Hi all! It’s not for me to tell you how difficult it is to get a job as a programmer without experience in 2023. Competition at the “no experience” level has grown greatly recently (primarily thanks to such resources as JavaRush, GeekBrains, etc.) As a result, it becomes very difficult to stand out among the mass of graduates of all kinds of online courses. And the problem is not at all to pass the interview well. The problem becomes simply getting there. How can a JavaRush graduate stand out from the crowd of job seekers? I will not write about enterprise technologies such as Spring and Hibernate that are obvious to a Javaist, because they themselves are a must-have, and without them it will be very difficult to find a job. Below are 5 recommendations for aspiring developers who want to find a job in 2023. Each of them will definitely give your resume a lot of extra points.
1. Learn JavaScript.
Today JS is the most popular programming language among employers . The HackerRank portal conducted a survey among companies regarding their “wants”, and it came out in first place according to employers’ requests.
The reason is simple - JavaScript currently has no serious alternative when developing frontend. If you master “pure” JS and one of the popular frameworks (primarily React or Angular), your chances of becoming a programmer will increase MANY TIMES . Firstly, any company looking for a Java developer will be glad if he knows JavaScript. The reasons for this are quite simple: very often there are small tasks in a project - for example, fixing some functionality. “Button A should be called not A, but B, located not on the right, but on the left, and call function X, not Y, on the backend.” But in this case, both the backend and the frontend need to be corrected. And even if the task is elementary, two people are still needed to solve it: a backend worker and a front-line worker. But if the team has a person who knows both (not necessarily at an outstanding level), the amount of resources to complete such tasks is reduced significantly. Secondly, vacancies for juniors and interns appear more often for front-end workers than for back-end workers. For example, after searching through HeadHunter today, in my city I found 1 Java Junior vacancy, but Frontend Junior - 3. In general, JS is your serious chance to get your first job . Get a job as a Javaist - great, for them JS is never superfluous. It won’t work out with Java (in many cities there are a bit of a lack of vacancies) - it’s quite possible that you can get into IT through the “front”. At JavaRush, I remember reading one “success story” from a person who, after studying here, went into front-end development. A great portal for learning JS is learn.javascript . It's not as good as JavaRush, but you'll get a solid base. There are also courses on all popular frameworks (they are already paid).
2. Learn to write SQL queries.
It would seem that SQL is no less obvious than Spring and Hibernate , which are not included in the list . In fact, there is a difference: a large number of developers know how to use SQL “at the top” - write “SELECT * FROM table_name”, or join a couple of tables. I recommend that you thoroughly get to know them, and do not hesitate to indicate this in your resume. If you understand what is written here and can quickly write similar things yourself, your value in the eyes of the employer will increase greatly. Several of my colleagues in the past worked in fields where they had to write a lot of SQL queries, and when they decided to change the field to Java development, these skills helped them look very attractive in the eyes of the employer. And in java-dev work, of course, this is a very useful skill. I myself regularly run to them for tips :) You can start studying with “Head First SQL”, then just choose one of the popular DBMSs (Portgres or Oracle, for example) and read a couple of books on it. I recommend the portal http://www.sql-ex.ru/ as a problem book . It looks simple, but it does its job quite well.
3. Create a GitHub profile
Your GitHub is perhaps the most important thing a potential employer will notice after your resume. A profile with several ongoing projects will definitely attract additional attention. Moreover, “GitHub analyzers” are becoming increasingly popular among recruitment services - special programs that, using code stored in GitHub, find developers for companies with the required technology stack. If they need a person who knows Spring Security, such a program parses GitHub and selects users who have code using this technology in their repositories. It is clear that at the beginning there will be nothing special to brag about, but it is quite possible to start by uploading “big tasks” of JavaRush there. If you completed a test assignment for an internship, go there too. We mastered ReactJS/AngularJS and created a couple of single-page applications - there too. Everything that you created with your own hands works and may be of interest to an employer and should appear in your gh profile.
4. Get Oracle Certified.
The creators of JavaRush will not let me lie: the most common question they are asked by potential students is “Do they give you some kind of certificate after studying?” Certificates for JR are not given, and there is, in general, a simple reason - employers are not interested in them. They are quite capable of checking what you know and can do at an interview without any online course certificates. The difference between an Oracle certificate is that it is an official confirmation from the creators of Java that you are proficient in this language. Having it in your possession will be a very serious advantage for outsourcing companies, i.e. for those who “rent” their developers to other companies to work on external projects. For example, a bank needs to create a new Internet client. It is not profitable for him to maintain his own horde of developers for this - for a one-time project it is easier to find a team from the outside. In such cases, they turn to outsourcing companies. They will select people with the necessary skills for the bank and form a team. However, it is very important for the customer to understand that he is paying money (and a lot of it) for really smart developers. And this is where the Oracle certificate will become your advantage. After all, in fact, this is the only opportunity to confirm the qualifications of a Java programmer with a piece of paper. In other words, it is much easier for a company to “sell” a certified developer to its customers. Oracle certifications come in several levels. Getting the first level (OCAJP8) will not be difficult at all. The exam will include questions on only 8 topics:
Working With Java Data Types (primitives, references, wrappers);
Using Operators and Decision Constructs (+-*/ , as well as if-esle, switch, etc.);
Using Loop Constructs ;
Working with Methods and Encapsulation (methods, encapsulation);
Working with Inheritance ;
Handling Exceptions ;
Working with Selected classes from the Java API (Working with several popular classes - LocalDateTime, ArrayList, String).
No complicated topics like multithreading, IO/NIO, etc. Many topics are truncated (for example, of all List<> implementations, questions will only be about ArrayList<>). You can prepare for the exam using any of the special books; a review of them is available on JavaRush. They also come with several practice tests. The exam currently costs $150.
5. Participate in professional communities.
According to the results of a survey conducted by My Circle, about half of employers are interested in the participation of potential employees in professional communities.
Every fourth employer could recall a case when active participation in professional communities helped one of the candidates get a job with them.
The main ones (besides GitHub, which was mentioned earlier) are Habrahabr and StackOverflow. And if it’s almost impossible for an inexperienced developer to get high karma on Stack, and it’s too early to participate in OpenSource projects, then a link to a blog on Habré with several good articles will look very advantageous on a beginner’s resume. Therefore, if you are working on some mini-project, do not hesitate to share it with the community. The main thing is to read the rules carefully, and do not forget to first scour Habr for similar articles (the text on how to display “Hello World” in the console is unlikely to be of interest to anyone). PS The world is constantly changing, and the IT sector is no exception. It is quite difficult to attract the attention of an employer without experience. I hope the above tips will help one of my “classmates” with JavaRush get their first job :) If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them in the comments. And, of course, don't forget to like :)
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