Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

To get a job as an entry level person, you either need to demonstrate that you have all round skills and you can fit into a team OR you need to target specific companies/teams that could utilize your existing experience (.e.g Java developer)

To do that, you first need to differentiate yourself from the 1000s of other entry level applicants. Some tips:

1. Determine if you want to apply for a specific type of role. As an entry level person who just needs a job, this is hard. But think about the employer. THey want to get Resume from people who could fit into what the employer/team is doing. So lets say you decide to find employers/teams where Java is heavily used. Go apply there.

2. Write a really good Cover Letter and do not send it generically to every employer. A generic Cover Letter is as good as No Cover Letter. Research the team and send them a unique one along with your Resume. Yes, cover letters can work in 2022 at least for entry level people.

3. Go on Linkedin and look for the companies/teams that sell product/service in areas you have interest in. If your skills match their current product/service etc, reach out to someone like "Director of Technology" etc directly. It can never hurt but only help. Be specific. I would say something like

"Hey John, I hope you don't mind me reaching out but I was wondering if there are internship opportunities in your team. I see that you do xyz and I am very interested in this field and have some experience with tools in the area as well. Can I email you my detailed Cover Letter and Resume ?"

Get creative if you want to separate yourself from the others just like you. There are jobs out there but without experience, they are always harder to find because you need to sell yourself more.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to respond. I really do appreciate the advice.

I honestly have no clue what to write for a cover letter. Everything that I write just ends up sounding fake / makes it obvious that I just want a job for money's sake (which for me, at the end of the day, is what it comes down to).

I actually received the opposite advice from some others I asked, where they said to just use the shotgun approach and send as many applications as I can. I'm struggling to understand what order of magnitude of openings to apply to, should it be tens? hundreds?

Thanks again for all the help.

I noticed this divide in the given advice as well: some say to carefully tailor each application to the job, others say to fire and forget. I think if you're sending 200 applications out the fire and forget way might be more manageable. Personally, the former (tailored applications) has worked better for me (so far).

For some context, I've been doing this for around 15 years, which might make my thoughts pretty irrelevant since job hunting as a junior now is surely different than job hunting as a junior a decade ago.

Nevertheless, I have not sent 200 job applications in my life. How people manage it is beyond me. My approach is usually to send a very tailored cover letter, and a reasonably tailored CV (when a CV is required - lately they just pull it from LinkedIn... which in my opinion can make a custom cover letter even more impactful when you're actually looking).

For the cover letter, I take points straight from the listed job description. There are usually "must have" and "nice to have" points listed there, both technical and personality traits ("go-getter!", "self-motivated!", whatever).

In my first couple of junior jobs, I started with a brief preamble (name, what I do, etc...) I also include something showing that I did some research on what the _company_ does ("I was very excited to read about Company-X's unique approach to Thing-X"). This was followed by covering each desired point they mentioned in the job description, with a sentence or two about how I meet that requirement. For points I did not fulfill, I mentioned the _closest_ experience I could, and mentioned something hand-wavy about expecting to have no trouble hitting the ground running and learning-thing-x quickly on the job. For junior jobs, I think you can leverage the "passionate, quick learner" thing quite well where needed.

But like I said - I am not sure how relevant this approach is for juniors today. When I applied at a large company years ago, I had one phone screen and one in-person interview before being given an offer. When I interviewed other candidates at the same company a couple of years ago there were multiple rounds of interviews, assignments, discussions with HR, followup panels, etc. I have no idea if I would've been given an offer at the same company if I'd been applying as a junior eight years later.

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