Quitting your career to opt for highly lucrative jobs in current IT market may be a smart choice at the moment, but is it really that easy and what does it take to land a job as a software engineer with no previous experience?
I am by no means an expert on this. What follows is a list of steps, methods and techniques that – failed for me. So, don’t take them for granted, and do not expect a one size fits all approach, nor a guide tailored to your circumstances to help you land that super lucrative job you’ve been fancying for years. It just does not go that way. We are all different, just as is our experience, our skills, our knowledge, our assets, time and background, so the best you can get from reading this is how my ways didn’t work for me. Maybe you won’t have to go through them all yourself. Maybe you’ll be half as lucky as me and land that job in half the time it took me. Maybe – or maybe not.
But, without further ado, let’s get started.
My background, i.e. where does IT fit in
As an English graduate, I was working in education on and off for the past 9 years, with several additional unsuccessful attempts at jobs, either freelance tutoring, translating, copywriting, proofreading, and what not. While my friends were convincing me to try learning QA as the easiest way to get into IT, and although school was not as well paid, I was still able to get by with such low income – and I was actually enjoying working with youngsters. But then the pandemic happened, and everything turned upside down.
Along the way, I was given (read: passed several tests to get in) a chance of attending an online full-stack programming course, combining fundamentals of programming, object-oriented programming, MySQL databases, and backend in Java / Spring framework + frontend in JavaScript / React framework. I signed up out of curiosity rather than desiring to pursue a full-time career in IT, and approached the course with utmost – nonchalance. I attended all lessons, I did all the homework, I took all exams, but altogether, to pass the overall course with flying colours I skipped on the most essential step – exploring and studying on my own, relying on my ability to understand the concepts instead of combining it with doing a lot of extracurricular work and simply immersing myself fully in the matter.
Unlike many other colleagues in the course, who simply got it all at first sight, I was the slow one – it took me a lot of time to understand something, but once I did, I could do it blindfolded, and I was perfectly able to explain it myself or to help others.
So once the course was over, several months later I was faced with a choice – stay a teacher and end up in a mental institution, or try using the newly acquired knowledge to land an entry level job as a software developer with no experience. I’ve got all it takes, so how difficult could it be?
Being an experienced IT laborer with no software dev experience
Before I get into details about this particular job search, I must mention this was not my first contact with IT. Several years ago, I spent 14 months in a full-service digital agency, as the firm used to refer to itself, as a copywriter and community manager. Having worked with WordPress for years prior to that job, the greatest challenge there was to learn how office life works, as well as what community management entails.
After the post ended, I found myself in school again, but that was the right choice at the given moment.
So here I was again, dangerously reaching burn out in school again, turning to IT once more.
Step 1: one-day job search motivation
It may feel like ages ago, but my first attempt of a job search as a Java software developer with no experience, just a one-year full stack course under my belt, actually occurred in mid-January 2022, less than 2 months after the course. I was determined to do all I could in just a day, convinced the more I applied, the higher the chances someone might respond with a yes.
So, I opened the website of my course organiser, and found the partners page – with a list of about 20ish IT companies in the city. A good starting point, I reckoned. I had my resume, my course letter of recommendation, and a direct access to some of the best software companies, I thought, and once I knock on their proverbial door carrying that certificate, what have I got to lose anyway?
I started knocking, humbly, hello, my name is this, I’m interested in pursuing a career in software development, my knowledge is limited, but with the right guidance I will inevitably progress, I’d appreciate it if you were to offer this chance to me, to recognize my potential and for both of us to benefit from such an arrangement, yata-yata-yata.
But this took time, because if you want to do things right, you’ll most likely want to avoid sending your pitch to info@domain.something. That means browsing the company website in an attempt to find a person’s email, and while you are there, you may as well go through the website, to familiarise yourself with the technologies they work with and projects they have worked on. Sometimes you’ll see right there that the company is of no interest to you, as their set of tech stack does not align with your (current) skills, and that is perfectly fine, move on.
But, what was particularly frustrating here are the companies with only contact form on their website, with absolutely NO email address anywhere to be found. I did not let this stop me from getting where I was headed. Since I made some websites, as well as their contact form, I knew that the contact form has to send messages to a valid email address, so I relied on this prior knowledge while opening the page source code to try to extract the email address linked to the contact form. If that’s not resourcefulness, I don’t know what is!
