Hi everyone,
I just recently graduated from university this past May with a BS in Computer Science, and I really have to ask the question: is the hiring market for the tech industry in the U.S. really as screwed up as it feels right now? I've been job hunting since before the start of my senior year of college and I've put out WELL over 100 applications by now (probably nearing 200) and I haven't even been able to get a freakin' interview. Not. A. Single. One. I'm at the point where I'm about ready to give up and just go back to applying to retail jobs, even though the reason I went to college was to escape those positions. I know that late last year and early this year there were tens of thousands of layoffs at major tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, and so all of those people with industry experience flooding into the job market really outshines a new-grad like myself. However, I keep asking myself if that's actually the source of my problem or if it's something wrong with my approach. One thing that I know for certain is a bit of a problem is that I'm applying to positions in the Seattle area as well as remote positions, which are both fairly saturated with comp-sci people. This is because I'm going to be moving-in with a group of my friends there in a couple of months.
To give an idea of the position I'm in, here are some details about my experience level so far:
- I graduated Cum Laude with a GPA of 3.64.
- I had 2 internships during college, both of them writing code for small, local web development companies.
- My second internship turned into a 5 month contract position developing a mobile app in React Native for one of their clients.
- Though my school I did some projects for both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and my state's Parks and Wildlife department to help prototype some projects. Neither of these were paid positions, but they were projects that I wanted to help with to make my resume stand out.
- During my last two years, I worked with my university's biology department by writing small programs to help their undergraduate research projects. Again, this wasn't a paid position, but I thought it would look good on my resume (and my biology teacher was cool).
- I participated in a summer research program to work with machine learning algorithms and see how they can be useful for data analysis. So even though I'm a new-grad, I feel like I have a pretty good amount of experience to offer.
Now here are some details about how I've been job hunting:
- I've had my resume looked-over by 2 of my teachers, someone in my school's career services department, 3 of my friends who are in the tech industry, and also ChatGPT (just for good measure). All of them said it looks really good and professional. Also, I have 3 different versions for applying to different types of jobs, each of which highlights different skills more prominently.
- Using ChatGPT and help from a few of my friends in the tech industry, I created a very professional cover letter template that I've been using when applying for jobs. Each section highlights specific skills and experience, so I can quickly rearrange and tailor it to fit the job that I'm applying for.
- I use my GitHub account very frequently to show details about all of my major projects and to demonstrate that I know how to use code repositories for backing up and documenting my work.
- I created a Wordpress website to act as my portfolio, which I've been keeping up-to-date with all of the notable projects I've worked on since going back to school. This includes lots of pictures and detailed breakdowns of what the projects are for and what the biggest problems were.
- I've reached out to all of my friends, family members, classmates, roommates, teachers, former co-workers, and acquaintances to see if any of them might know of an entry-level position I could fill. Unfortunately, all of the non-tech people in my network came up empty-handed, and all of the people who were in the tech industry said "my company has a hiring freeze and are only laying people off right now." I should also note that I've reached out to these people a couple of times each since the start of this year, and the responses have been exactly the same.
- I've set up profiles on LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, Handshake, Jobot, Microsoft Careers, USA Jobs, and probably a couple other job hunting sites I can't remember. All of them are up-to-date and I use them all very frequently.
- When I apply for jobs, I'm not just throwing out an application at every single position that I find. I specifically target ones that I actually have a chance at, which are 0-3 years of experience and where I have about +40% of the skills listed. I just wanted to clarify that I'm not being an idiot, applying for mid-senior positions, and then complaining that "nobody will hire me!"
With everything I've listed here, I honestly have no idea how I'm failing this horribly at my job hunt. I'd understand it if I had gotten some interviews and people said my coding skills weren't up to their expectations, but I haven't even made it that far. Not only can I not get my foot in the door anywhere, it doesn't look like there are even open doors available for me to try. All I get are automated rejection letters over and over and over. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Because this constant failure is really breaking me down, and I'm at the end of my rope here.