Bootcamp Grad Job Hunting Guide
How does one find their first coding job?
The short and easy answer is to apply for as many jobs as possible on job site like Indeed, LinkedIn, and Monster. The reality is that the obvious approach is just the bare minimum of what you should be doing. This may in fact be what gets you your job, but there is a more calculated and effective way to do this. This guide will introduce you to the more active approach to applying to jobs that I wish I knew sooner.
The goal of this more active and social approach to job-seeking is to try and connect with people in person or on the phone. People tend to hire people that they feel like they know. The first thing you want to do is to ask your friends and family about their connections to the industries that you are interested in or the cities that you want to work in. You will probably be surprised by how many people you can meet or job opportunities that you can apply to from doing this. It can have a branching effect that will get you introduced to more and more people.
LinkedIn will be your best friend during this process. It is the easiest way to look up companies and employees at these companies. When you find a job posting on any site that looks interesting, you should look up the company on LinkedIn and see if you can find any sort of connection to employees at that company. The easiest situation is to message a 1st connections directly at the company. 2nd connections can be introduced to you by your 1st connection friends.
3rd connection relationships are where it gets a little trickier. There are a few ways to approach messaging people that you don’t know on LinkedIn.
- Message them directly
- Send a connection request
- Email them directly
Messaging 3rd connections directly only works if you have LinkedIn Premium (which gives you 5 out of network messages per month) or if that person allows direct messaging to them. People with the Recruiter or Talent Acquisition titles are more likely to have free messaging on. You will want to message either recruiters or people with the job title that you desire. You can get a LinkedIn Premium trial for 1 month for free and it’s around $25-$30 per month otherwise. You only want to use this limited messages on jobs that you really want. It is worth it to try the free trial and see whether or not you think it is worth the money.
The easiest way to contact people on LinkedIn is through a contact request. You can send them to pretty much anyone and when you do, you should include a personalized message in the request saying why you are interested in connecting with them. You can then follow up with the person once they accept the request. The 3rd and more stalker-ish way of messaging people is by finding their email addresses. You can do this by seeing if they have an email address on their LinkedIn page or their Github account. You can also google their name and see if they have personal site that has their email in it or has a resume on it, which normally includes an email address. There are sites that help you look up people’s email address at companies by their names. An example is https://hunter.io/email-finder. I haven’t had much luck with this 3rd approach, but you might.
Another great way to network is to go to meetups and hackathons. You should try to go to at least one a week if you can. Meetup.com is a great resource for this. You should also try to look for tech slacks to join in whatever city you want to work in. Recruiters will often post jobs they are hiring directly for in the slack group.
I hope that these job-hunting tips will help you find your dream job!
