Let's Talk about Fresh Graduate and Job Application

Let's talk about fresh graduates and job applications. I feel to write this post as there are lots of complaints among companies for not finding the required human resources, whereas there are lots of complaints among fresh graduates for not getting a job offer, not even interviews. As I am a last year student myself and got an opportunity to look through the process of hiring new developers, I can relate from both perspectives. Let's get started

I would like to make just two statements

1. Job Applicant is not being able to express their knowledge and skills
2. Companies failed to review applications deeply (Massive no. of application)

Thus if we know the problem, we are a step ahead, we can resolve these. For the issues, I listed above,

1. If you are looking for a job, provide every possible information about your knowledge and skills on the application, so the reviewer can get to know about you without needing to search you and your profiles on the web.
2. If you are looking for employees, take your time to review the applications, look through the web for his/her profiles, projects, blogs, articles, contributions

So, it basically depends on yourself to get a job, how much you need it. And also the same for companies, how urgent are you for the fulfilment of open vacancies.

The Issues

The solution seems pretty simple and easy to implement. But some vacancies are not vacancies, also some applicants are not the applicants. Let me take you some years back, during a first-year, one of the senior offered me to join an event about WordPress or sth. I remember someone was like "Wanna advertise your company? post a job vacancy." And it actually works, about a year back I had applied for a vacancy while looking more about the company there has a nice post explaining how cool the company was and their services.

Let's talk about the applicants. There are applicants who just apply to experience the interview, without the interest in the job or even without the required knowledge. Some months back, one of my friends applied for a vacancy, having little to none knowledge on that topic. He was asked for the interview, I forget the rest of the story. He did not get the job, probably won't in that company.

CV Resume Review

How corporations need to handle job applications could be a topic for another day. Let's talk about the applicant's CV.

HR will review the application and forward the CV to the developer team, (At least for our case). So prepare the cover letter for the HR teams. Once the CV is passed to developer teams, they will review it.

The CV will be first scanned from top to bottom. If any known contents are found it will catch the eye, eg. college Name, the project titles, required skill sets.

Then the brief check of your education history, and involvement in events/college organizations, the data on those topics.

Training, courses on any in-demand skills

Now, it's time to check your projects, what tools have been used, the project type (personal or group), if group project the teams involved. If the tools used matched with the vacancy needed, it's time to check your code. review your codes, the structure, logic, various conventions, and much more. Also, check the output URL if any.

My Personal Suggestions

I had a CV, which included just the name, project titles, the courses I completed. While applying for this job, I asked a friend to review it, who has completed a fellowship program, shared with me the CV. Updated mine to match the structure (project date, descriptions, tools, references, training). When I completed my trial period I asked my senior if he would have invited for an interview, with the old CV? NO.

So here are some of my suggestions for your CV

1. Include the GitHub link attached to your username, thus developers can review your profiles. not just username
2. Don't just include the title of the project, including what is it for, what tools are used, the end result (if any) and link to source code
3. Follow the version control practices, use its functionality, using branches, ignoring the binaries, the environment files, (the node_modules :P )
4. Be sure your project is not just one functionality, eg, not just log in and signup but can be a mini social network.
5. The job vacancy may need some knowledge on a special topic, including a project, where you used the required tool and write about it on the cover letter.

Suggestions from Job Market

About a month back, I got a chance to join an event targeted to fresh graduates. I had picked some of the suggestions, here they are.

Jobs Dynamics representative
• Be involved in projects and events in college
• Take up internship
• Get your resume ready
• Take up online courses to acquire in-demand skills
• Spend time building network
F1 soft representative
• Solution-oriented
• pro-activeness
• Growth mindset
• Decent Communication Skills
Youngs Innovations representative
• problem solver and critical thinker
• flexible
• Learning attitude
• side projects and portfolio
Some More
• Teamwork
• Continuous Learning
• Future is fast: follow industry trends
• Spend time learning skills that will help you perform.

Change is the only Constant.

What not to do

Let's not assume these
1. I am on top of Google search, they will search and learn about me. :P
2. They will check my contributions and all projects.

Conclusion

To get a job, the applicant can be able to express their knowledge and skills. There is no way other than your CV or Resume to tell the employer how smart you are, thus take your time to prepare the perfect CV for you. Be who you are. Keep Learning and Improving. One may not offer a job, you lose nothing, but they lose a potential one. Have a good day!