The next step, of course, is sending each email separately, not via the bcc option. You want your email readers to know you are addressing them in particular, so if you find a person’s name on the website, you’ll want to address them personally, Dear Mr. Smith, or Dear Ms. Jones. Rarely did I send a To whom it may concern intro line, because it feels as if shooting blanks and expecting them to his the target.
Aided by Google search
Next, after I’d gone through the list on the initial website, and even more motivated to keep going, I moved my quest to Google SERP, and simply browsed for IT companies in my city. And, oh boy, was that interesting! Of course, many results were the ones I had already sent my pitch to, but there were also foreign websites offering entire lists – lists of IT companies in my country, per city! That is a real gem, my friend, because it saves an enormous amount of time – and you have an easy access to the websites with no need to search for them yourself. And that is how I continued, thinking the more I try, the more likely for me to succeed.
In the end, since I do keep track of all job applications, it took me almost the entire day (unfortunately), but the number of my job applications equaled 55 – on a single day. Well, it did not hurt that much, did it?
All that now remains is to wait for responses. I mean, they do software development, they constantly look for new people, the market is desperate for fresh meat and on a constant search for new talents – they will respond within the next few days.
But days started going by, and responses, if any at all, were mostly Thank you for reaching out to us, but we are currently full, we’ll keep your data in case a post opens up.
So disappointment starts creeping in. What did I do wrong? Why did NOBODY respond? Why did they immediately reject me? Why didn’t they even want to talk to me? What did I do wrong? Is there anything wrong with me, my bio? Why aren’t they responding?
Okay, so after a while you simply realize this was not working right. You bit the bullet and got yourself out there, you were proactive, you were resourceful, you were super motivated, but something must have been off. Maybe you chose the wrong moment?
Whatever it was, you have to change something, you have to start anew.
Step 2: just casually window shopping
While all this was going on, mind you, I had a steady full-time job at both primary and secondary school, which was taking up A LOT of my leisure time as well. Additionally, to attend the course which partially overlapped with my karate lessons, I had to cut down on the number of lessons per week, so once the course was over I simply enjoyed the luxury of having my regular karate lessons schedule.
These two combined meant there was not so much leisure time for me to keep looking for a new career as actively as I maybe should have. I’d encounter a post that sparked my interest, casually apply, and simply hope for – nothing.
It was during this period that I started realizing how difficult it is to be a complete novice on today’s job market. I do not know about other industries, because most jobs I’ve done so far were either freelance or education-based; but to get into an IT position, to an entry software developer position in particular, it seems like majority of job ads require you to have AT LEAST 2 to 3 years of experience in similar job positions.
Well, excuse me, job ad writers and employers and HRs with all your unrealistic expectations, but where do I get so much experience if it does not grow on trees nor can I buy it in a supermarket along with condiments and toiletries, and if nobody gives me a chance to gain it? In the end, if I had that much experience, I would not be looking for entry level positions, but a medior one!
The second frustration point are the job ads with nice-to-haves lists of tech skills, where they tend to sugar coat such an unrealistic set of skills a senior developer could easily have, but a novice – hardly. So, I start wondering, again, who writes these job ads, and why and when has it become the norm to expect a beginner to have 10 years of experience in at least 35 technologies, frameworks, and languages; and, more importantly, how do I get there to even be given a chance?
I understand I am new to this, but it’s not like I fell out of the blue just wanting to become a software developer with no understanding of things at all. I speak English, along with several other foreign languages; I know how to write, like, real essays and linguistic papers, and copy; I have worked in WordPress, I made websites in Elementor, I work in Linux, I use clouds, I gave online lessons, I used gamified learning platforms for my lessons; I am tech-savvy, I consider myself to be just a bit beyond a regular user of computers; I graduated from university and I have an MA degree in linguistics; and this programming course I attended for a year shows I am still able and eager to learn something new from scratch. So why is nobody willing to walk a mile in my shoes to give me an opportunity to show my potential? Again, what am I doing wrong?!
All this time, people around me were getting (and changing) jobs in IT. Funny enough, their suggestions on the same issues most often diametrically differed. While one friend claimed I should never have my photo in my resume, the other one advised me to always include it, because, you know, we live where we live, and the photo is a standard. Such moments really drove me mad, because, again, what works for one person does not have to work for the other. The one without the photo got the job without it, the one with the photo got his job with it. So where was I in all this? Where was my spot? Do I even fit in? Is there a place for me? And again, what was I doing wrong?
