Tips on What Makes a Computer Science Graduate Stand Out to Potential Employers

The most common job for computer science graduates is a software engineer. Since the tech environment is so hot at the moment, there are not enough software engineers. So computer science graduates may get a job right out of college. The problem with being hired as a software engineer is that traditionally, no one wants to hire a software engineer with absolutely no experience. And programming during college does not really count as experience.

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The reason for that is in a professional development setting, there are many kinds of software and general practices that this developer would need to learn. And that would require a lot of time from the senior developers and managers.

So generally, people prefer to hire junior engineers who have 1-2 years of real industry experience at least. There are exceptions to this, however. If the junior engineer shows a way in which they are outstanding, they are more likely to get hired. That can be either through doing well in an internship (possibly unpaid to show drive), coming out of a great university, or having great achievements during college such as being near the top of their class. Another way very junior developers can stand out is by projects they have built that they can show online or open source projects in which they participated. In summary, these graduates can stand out by pursuing their own projects, contributing to open source projects, being proactive, and actively being "hungry" for more opportunities.




Those sorts of things, especially hustle and open source contribution, can go a really long way in impressing a hiring manager.

And of course, the candidate also has to come across as a nice person who would be pleasant to work with.

Alex Genadinik, founder of Problemio.com and advisor/consultant on mobile and marketing strategies to g33ktalk.com



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