Here are the slides on how to "Reverse Engineer" how to get an awesome IT job. We asked our top 40 students for tips on how to get hired. We're summarised their wisdom into this slide deck.
8. Our advice has been captured from 10 years
of helping students get jobs.
> 500 placements with 75% on-hire rate
We know what works and we will tell you
how to get a job. If you don’t understand
then keep asking WHY until you get it .
95% most of the students who don’t get a
job don’t follow our basic advice.
Yeah Nah !?!
20. Last year - we placed 145 students
Programmer Designer
Web
Programmer
Mobile
Programmer
Web
Designer
QA
IT
Support
Analyst
Network
Support
Mechatronics
IT
Security
Database
Admin
Dev
Ops
Ops
Marketing
Project
Mgmt
44. Oly now works at Google
“The Summer of Code program during my university years was
my first encounter with programming in the real world. Getting
placement in a local startup company was a great way to get
exposure to every aspect of running a software business,
programming and otherwise.
The startup experience inspired me to start my own projects
using new technologies which kickstarted my software
career.”
51. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
52. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
How to find
a good
company?
X
53. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
How to find
a good
company?X
What you can do NOW!
( )+
54. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
How to find
a good
company?X
What you can do NOW!
( )+
Summer of Tech is here to show you how!
61. “I largely don’t care about someone’s
actual coding skill on day 1, because they
often won’t align with our patterns anyway,
but it’s all teachable.
What I want to see is a candidate’s ability
to interact with an existing codebase and
team….”
What companies are looking for
62. What companies are looking for
“…The single best way you can do this is
by choosing a project and contributing.
One way to get started (assuming github
here), is fork the an interesting repo, read
the contributor guidelines (which typically
also include an explanation of how to set
up for development), and then look for a
bug to fix, or new feature to add.”
- Brad Murray , DATACOM
63. “We like to see working demos of games
they have made. An app I can run on my
phone is great, from the app store is even
better.
Some people have unity games that are
very impressive, but Unity hides some of
the difficult parts so we prefer to see C++
game demos…”
What companies are looking for
64. “The stuff that sticks out the most is when
they have a larger game demo they have
worked on in a team. It helps us get a
sense for how well they work with others.
Things like the Imagine Cup or Global
Game Jam are great.”
Joe O’Sullivan - PikPok
What companies are looking for
95. Google researched - What makes a “perfect team”
“We had lots of data, but there was
nothing showing that a mix of specific
personality types or skills or backgrounds
made any difference.”
The ‘‘who’’ part of the equation didn’t
seem to matter.’
96. Two factors that mattered most to the teams
1) ‘Equality in distribution of conversational
turn-taking.’’
- Teams where everyone spoke the same
amount. (ie. no one dominated)
2) ‘‘Average social sensitivity’’
- Understanding people's cues
What did matter most for teams was ...
98. “Be prepared to go out of your
comfort zone (promoting yourself,
networking, interviewing),
you'll improve a lot and pick up
transferrable skills
(eyy buzzwords) by doing so”
99. Building software products is a team sport
3 Communication skills
aka Can I talk to you
and do you listen?
100. Can I talk to you about a problem?
3 Communication skills
aka Can I talk to you
and do you listen?
114. “Build your CV while you are at
uni;
That might sound strange but
people often think that they will
start building their CV after uni.
The most challenging thing is to
get your first job.
So build your CV now.”
115. “How to build your CV? Attend as
many programming events,
hackathons, etc. as possible.
Build a complete website / mobile
app while you are studying.
Have a cool github profile.
Participate in open source
projects. ”
116. “Work on team projects.
The university does not prepare
you properly for that.
Learn how to use git in a team
(branching, merging, etc.)”
119. What they are looking for in your Github?
1) Interesting projects
2) Examples of your work
3) Contributions to projects
120. Annotate your code in an README.md
● The purpose of code
● What it does and doesn’t do
● Any special instructions
● Any anomalies
● If you had to make trade-offs, state
why
131. “Don't be shy about requesting
information from companies,
or asking if you can get a tour.
Actually being in the office was
a huge indicator for me if I
wanted to work there.”
133. “If you're aiming for a company
that uses C#, do a small
project in C# to show off on
your github so they know
you're actually interested and
will put in the effort.”
“Researching the company so
that the interviewer was
impressed with my knowledge
and interest in the company
and its products at the M & G
and the interview.”
135. “Talk to employers and figure
out what kind of people the
companies are looking for.”
“Know what you want and go
for that. (research different
types of companies and get a
feel for startup/small
companies vs larger more
corporate ones) “
148. “Have at least one project you've done
outside of university to show to potential
employers - bonus points if it's on
Github! ”
“Find people who really want to
work on a project and team up with
them. Don't just talk to your friends
about working on a project
because all you'll end up doing is
drinking a lot and playing
scrabble.”