Anitra's Journal: Job-hunting sucks.

Yet another discussion on jobs (or lack thereof).

Anyone have suggestions or tips on how a college student with little to no experience can find a job in IT? Or am I deluding myself?

I really don't want to be flipping burgers come May...

I understand

[ScioN_000]

I totally understand your dilemma. I too am a soon-to-be-graduated college student in an IT field. The job market doesn't look too good for us right now. I want to start my own business but feel the need for experience in the "real-working" world necessary. Who knows!

Why do you have no experience?

[[e-mail]]

Why do you have no experience? Have you never written code on your own? Been part of an open source project? Helped out the local library with computer problems?

Anything you've done with computers and/or software is experience. It doesn't have to be on-the-job.

Even if you do have experience there, keep working at it. Find a good OS project you enjoy. Submit code. Be involved. All that parlays into experience that counts.

Re:Why do you have no experience?

[Anitra]

I've heard that in the past. But I don't think I have programmed anything really worthwhile, other than directly for my classes.

If you really want to know what kind of experience I'm comfortable talking about, look at my resume [wpi.edu].

At this point, I'm working well over a 40-hr week just to finish my graduation requirements. I barely get my homework done, I don't have time to go looking for more work to do. I do plan on taking some time for programming this summer, though, especially if I still don't have a decent job.

Re:Why do you have no experience?

[[e-mail]]

So find a project to latch on to. Submit some patches to a Perl module. HTML::Lint and WWW::Mechanize can always use help.

Email Email Email

[Christianfreak]

I was recently unemployed, I discovered that the best way to find a job is to find the area you wish to work in and look up every company you can find that might even remotely have something you're qualified in. Then just ask.

Seriously it worked for me, after two months of hunting the job sites I tried this method and got a job in just two weeks.

Even in a bad economy people get fired or change jobs and need to be replaced, you just have to be availiable when that happens.