Jobs for Students - Where Are They? 161
jtpalinmajere asks: "The past few years students like myself have found themselves in an ominously precarious situation. This is to say that the availability for jobs in the computer industry that are suited well for fresh meat graduates are dwindling at an alarming rate. Personally, I graduate this coming Spring and have been job searching for the past semester with little if any success at finding a prospective future employer. The placement office at my university hasn't been too helpful for many students in the CS department. The only companies that I have come in contact with that might consider fresh graduates are Microsoft and government agencies such as the FBI. If I can actually compete with the 76% foreign immigrant population of Microsoft then I might see that as a fairly good start, though the odds don't seem to roll in my favor. As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security. Most of my job searching has been conducted through services like Dice and Monster. 99% of the jobs listed in these services require 2 - X many years of previous experience using Y software with a current Z security clearance level. I've even found one company that wants 10 years experience specifically with .NET -- go figure! I'm not looking for the dream job that everyone hopes to one day attain. I'm looking for a job that will simply get me into the industry with a meager salary large enough to sustain life. How many other students find themselves in my position? What are some opinions, particularly from our non-students, for soon to be graduates like myself?"
Apply anyway (Score:4, Informative)
I remember seeing 5+ years in Java Enterprise Edition and 2+ years with
Resumes are usually poorly written. (Score:5, Informative)
For more than 20 years, as a hobby, I've been helping friends re-write their resumes. I've noticed that one factor that affects the hiring of excellent students is that their resumes usually don't communicate clearly.
People are told that resumes should be only one page. That's not true. When you write any advertisement, you should write as much as you have to say. When you finish telling the entire story, stop writing. This advice is from the famous ad man David Ogilvy, who wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man [isbn.nu], an excellent book that is, as you would guess, easy to read. Any library should have it.
Here are PDF examples of the before and after: Original student resume, with beginning corrections [hevanet.com]. Draft of improved resume, with formatting quirkiness caused by Microsoft Word [hevanet.com]. (My friend the student did the re-writing, using my suggestions as a guide. The improved version is current as of yesterday.)
It took maybe 10 hours to develop the information. I spent the time because I am a friend. It is easy to understand that a prospective employer would not spend 10 hours getting to know every person who sends a resume.
Notice that the original resume looks like the resume of thousands of recent journalism graduates. The improved resume is an advertisement that gives a complete picture of the person being advertised. The original expects the reader to do the work. The improved version gives as much as possible and asks as little as possible from the reader.
Like the friend in the example, many students have a lot of relevant experiences.
The book Executive Jobs Unlimited [isbn.nu] is old, but includes a lot of information that is relevant to anyone's effort to write a job-getting advertisement. Most libraries have this book.
A lot of the problems in getting a job are caused by the inexperience and ignorance of the employers. Employers are often no better than applicants at communicating. They often ask for qualities expressed by buzzwords. Often what an employer really wants is very different from what is communicated. Imagine the confusion when both the applicant and the prospective employer communicate poorly.
The most difficult kind of writing is writing an advertisement. The most difficult kind of advertisement to write is an advertisement for a person. The most difficult person about whom to write is yourself. Get help if you can. Write biographies of yourself, so that you will have information to use in the job-getting advertisement. Most people have difficulty believing they are as good as they really are, I've found.
If you are interested, it is okay to mirror the resumes, but the mirror must include a link to this original Slashdot comment.
don't be too picky (Score:3, Informative)
Don't wait for job offers; *make* them happen (Score:3, Informative)
After you graduate, I'd suggest working at least 8 hours a day looking for a job. It's hard work, but so is a job. There are a lot of books and websites with job-hunting tips. The newspaper and job sites are the very beginning. You need to meet people and to let them know you need a job without sounding desparate.
Some ways to meet people: mentor, teach, volunteer, temp, go to local user groups. Remember, you just got a degree in a field that most people are afraid of and have little experience with. If you had an English degree, it would be hard to teach or help people, since everyone took English in school.
And don't focus on just tech companies. Let's say you are interested in science and computers. Maybe you know someone who knows someone who works for a biotech company. Tell them you want some practical experience writing a database program (in Access or something) and ask them if they could use such a program for free. Work there for a few weeks (don't work at home). Now all of a sudden you know a bunch of scientists who think you are a computer genius (because they have no idea that Access is easy). Maybe they'll hire you, or mention you to their colleagues who actually are looking to hire someone.
