How to “stand out” as a potential candidate for a junior front-end developer role?
You had that ardent desire to break into the development world, and secure yourself a junior front-end developer role. No matter what you do, you find yourself feeling like either an impostor and discourage yourself from applying for the role you saw advertised locally, or you apply but you seem to get knock-backs!
Is this you?
Let me tell you one thing now. Don’t feel like you’re the only one who gets this kind of experiences, when starting out. The Industry is full of such stories. And yet junior roles are being filled-in. How? what can you do with your limited industry experience and a C.V. that is almost bare of any relevant experiences? You want those experiences but if you don’t get a chance to get them, what can you do?
Well, a lot actually.
If you lack the experience in the industry, you can make experience outside of the industry!
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Start building lot of projects in the basic languages of the web: HTML and CSS. Create your own website, get it hosted cheaply and have it display your work. Make a commitment that everyday you will spend 1 or 2 hours on your home projects. Get a Github account — it’s free and you can push all your projects there and build a good overview of how active you are to someone who doesn’t know, like your potential next CV reader.
What will doing the above do?
They will show that you are very much active with the technology, that you are being creative, that you are active and you are “fighting” to get through the door.
If you have grasped the basics well. Move on, push yourself! Go to Javascript. learn it. Write some cool stuff with the combination of HTML and CSS. Start mixing with the development community. Get a Twitter account and start show casing your work. Amaze the people our there. That’s a platform to showcase yourself.
At the end of the day, the more you master the technologies that interest you, the more strength your building that justifies to a potential employer that you have earned a place with them.
Don’t just sit there. Once you have mastered a fairly good standards in the basics, start teaching others. Teaching others will give you that boost and will help you get over that impostor feeling.
If you want to add more stuff to your CV, do community work. Help others and put it down on your CV. It shows you are a initiative taker and care about others.
Remember this: the only person who is holding you back is…You!
