to hire coders with little or no experience en masse for relatively little pay, allowing them to gain experience and knowledge for later career advancement within the same company. So, in Ukraine, the top 5 IT companies hiring junior specialists look like this: SoftServe, EPAM, GlobalLogic, Luxoft and Infopulse. This is stated in the studyprofile resource DOU.UA, which was published in April 2019. According to the study, 45 top companies in the Ukrainian IT sector in 2018 hired a total of 4,360 new employees (meaning IT specialists in all areas with less than 1 year of work experience or no experience at all). SoftServe cooperated most actively with newcomers - in 2018 it hired 400 more juniors than in 2017 (1148 versus 719 employees). As for Russia, when preparing this material, we were unable to find data on the number of junior-level developers hired in this country. However, the analysis of vacancies for "juniors" on recruiting sites allows us to single out the following companies as the most Junior-friendly employers: G5 Entertainment, Luxoft, EPAM, Emergn, Mail.Ru Group and ALM Works.

What are the easiest cities for a Java Jun to find a job?

In which city will it be easiest for an inexperienced Java developer to find a job - this is another topical question both for those who are just learning Java and are thinking about finding a job in the near future, and for those who are already actively looking for vacancies and sending out their resumes. In general, the most employment options for Java Junior are in large cities, where, as a rule, the offices of all major IT companies are located. In Ukraine, according to the same relatively recent DOU.UA study, green and unshelled developers are most often searched for in Kiev, Kharkiv and Lviv, with these three cities showing approximately equal rates in terms of the number of juniors hired in 2018. Also in the top five cities with the largest number of vacancies are Odessa and Dnipro. As for Russia, then in this country, the top cities where a Java developer, including an inexperienced one, will be the easiest to find a job, is as follows: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Yekaterinburg. This is according to the dataresearch of the recruiting portal HeadHunter. This top also includes Kazan, Perm, Ufa, Samara and Voronezh. In Belarus, the absolute majority of vacancies for Java developers, including Junior, fall on Minsk. You can also find work in Vitebsk, Mogilev and Grodno, but, frankly, there are not many vacancies in these cities.

Expert opinions

But back to the main topic of this material - the expectations of employers when hiring Java Junior developers and how to meet these expectations. Several quotes. “It is widely believed that the requirements for a Java Junior developer on the part of employers are extremely high. This has a pretty strong impact on many candidates during a technical interview. Thinking that the bar is higher than it actually is, they feel insecure, exaggerate their experience and embellish skills, which is why they often just don’t get the job, ” saidKen Mazaika, CTO and co-founder of Firehose. “Honesty and knowing the areas where you need to improve will only increase your chances of getting hired. For companies, hiring junior developers is more of an investment with long-term potential, they don't expect much return from it. Therefore, they do not expect junior developers to write some complex features and will not demand too much during the first few months,” the expert added. “One of the most common traits of the really cool Java programmers I've hired is that they all tend to work on different side projects outside of their main job. These could be open source projects or personal projects. They don't even have to be based on Java,said Kevin Hayen, an experienced Java developer and CTO at Let's Be Chefs. “Often, when hiring Java programmers, we give preference to those who have learned a lot on their own. Often these are the people who are truly passionate about programming. We need people like that — programmers who live and breathe code. And many of the technical knowledge and elements are easily acquired on the job,” said Craig Dalziel, Business Manager at Pearson Frank.

The devil is not as scary as he is painted

Summing up, the main thing to emphasize is that getting a job as a Java Junior developer is not nearly as difficult as it might seem at first glance, especially after studying vacancies with a long list of requirements. It is enough to know the basic principles of Java, have a desire to learn and improve, and have at least a little bit of practical experience. You can get it in many different ways, including using the course from CodeGym - it includes more than 1200 tasks, and their solution will take 300-500 hours of pure programming practice. That's a pretty impressive number to put on your resume without any hesitation, not to mention that this course will prepare a novice coder for most of the tasks that employers set for Java juniors and the questions often asked in job interviews.