Wednesday of this last week, I went to a EECS job fair. I found that essentially all companies there were eager to talk with anyone that came by and take a résumé. I have even gotten some contact back from some companies already which I was not expecting as I am a first year student and I was told by many older students that first years do not typically get contacted or get internships/jobs.
I think that this point brings up some very interesting beliefs that are in the tech industry. Many of these have been noted before on countless blogs and new articles, but rehashing these from my own experiences I believe might be helpful to some people.
- The tech industry does not particularly care about you age, gender, race etc. All they care about is if you are technically skilled and are able to get the job done.
- Github profiles are a big deal. At the top of my résumé along with my physical address, I decided to put my internet address. This included things such as my email, website and github profile. I want to note that even while talking with an individual he was looking at my résumé said “o nice you have your link to your github profile” and then continued to circle it with his pen and said that he was amazed how many people he talked to that did not have some public code profile. Today this “public code profile” has become a standard for hiring in the coding world.
- Do not emphasis what you do not have when talking with the representatives. I was waiting behind some student who was talking with the hulu representatives about what he has. First he starts out with what he does not like about the hulu product, the fact that there are ads even though he is paying for it (guess what you pay for Cable and there are still ads, there is no reason hulu can’t do the same). The representatives then interrupts him and asks about what sort of projects he has. He states that he has made a few smallish things. The representatives then continues to ask if he has a github (see point 2). Which he replies that he does, but there is nothing on there because…..some answer like, “my ideas are soooo great that I do not want people coping them I might sell them at some point…..”
These are somewhat of tips/points/what not to do experiences. Like I said at the top, these ideas have been noted all over the internet and are not rocket science.
Additionally, in line with my last post about hackathon projects. Everything that you write should be version controlled somehow. You can use git without using github and just keep it on your local machine. Additionally, when you decided that your code is either “done” or not going to continue into a money-making company, or only going to survive as a free product, then you might as well create a public repo on github or similar so that if/when you are at a job fair, there is something on