How does anyone ever get their first programming job?
The question is personal. My daughter Kimberly recently graduated from a software boot camp, having acquired coding proficiency in several useful languages, along with practice in a number of popular development techniques. Now she’s doing what she’s supposed to be doing to make the proper connections and all.
But she’s caught in a well-known Catch 22: HR and hiring managers want applicants to have at least two years of experience under their belts, but to get two years of experience, someone first has to hire you.
I have to admit, the problem is personal for another reason: I’ve been part of the problem.
Every new hire is a risk. Unlike promotions or transfers, with new hires all you have to go on are interviews, which are highly unreliable (thanks to long-time correspondent Leo Heska for bringing the linked article to my attention), and test scores if you use them, only many of the tests used to screen job applicants are junk science at its worst.
Even the best programming schools have limits as to how close they can make classrooms and assignments to what their graduates will have to handle once hired. You know experienced applicants have been through this transition. Were they successful? You at least have a basis for having the conversation.
And if you insist on a few years of experience, you know even the worst of the bunch have had to cope with juggling responsibilities and dealing with personalities, along with the technical assignments themselves.
Did they cope well? You at least have a basis for this conversation, too.
But when you accept new graduates as applicants, all you know for sure is that the individual on the other side of your desk knows how to turn specifications into working code. Even the most promising will have to learn what are politely called “soft skills” after you hire them.
And “soft” is a poor description of these skills, because …
In addition to being an organization that delivers business results, every department in every business is also a society. New employees are immigrants who have to figure out how to live in it. Experienced applicants have been through this before. Trainees have not.
No question: Applicants looking for their first position are riskier hires than those who have a few years under their belts. When I was a hiring manager, I usually insisted on a few years of experience, too. I wasn’t willing to take the risk.
But … CIOs are complaining bitterly about a talent shortage. Whether it’s real is debatable — every time a company needs an Oracle DBA and refuses to consider otherwise excellent applicants whose experience is limited to MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2, the talent-shortage meter clicks up another notch, even though the talent shortage comes from a self-imposed refusal to consider highly qualified applicants.
But forget all that and accept the IT talent shortage at face value. Further, accept that entry-level applicants shouldn’t be considered part of the solution.
What we as an industry have just done is to make the talent shortage permanent. The experienced men and women who are worth hiring are all now employed. We won’t take a chance on new entrants to turn them into IT workforce members.
It isn’t quite fair to say nobody is hiring entry-level programmers. As an experiment I searched for developer positions on LinkedIn. In round numbers, perhaps one out of every hundred position descriptions indicated a willingness to hire newly graduated talent.
If only one percent of hires are inexperienced applicants, the IT workforce just isn’t going to grow very quickly.
In a completely different context, Elon Musk looked at the state of the electric car industry. He sees Tesla as being part of a larger ecosystem. To improve the health of that ecosystem he open-sourced a bunch of Tesla intellectual property. It wasn’t an act of altruism so much as it was enlightened self-interest.
Once upon a time, employers considered IT talent so valuable they were willing to train their own, and to accept a cadre of new graduates every year. Doing so helped build the industry while gaining highly loyal employees.
Those were kinder, gentler times for our industry. But I wonder: Maybe being kinder and gentler might also, in the long run, turn out to be more profitable as well.
A lot of shops use internships as a screening tool.
That is exactly what we do. We have relationships with a number of universities in the area with good CS and MIS programs, and we hire a lot of interns (well-paid, I might add). We are also quite open with the interns that we view them as trial employees, and we regularly hire them after graduation. And even those that we don’t hire can put their internship on their resume as real-world experience.
Is currently enrolled student status a non-negotiable requirement for entry into your internship program?
From what I’ve seen in Dice and the like, current student status is as aggressively stated a requirement for the internships as 7+ years of paid non-academic experience in several three-year-old technologies is in the 99% of listings that are not entry level.
We have also used interns for many years (decades in fact), and many of our best people have come through this route. We hire summer interns, and if they work out, we offer them part-time work during the school year. This is better money than they can make at McDonalds. If things continue to go well, then we offer them full-time jobs when they graduate. At this point, we know them and they know us. It works out quite well.