I had to change something in my approach, so the most tangible thing to work on was my resume. As a regular user of Canva, I simply chose a different resume template, reorganised my data, adjusted the template to what I liked, and continued casually applying to jobs with my new resume.
The results, as you may guess by now, were still the same. Thank you for reaching out, we’ve chosen a candidate who better suits our needs at the moment. But they never tell you HOW the other person is a better match, so they actually drive you completely mad, as you have no feedback and have no idea what made them stand out, and what to work on in the future to make yourself stand out the same way.
By this time, already losing hope about getting that job, I applied for a new programming course, without actually knowing if I’d even attend it, or even which course to sign up for. I wanted to go through tests again, to see if I’ll be able to pass them again. Additionally, I applied for yet another course, following a friend’s advice, but the further we got with the tests, the more I hoped not to be chosen for this one. Thirdly, to give you the whole picture, towards the end of May, I even started landing some interviews (wow!), and together with the end of school year approaching, my life was becoming quite hectic at the time.
Step 3: panic attacks
After the end of school year which made me feel like a squeezed lemon, summer was finally in its full swing, but I was home, sleeping day after day, for about a month. I needed time off to recuperate from all the school stress and pressure, so I just needed sleep. No desire to go anywhere, nor to talk to anyone, nor to do anything. Just sleep. Sometimes, after the entire day indoors, I’d take out my laptop, my notebook, a bottle of water and a cup of coffee, to sit on the porch and just continue applying to job ads I’d saved over the last few days. Some days I’d apply to 20 ads, some days to none, but that was also okay.
After about 3 weeks of such regime, when I seriously started considering the idea of quitting school for good, as I was cringing at the very thought of spending another school year in such environment, I realised I had to take the situation in my hands again, and steer the wheel in my direction. I had what it takes, I just needed the answer key to the test! And, heck, I was about to find that answer key!!!
That was when real panic attacks started. There was not much to lose, yet there was a lot I could gain. It was about 6 months past my course, and a pang of fear crept in that I am about to forget it all unless I start doing something with that knowledge. I made job filters on LinkedIn. I started following several more job portals. I applied to all job-related mailing lists I could find. When a job ad on LinkedIn took me to an external job application website which required me to make a new profile, bam, make the profile and memorise it in the browser. I have no idea how many profiles I made, nor how to access them anymore, seriously. Update my job bio in all freelancing platforms. Copy my friend’s LinkedIn profile (that he paid someone to optimise for him), adapt it to my own set of skills, knowledge and experiences. Have resume versions for different jobs – okay, now that the software development quest seemed impossible, I even started applying to jobs I never even wanted to do anyways, such as copywriting and digital marketing, but in such moments of despair I was considering them too. Heck, I realised I was a good fit the position of a technical writer, especially when during one job interview I heard what their current salaries scope was.
And again, the more I applied, the more rejections landed to my email every day. So you really need to be either an idiot or a complete fool to keep going after receiving new rejections every friggin day. I was becoming completely clueless! What was I doing wrong, again and again? I tick literally every box from the list of what to do, yet something was still not right, and nobody was giving me any constructive feedback! How should I know what to change if nobody’s telling me what I am doing wrong?!
However, there were some job interviews as well! Even though scarce, they started multiplying too! So it is true, the more you apply, the more likely are you to get some feedback. These interviews brought some new insights.
First, some companies make their hiring process so lengthy and so time-consuming that even I as a candidate lose track of time between two interviews. One company, as a branch of an American-based company, kept me on interviews for about three months, I think, starting in May, ending in either July or August, to finally reject me after a technical interview. Okay, I blocked after I was given quite a simple task to do on screen sharing, and that was okay, but the process of getting to this point was so long that I even forgot when I applied in the first place.
Another Croatian company gave me a two-week task, and an extra week when I asked for it, and rejected me few hours after I shared my codes with them, which was super fast, but again – with absolutely no feedback. I understand it is time consuming for them, but if I dedicated three weeks of my time to doing a task, together with filling in the application and all that, I believe I deserve at least a few sentences feedback with constructive criticism I could learn from, rather than the typical: Thank you for your time and effort, but we’re not a good match, thus we will not be proceeding with your application at this point.