And finally, think of it this way: if half of the graduates this year can't find a job, it means that you only have to be better than 50% of the people in your school. You're better than 50% of the people there, right?
The placement office at my university hasn't been too helpful for many students in the CS department.
Don't expect them to do much work for you. Actually, don't expect anyone to do work for you. Do it yourself.
As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security.
That's false. My first job was with the government, and while I wasn't making a killing, I made good enough money to have an [ugly] apartment and a [cheap] new car. And it wasn't with a defense-related department, so there were no security clearances I needed to have or anything.
Most of my job searching has been conducted through services like Dice and Monster.
I think those sites are a good starting point, but you should spend only a small fraction of your time on them. The rest of the time should out of the house, walking the beat as it were.
Re:Immigrants (Score:3, Informative)
Well, actually, this is the case. In order to be able to bring someone over on the H1B visa, a company must prove that they have expended due effort to find a qualified U.S. resident for the job first. This means they must show they've placed advertisements -- and in appropriate places, too, not in the back section of the classifieds -- and been searching for what is considered a sufficiently lengthy period before they can go through the H1B process.
Yes, I'm sure there are abuses of the system. However, I came over (not through the H1B system, by the way -- my wife is an American citizen) and walked straight into a job where the company had been desperately searching for a year for someone with my skills. They simply couldn't find anyone in the area (or who was willing to relocate to the area) with the necessary niche skills.
So true (plus a little more friendly advice :-) (Score:3, Informative)
The parent is right on the money, except that I think the stat is much greater than 50% in my area (East Anglia, UK).
There are basically four ways to go about getting a job:
In my experience, these are listed in increasing order of likelihood of success, and the first two options are way behind the other two.
My other advice would be to consider aiming for a small company first, particularly if you're good. You're much more likely to have someone technical read your resume and any covering letter you send, rather than to be filtered out by some buzzword-craving DB. If you write a good resume -- most people really don't, and I've posted advice on this subject around here before -- then so much the better.
You probably won't get a top notch salary at a small company, but you'll get a decent average for someone with your experience over the first year or two at most of them, and you'll get a much more personal experience from those you work for and with, which is good for developing your early career. Again, this is particularly useful if you really are good, either technically or in your attitude, as this is far more likely to be noticed in a smaller, more personal environment.
After a couple of years in the business, you'll have had chance to establish a solid track record with a company, and to see which skills are really useful and not just hype. If you choose to move on from there, you'll be much better placed than you are right now.
Final tip: do consider staying on and getting more qualified while the market is tough. NB: I'm mostly talking about serious qualifications, not random certificates from marketing departments, though the latter rarely hurt. I got a long way based not only on a good maths degree, but also on the one year postgrad diploma in CS I took to go with it. Aside from being a darned useful course, it distinguished me from other random graduates in my early career. If you can get some sort of funding or sponsorship to do such a course, so much the better, obviously. It gives you a way to ride out the current wave of poor IT recruitment, and good experience to boot.
If you're looking to do software development as a serious career, supporting skills in things like maths or management do no harm at all. If you're after sysadmin type work, you could do worse than having some electrical or communications engineering skills as well (and those random marketroid-driven certificates are probably worth something, at least in some cases). Either way, the extra edge does no harm.
tech support (Score:2, Informative)
As an example, a buddy who is still finishing up his AAS is CS just managed to get a job doing help desk at a hardware maker and he's starting at $14/hr. It'll be enough to pay bills and rent for him. Oh, and don't forget to check the local papers... it may seem outdated but there are still a few jobs to be had there (employer may get 1,000 reusmes but it's worth a shot, it's how I got my present job).
good luck
Off line search (Score:2, Informative)
Have you tried searching off line? There was a time when people were able to find jobs without using the internet. People even found programming jobs BEFORE the internet existed. *gasp*
You need to be agressive. Call up companies that you'd like to work for, find the person in charge of the tech department, get them on the phone and sell yourself.
Physically walk into companies, and start talking to people who work there.
Go to networking events in your area. All over there are user groups, places where geeks, and people in charge of geeks converge. Find those places and bring your resume along.
If you're in college start going to alumni association meetings in your area and networking with people.
Call up head hunters.
There's more to finding a job than search on Hotjobs, Dice and Monster.
Cire