Is she geographically mobile? Can she help out a local not for profit with her skills? Is her LinkedIn profile up to date and polished? Is the grammar correct in her cover letter and resume? Is her Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram/Vine/etc either locked down, name changed, or totally clean? If all these answers are yes, she may not be looking broadly enough for jobs. She’ll find something — just keep looking and networking!
Some companies use temp help/contracting houses to fill entry level – a way to see if someone ‘fits’ before making the person a regular hire.
I agree this is a tough issue. My thought is that top IT management should sell the idea of having a 3 to 6 month intern position to see if the prospect is really interested in working for company and the industry the company sells its products. If the candidate has other skills, they could work a few weeks in some of the other departments, then if that works out well, eventually try a few non-mission critical projects.
Also, don’t let HR do the initial selection, as they have no chance of knowing what to look for in resumes, no matter how good your instructions to them are.
Bob: I have been a long time advocate of positions like this. Or a couple of seats that have a 1 – 2 year sunset. Give them the repetitive tasks nobody wants. Allow them to jump in, help, and learn as time allows.
Three months before the position terminates, communicate clearly to them that they need to start looking for a job, and it is ok (and expected).
Of course if there is an opening (or they are super sharp) keep them.
Last year we attempted to hire a college grad for IT. Total candidates – 0. We contacted local schools and a firm named GradStaff that we use to hire other college grads in other parts of the business. We learned that at least locally all of the IT grads are snagged by the larger companies and the remaining students need to be recruited hard months before they graduate.
The market is as bad as advertised (again at least in Minneapolis/St. Paul).
Our company (large transportation) uses interns not only as a screening tool but as a promotional tool. We have hired many of our interns who have gone on to have long, productive careers with us. Sure it costs a bit (we pay fairly well), but its more than returned to us in loyal, skilled employees who (mostly) stay beyond the 2 years required to “jump ship”.
My son went through this a few years ago (and I blame outsourcing for a lot of the problem). He found a solution in starting his own web-design business. It was slow starting out but he could live at home and supplemented by waiting tables. I taught him to begin with and he learned by long hours, hard work and doing it. Four years later he has an extremely successful Minecraft hosting business in addition to many lucrative customers for his web design business. He works from his apartment, hires remote workers only and will never need a job. His solution is not uncommon for this generation, but these workers will never fill those job vacancies. They’ve tasted freedom and success not to mention made more money than they ever would at an 8-5 job. This industry taught him well, he does not want to work for them now that they would very much like to hire him.
Problem solved (most HR and IT managers are either too lazy or too overworked to do any real background checking).
From “Forbes” Magazine:
This Man’s Business Is Providing Fake Job Histories And References
After William Schmidt lost his job as part of a mass layoff from a Columbus, OH auto parts distributor in 2009, several colleagues who had also lost their jobs asked him if he would act as a reference and fib about whether they were still employed. He obliged and was pleased when his friends found new jobs.
Read more at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/12/20/this-mans-business-is-providing-fake-job-histories-and-references/
You’ll understand if I don’t pass this option along to my daughter.
You’ve received lots of good advice so far; I will add my 2 cents (about what it’s worth 😉
* Volunteer: tons of volunteer agencies could use IT expertise, and it will count as practical experience.
* Get an entry-level job in another part of the company: Especially if you know what org(s) you want to work for, get any job you can there (including help desk, data entry, receptionist, etc.), then work towards the dept/job you want.
The above works especially well at fast-growing companies. They’re too busy growing to want to do a lot of expert hiring, so there are many more opportunities for internal promotion.
* Network network network 🙂
At the point I graduated and was looking for a position in Cincinnati, there were only two companies that would hire anyone with no work experience. You had to go with one of them or leave town. I was fortunate to get in with the one I told was the better of the two — and “better” is relative. I left eagerly after two years. One has to gain experience somehow, but it’s not always fun doing it.
You put your finger on one part of the problem: managers who list several different software systems as requirements, and HR departments who filter out any resume that doesn’t hit exactly those systems. Nobody’s willing to take on someone with a proven record of achievement in picking up new systems quickly; if you don’t know exactly the list of things they want, you never even get an interview.
