Guide to breaking into tech as a junior, unfiltered edition
Context: I wrote this because I broke into tech in 2023 with 4 job offers without a degree, only high school educated and I wanna help folks. This is what worked for me. It also only took me 127 days to find a role I liked
PROOF so you know i'm not one of those grifters asking for you to pay me hundreds for career coaching just to grift you:
Build cool projects to talk about
PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLES PRIOR TO STARTING THE GUIDE
Who to connect to
C suite → you never know which C suite exec will you give you the time of day, It's like a 1% hit rate but yknow if you hit it, it’s like betting 0 on a roulette wheel with lighting rounds
Directors → its same as C suite except the hit rate is a lot higher and you can talk more high level since it’s been a while since they have touched code.
Managers → This level is probably your best bet for conversion rates. If they can imagine you on the team, then they can make a spot for you. You can probably talk about high level programming and the day to day.
Senior [insert role here] → Same as manager but they would like to see what their juniors do and can inform you what they expect out of their juniors.
Junior [insert role here] → I find the hit rate here is extremely high but conversion is low cause they typically don’t have as much pull
Recruiters/HR → This varies depending on your background. You can get a lot of traction if you have orgs that have high prestige but you can get ignored. I get ignored cause I don’t have a degree so I typically reach out to engineer type folks who understand you don’t need one
Schedule
Treat the job search like it’s a 9-5 or 10-6. I would typically arrange my days like this without some variance depending on how I am feeling. I would also choose to go to at least 2 networking events in person to try to meet folks IRL. YOUR 5-9 IS AS IMPORTANT AS YOUR 9-5, more so I would argue
Monday:
- Send 100 connection notes to engineers, CTO, directors, managers, recruiters, CEOs
- Linkedin maxes out around 100 connections request a week
- If you do not have Premium, try to add them and keep track when they do so you can send a message
- The goal here is to get them on a virtual coffee chat
- After they reply, I would suggest using a calendly link to allow ease of planning instead of going back and forth with times
- I would also confirm with them on the day
- 80 of my connections would be for companies that are hiring and 20 of my connections would be for folks just in industry whose company might not be hiring but down the line
Tuesday-Friday:
- Try to aim for 1 hour leetcode, 1 hour project building and 1 hour just reading programming concepts
- I would also try to keep track of the messages I have sent on Linkedin within work hours.
- This is when you would have coffee chats. The goal of networking again is to get you in front of a real person
Weekend:
- Relax, you had a long week. Being a programmer is a marathon not a sprint, it should be treated as such. Take a break as doing technical things all week and networking is tough. It’s the same as working where you have meetings with PM, UX/UI designers and stakeholders but have to balance solving the bug or implementing a feature.
Linkedin Message Prompts
I used these but feel free to customize it a bit more. Linkedin Notes are limited to 200-300 characters but after you add them, it’s unlimited. You still would want it to be brief rather than a write up of your resume
REACHING OUT:
Hey Name,
I’m Sammy, a Developer in Toronto! I’m interested in being a software engineer at Y and was wondering if you had 30 mins to chat about what it’s like working at Y. If not, that’s ok and I would love to just connect. Have a great week!
RESPONSE:
Thanks for getting back to me! I really appreciate it. Feel free to book the time slot that works for you!
REMINDER:
Looking forward to our call today @ {insert time},
FOLLOW UP:
Thanks for chatting with me today about xyz. I really enjoyed our chat!
Email
If you want to do this by email, by all means go for it, I just found this approach less useful because linkedin gives your profile education, and background, social credit if you will. I would highly advise using a mail tracker if you go this route because you can see when they open emails and follow up with them. It is a bit harder to find people’s emails versus linkedin and the message should be longer to summarize your background.
Networking
Networking should not feel like you are only using the person for a referral. It’s the same as making friends treat it as such. You want to be able to talk about anything professional to things like hobbies or life. The more you treat it like a conversation where you just enjoy it, the more likely someone will refer and champion you. This is also a long term endeavor where you might not see the benefit of it today but maybe down the line they refer you. I cannot stress how often someone refers me to a role after 8-9 months after finding a role. I also cannot stress how important it is to be genuinely curious about a person as they live their own separate life and are allowing you a window to glimpse into it during a virtual coffee chat.
I’ve had calls start at 30 mins and go up to 4 hours where the conversation kept going and going because both parties were genuine. Networking is also about building long term relationships rather than short term. End of the day, I know I have built up enough long term relationships where if I get laid off, I know there’s going to be a job at the end of the month waiting for me.
Keep in mind not everyone checks linkedin all the time
Keyword
Peaches
How to connect with someone
Hobbies → EXISTING hobbies that you have could be common ground
- We can chat about how garbage I am at valorant or what the hot new manga is
Hobbies → Curiosity of NEW hobbies
- I am not a dancer but I could ask them about what drove them to choose it, where they like dancing, the type of style
Career → Ask them genuine questions about how they got there, advice, general technical knowledge
- This is coming from a place of curiosity rather than what it would look like if I worked there. You want the conversation to feel genuine as possible rather than you using the person as a referral
- Everyone has mistakes and things they wish they did sooner, so learn about what you can do
Technical aspects → figure out what they do in a day to day and what you can do to get to their level
- Folks love dropping knowledge in passing so take that advantage
- I am not interested in front end development but I know enough just based off conversations and how front end works to broaden my scope of things
Networking Events
I think networking Events are great for building long term connections in your city but in terms of immediate job prospects, I wouldn’t say to go there for that. It just helps you learn how to make friends as an adult + potential down the line.
Applying to Roles
I would try to have linkedin alerts for new job postings. Typically if you are the first 200 to apply, with a good resume, you are golden. Imagine reading a 200 page document. That’s what recruiters are doing essentially with 200 resumes.
I would still apply anyways even if you see 3000 candidates because some roles are evergreen meaning they always stay up and they typically sort by latest submission.
Me personally,
FUCK COVER LETTERS
Referrals vs Championing (IMPORTANT)
Referrals → someone puts a check to your name and it goes to a slightly smaller pile
Championing → Someone advocating to their manager, hiring manager and director to get you on the team
Ultimately you want someone to be able to vet(champion) for you to both their managers and hiring managers. This does work a lot better at smaller companies but I have seen it work in enterprises where an employee is on HR and hiring managers slack influencing their decisions and making a value proposition for you to get hired. A referral means nothing especially when you have folks who are laid off with experience applying to the same role
What Job boards do I use
I mainly only use linkedin for searching for jobs. Also searching post because posting on linkedin does cost money if you are a company. I would search posts with keywords like hiring and using boolean search to look for certain things
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a524335
The second method I use is a google advance search where I would filter out by date, role and when posted
site:lever.co | site:greenhouse.io | site:bamboohr.com junior react canadaFor example this search, searches up lever/greenhouse/bamboo for the keywords junior react developer. You can further this by sorting by date posted
Self Care
DO NOT FEEL GUILTY ABOUT NOT HAVING A JOB OR YOUR PEERS GETTING A ROLE. IT’S NOT YOU IT’S THE ECONOMY. TAKE CARE OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. IT’S A MARATHON NOT A SPRINT.
YOU COULD BE THE RIPEST, JUICIEST PEACH IN THE WORLD BUT THERE’S STILL SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T LIKE PEACHES
This is my average month when I job hunt. It depends on bad you want it. I felt like a fish in a desert
RESOURCES TO GET TECHNICAL
1. LEARN DSA
2. LEARN FUNDAMENTALS
- https://roadmap.sh/
- YOUTUBE UNIVERSITY