Secondly, I realised that the smaller the company you are applying to – the less likely are you to get in. Simply said, small- to mid-sized companies need employees who could start earning their salaries the moment they start working. These companies have no resources to invest into training novice staff, so as a newbie you may be better off at international companies with several hundred or several thousand employees. They can afford new people on a regular basis, and they can afford training you.
And this whole time, there are those crappy inspirational HR tips and advice repeating some nonsensical lies. I mean, not even today is there a single day for me to visit LinkedIn and not to come across some inspiring-wannabe HR status based on one of the following: experience does not matter – show them you are eager to learn, knowledge does not matter – show them you are not afraid of challenges, previous experience does not matter if you are changing careers – present it to your advantage, education does not matter – stand out from the crowd, or, my personal per peeve: where qualifications lack, a good recruiter should be able to recognise the potential in the application (!!!), or the combination of all these together. Of course, those people are the exact ones who never respond to your job applications because, you know, they haven’t got time to go through the miles of your applications – so why do they even ask you to write those miles-long applications and cover letters, or they only contact shortlisted candidates – so you do the math yourself.
Finally, some of the job interviews you will go through will be unpleasant, because you will definitely realise how little you know. After all, it is absolutely normal for a beginner now to know anything – that is why you want to start working – to keep learning. Sometimes you will block at the first sign of difficulty, and then you will want to beat yourself up for being that dumb. Sometimes the interview will go just fine, and then when they reject you it will leave you puzzled on what the heck happened there, and why. These and many other similar situations are but the part of the process. You have to go through it, to see where you are and how you stack up against the market, and to get yourself ready for your future interviews. So even when you fail, take it as a lesson to learn from rather than a failure to linger on. And keep applying!
The ugly truth about job search
Altogether, nobody will ever tell you how difficult it is to find that darn new job if you are switching careers – especially if you have no formal education in IT. Yes, a formal diploma does not guarantee more or better knowledge than a plain course, but it still gives you a better starting point in comparison to where I started from.
So, let me break it to you: changing careers is darn difficult. It is stressful, time-consuming, unnerving, disappointing, exhausting, and horrible, disgusting and burdensome. It will have you wondering what’s wrong with you, what are you doing wrong, and how to fix it. It will have you banging your head against the wall, absolutely clueless on how others did it and you can’t. It will want you to quit trying. It will drive you mad, and take you to hell and back. It will test your mental strength and persistence, determination to succeed, it will force you to cross your boundaries and set new ones. It will play with your psyche, and it will drive you mad once more. And once more. And once more. Until you put your foot down.
Step 4: what comes afterwards
Then one day, in the whirl of all those applications and unnerving rejections and new applications and job portals profiles and interviews and fear and anxiety and banging your head against the wall, you receive a phone call which says: Hello, this is X from Y, you had an interview with my colleague, so I am here to present our offer to you, would you be interested in working with us? And you say YES, smiling in disbelief; and you sign the contract and quit your current job; and you start as a software developer with no experience. Mission accomplished – now comes the easier part: start really learning.
And that is all it takes. Even when your chances are lower than 1%, and mine were about 0.7%, it’s still a percentage that brings success. Even if everybody else rejects you, one yes is enough. Even if you are clueless on what’s wrong, it may not be you – it may be the wrong moment, or the wrong company you are applying to, or the wrong person assessing your application, or the bad day they are going through, or who knows what else. Someone smart once said: the best way to succeed is to try once more. Every time you fail, try once more.
Because IT at the moment is in such a need for staff that the only ones to not get a job there are those who don’t even try (or who quit trying along the way). When you set off on this quest, arm yourself with patience and nerves of steel.
What kept me going was pure spite – I believed I could land that job as long as I didn’t quit. I had already worked in IT, and disliked the job because of my work atmosphere and the boss and the clients – in general, how the company worked.
But this, software engineering, is a whole different story, so nothing was in my way – but myself. The more applications, the more likely to get a yes. And only one yes is enough.
Have you got the spite to reach that one yes?
P.S. Last night I realised that my two-months salary at this job is well over enough for me to reward myself with a two-week holiday to an island country on a different continent I’ve been dreaming of for the past 15 years. Two months work in IT covers the entire trip with flights, accommodation, optional field trips, and all money wasting activities we enjoy while travelling. I just can’t wait to start planning the trip! ❤
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