I don’t know what the fix is for this, but it’s a good chunk of the reason I’m making half of what I used to.
As an old geezer, permit me to take the opportunity of fleshing out the skills required of a programmer/analyst.
Foremost is disposing the creed of ‘coder’. What is that? Someone that knows how to throw instructions at a computer? People get paid for this? You jest…
Knowing all the places to set up logic gates and properly handling wrong intentions or actions, yeah, but it’s called analysis.
Your daughter can “turn specifications into working code”?
Big deal! We used to call that placing the cart before the horse.
The art of programming is defining the *PROBLEM*, not defining the solution…
I can geeze with the best of ’em. And in the end, I agree – there isn’t a lot of future for pure programmers any more. But I disagree that the art of programming is defining the problem, not defining the solution.
The art of the programmer/analyst is defining the problem and creating a solution. What good is just defining the problem and stopping, after all? I know that wasn’t what you meant. But still …
> I disagree that the art of programming is defining the problem, not defining the solution.
It’s a free country, I’ve had my differences with other programmers, but defining solutions??? There’s a computer for that.
What I choose to do with said solution is immaterial, i.e format, output medium, etc.
Encourage her to become an Open Source project tester in her spare time. Finding a project and contributing is the fastest way to build her resume while also expanding her network. Testing eventually requires writing test scripts and reviewing code. Eventually, that can be transitioned into a maintenance programming role which can lead to more advanced roles over time.
Basically, becoming a programmer isn’t the trick. Becoming a business problem solver who happens to use and leverage software engineering is the path. And that requires lots and lots of patience and earning one’s notches on one’s belt over time.
Or, you can start your own open source project and learn all of the above in a much more OJT way…but it pays crap and outside an utterly miraculous and magical solution, it takes a very long time to attract others to join your project.
I’ve often hired novices and some of these have been some of the best hires I’ve ever made. A few turned out to be duds but those became clear quickly. One of my novices is now a senior security engineer at a first-tier security company; another is a senior DBA at a very large insurance carrier; a number of other have had successful careers in IT.
Today entry levels are usually hired by taking an internship that converts upon graduation to a full time position.
Interns, interns, interns. But not just the “traditional” programs. We do a summer internship group for college soph-juniors. Then we let them work remotely P/T during the school year. Then we let them come back the second summer if they want. We are hiring a high %age of them, and a high %age of them want to work here.
Now we are looking at doing internships with code school graduates as well, to see if we can tap into that and succeed.
And finally, we are also looking at doing our own bootcamps with internal candidates.
Upfront Disclaimer: I worked in IT many years ago but I have been a full-time college professor for almost 20 years.
I long for the days when companies would hire based on raw talent (that’s how my math degree turned into a job as a COBOL programmer) but my longings won’t change the world. As has been mentioned many times already – internships. The problem with internships is that we can’t guarantee one to every student.Therefore we don’t require them for any of our majors. Since they’re not “required” a fair number of students won’t pursue the ones we do find. We actually have decent internships available that no one will take. Argh.
However, as a teacher, what really struck me about this post is that the boot camp isn’t necessarily “real” enough to lead to a job. It appears that boot camps advertise themselves as a guaranteed ticket to a job. I guess over-the-top marketing claims shouldn’t surprise me, but in this case they do. In fact, some of our students talk about dropping out of college because they think they can attend a 10 to 14 week boot camp and get a better job than they’ll get after four years of college.
I’d never ask you name the particular boot camp your daughter attended but I’d love to see some hard data on boot camp graduates’ job placement.
The boot camp in question is the Nashville Software School. It’s not-for-profit, run well, and provides as good an education as I can easily imagine, given the intrinsic limitations of an educational environment. For example, several of the projects required test-driven development – this was quite a bit more than just a school for coders.
I’ll also say that overall, their placement success is quite good, and they provide a lot of support during the job search. I have no complaint with the school. For that matter, I have no complaint with hiring managers — as I said, I was one and was part of the problem.