Ask HN: What to with 2 weeks off? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What to with 2 weeks off?

2 pointsJ-dawg3 comments

I have 2 weeks of annual leave to take by the end of March. I would like to use this time to do something that makes me more employable.

I'm a mediocre front end web developer. I know HTML, CSS and JS. I have worked with Angular a little. I have dabbled with Node.

What's the best way to spend 2 weeks, if my goal is improving my chances of getting hired as a front end developer? Learn a hot new framework? Try to build a side project? Do programming exercises (e.g. Project Euler) to work on the fundamentals? Something else altogether?

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Try to build something for your portfolio that uses various things that might be considered useful or fancy for buisness applications. The best hting imho to get a job is to be able to show what you can do, instead of being able to do it. It's hard to convey your skills via words, so try to implement all of your skills in tangible evidence of your ability.

Other than that im rubbish at web development ,so i wouldn't dare point you in any direction there ^^. But getting a personal blog / portfolio to show what you can do was the best advice i ever got which yielded direct and fast results in job interview. (notice its not plural ^^...)

Look on Craigslist for a short-term employment opportunity. The job might not be listed as part-time or short-term, but the cool thing about Craigslist jobs is they are put up by smaller businesses that'll be willing to work around your schedule. Don't ask for too much pay, and just be honest about what you're trying to accomplish.

The biggest thing that will improve the odds of getting hired is applying for jobs...though that's probably not much of a vacation.

My advice, beyond that, would be to do something that you enjoy and not worry about how it might effect an imaginary career.

Ask yourself, how much Rails or React or Clojure are you going to learn it two weeks?

The answer is: a lot but not enough.

Good luck.

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