Breaking into tech? 4 ways to hack it.
As the developer world converges toward being a professionalized industry, it’s hard to find a job without a university diploma. Considering this, I’ve compiled the 4 main strategies that I used to get my first job offer as a full time developer despite having had no formal training:
- Break job application conventions.
- Learn marketable tech.
- Reach out to devs you admire.
- Invest in writing about your work.
Break conventions creatively
You’ve already broken a convention by trying to “break” into the tech industry, so don’t get shy about getting unconventional! Often when tech companies say they’re open to unconventional candidates, they effectively mean “Harvard drop-out,” but that’s okay, you just need to find another way to shine!
This idea of figuring out how to shine is important, because technical expertise won’t be enough. The first wall you need to get through is HR, so be aware that your first barrier to entry probably won’t have technical expertise, so you’ll need to make your unconventionally acquired knowledge palatable for them. This is to say: a list of your technologies won’t cut it.
Here are three “more thans” to begin with:
- More than just a traditional CV: send in a portfolio as part of the same PDF submission.
- More than just applying: reach out to three people at the company to ask if they’ll tell you something about company life.
- More than just doing tutorial projects: build something which engages with the real world, even if you do it for yourself and for free.
Each of these suggestions engages with the idea that you need to sell yourself to someone who will never read a line of your code. If you leave them with a CV that doesn’t have university credentials or some very substantial projects, it’s your job to walk them through exactly how you create value.
🔥 Hot-take sidebar: I have no quarrels with non-technical HR! They’re there to assess “human” qualities and estimate tech proficiency from 30,000 feet. It’s the dev team who’s charged with evaluating your technical capability (and they’re likewise not responsible for evaluating your more interpersonnel qualities).
Learn marketable tech
Knowing how to code isn’t usually enough to enter the job market. In fact, it often requires knowing one of the trending frameworks. While it’s true that from a learning perspective that any programming language will teach you plenty about the fundamentals of others, having already in-demand technology in your back pocket is a plus.
Myself, when I began looking for jobs, I found a web-dev job market which was centered around React, TypeScript, and Material UI. For this reason, I went all in on these three complementary technologies. Companies are looking for the least expensive way to hire reliable, competent workers. With traditionally educated devs, the cost is these theoretically trained devs learning their tech. As a untraditionally trained dev, hopefully you come in ready to hit the ground running and just need support for more theoretical ideas.
This isn’t to say you should abandon your passions and converge on whatever is the most commercially valuable, but it may be rewarding to focus your passions for the near future and save your other whimsies for all the free time you’ll have after work when you come home from your new dev job!
Reach out to devs you admire
Reach out to developers you admire. This idea of “finding a mentor” really intimidated me at first, but I treated it like a programming problem. I broke it down into parts.
The first actionable was to find a developer who’s already at where I’m trying to be. In my case, I turned to Old Faithful: the internet. I knew I’d enjoy doing work for a non-profit, so I began reading about developers who’d done just that! One article inspired me so much that I emailed the author asking if he’d be willing to chat with me about his dev journey. One thing led to another, and next thing you know we’re building an app together and we’re doing code reviews. I built my first React app this way.
Invest in writing
If there isn’t something on your resume like a Computer Science diploma, you have all the more reason to contextualize you work! This will broaden your audience, making the value you bring immediately clear to anyone who looks at your work.
I like to use the following pattern in my ReadMe.md files:
- Context
- The Challenge
- The Opportunity
Context
What was happening when I came on to the scene? Ex. The coworking space used Google Sheets to manage the building’s events. A single event can easily involve more than 100 guests, and there are often several events a day.
The Challenge
Which pain points were my users experiencing? Ex. The waitstaff/servers had trouble reading spreadsheets from their phones during the setup of every event, and the administration was in a long term relationship with a temporary solution.
The Opportunity
How did I solve my users’ problem? Ex. Create a mobile friendly web-app which solidifies event requirements, simplifying their creation and readability.
Invest in your ReadMe files, breaking your work down into lay terms. My preferred formula is the context of your code project, the challenge you wanted to solve, and what approach you then took to solve this challenge.
Conclusion
Breaking into the tech industry without a traditional diploma is indeed a challenge, but with a little creativity and some strategy, it’s doable! By embracing unconventional methods, learning marketable technologies, connecting with experienced developers, and investing in clear communication through writing, you can navigate the hiring landscape. Your journey following an untraditional path can be an assset, but you need to find ways to fill in the gaps you have and showcase what you bring to the table.
The ability to showcase your skills and value proposition can open doors and redefine success in the ever-evolving tech world.
