Standing Out as a Developer Candidate

Becoming a developer is the new cool job in the U.S. today. People are flocking to a host of bootcamps and computer science courses, changing their majors, and learning new skills. Coding bootcamps are now a $240 million industry.  In 2018 they were credited with graduating 20,000 new developers and this year the number has increased. With so many bootcamps and training opportunities, including free learn to code online classes, how can you stand out as the best developer candidate for a company you’re interested in working for? 

 

Focus On Your Niche 

There is so much to learn. That’s the biggest lesson most fledgling developers discover shortly after they start their educational journey to learn the trade. But spreading yourself too thin to learn a little about a lot of languages and frameworks isn’t the best approach in development. Instead, stand out from the crowd by learning a lot about one or two things. For example, if you’re a PHP developer you can focus just on Laravel Framework or CakePHP or some other type of specialization. 

 

Add Special Skills 

You could also stand out from the crowd by learning a new language like Xamarin or Java for app development or Node.js or Angular for the web. You could also market a particular product specialization such as the Internet of Things (IoT) or mobile or perhaps you have experience building APIs or know some machine learning algorithms. Try taking a Udemy Python C++ or C course and learn everything from video game programming to big data analytics. Any of these add-on skills may make you stand out. 

 

Give Back 

You will stand out from other developers if you volunteer your time to teach what you know. Consider sharing your expertise with others in a meetup group. Or, perhaps you could volunteer to judge a hackathon. You could speak to a bootcamp cohort. Or mentor an older adult in coding standards or help a high school computer science teacher and his or her students.  

 

Create a Programming Portfolio 

Programming is an art and a science. Developers should create a programming portfolio in the same way that artists do. Creating a GitHub or Bitbucket online repository for your projects will give an interviewer an easy way to review your credentials and the projects you’ve worked on, and showcases these skills to hiring teams. You may even want to set this up on your own website (Hint: Design the site from scratch) and share it with potential employers. 

 

Work with a Recruiter 

If you work with a recruiter, you automatically will stand out from the crowd. Recruiting teams partner with hiring managers to find the best candidates on the market. If your recruiter believes in you as a candidate they will promote you with the employer and you will be more likely to land an interview. Recruiters can help improve your resume and your interview skills, plus they know a lot about the internal environment that you’ll be interviewing in. These are all reasons why recruiters give developers a leg up during the job interview process. 

 

Blackstone wants to be your go-to recruiting firm. Our team of technical recruiters has links to some of the best programming jobs in your market. All you need to do is get in touch and start the process of finding your next developer role. Give us a call.  

 

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