How to stand out from the crowd and get an entry-level job in software engineering quickly

Since we started our entrepreneurial journey, the Ministry of Programming has been growing in every possible way.

With such growth and potential, we get hundreds of job applications and dozens of internship applications every month.

We look at every single application trying to find the most promising candidates — what we call “the top 1%”.

The number of positions is limited and It’s very time-consuming to find the perfect match between job and candidates.

One question I frequently get, especially from students and junior developers is:

How can I increase my chances to get into MOP internship or a junior developer position?

The problem is that at a good company, there are 10 or 100x more applicants than the number of positions. So, differentiating yourself as a candidate and getting hired is not as easy as it sounds.

Some people will be luckier than others, but your goal is not to get lucky but to be prepared.

The following is exactly what I tell people about differentiation and how to get hired quickly anywhere.

You need to stand out from other applicants

The problem with schools and universities is that they mostly produce uniform students that have gone through the same education and then use the same CV templates, and end up looking very similar to an unsophisticated recruiter.

Any strategy (including your strategy to get hired) is defined by the quality of the value proposition and differentiation.

So how can you differentiate yourself from the crowd?

One simple way to differentiate from the crowd is to do things that most other candidates in the recruitment process will not do.

If you think about 1,000 junior candidates in a recruitment pipeline, most of them have the following in their profiles and CVs:

• Formal education or certifications (e.g. Major in CS or a certificate from Udemy about a course completed)
• Basic knowledge and skills (e.g. basic C# skills)
• Participation in events
• Random information and interests (e.g. The love of Snowboarding)

But what are some things that 99% of interns and junior developers don't have in their profiles?

• Concrete projects finished (e.g. real experience on a product/project in production)
• Links to real work, GitHub repositories, websites, apps, etc. (e.g. 2–3 android apps to show on your phone)
• Membership/participation in relevant organizations (e.g. held 3 talks in the Python meetup in your local city)

Yes. It’s hard to collect proof of work as shown above, and go beyond credentialing from your studies — but it pays off big time. Every company will hire a person that can demonstrate real work finished.

The obstacle is the way

As with many things in life, the easier or the common path is not the right path.

In this case, the harder path is to prepare a demonstration of skill and build real things in the real world.

How do you build real apps that can act as proof of skill and impress any company that you are applying to?

One way is to invent a mini startup or copy an existing app in the market.

e.g. build your own Twitter clone with reduced functionality. I promise it will be fun and exciting, but not easy.

The important thing is to aim to have the app running on your phone at the interview to impress people.

Another way to do this is to go through courses online that build real apps that are runnable on your phone.

While there are many theoretical courses out there, some of them focus on building real stuff, like:

https://www.udemy.com/course/the-complete-android-oreo-developer-course/

https://www.udemy.com/course/build-different-android-apps-hands-on-android-course/

Invest 40–50 hrs of your time in these kinds of hands-on courses and I promise that you will have zero trouble standing out from the crowd and finding a job.

This investment of time to build real runnable apps/systems might be the 1% of the total learning effort during your studies, but it might very well provide 80% of the benefits and make you super-attractive to companies.

Interview like a pro

Now imagine getting into an Android internship or junior dev interview with the confidence of knowing that you have 2–3 android apps running on your phone!

Once you get asked a question about Kotlin/Java etc. you can pull out a real app and show the result.

Let me show you the apps I have developed in the last few months

The recruiter will be like:

If the company you are talking to doesn’t appreciate your effort and the fact you built several apps to prove your worth, then it’s the wrong company to work for anyway. Find a company that appreciates results and outcomes, and not words on paper.

So, good luck finding your next Job! And remember → Differentiation is the key. Don’t be a copy of your colleagues.

Developing real apps is not the only way to stand out of course.

Other ways may include, but are not limited to:

• Open-source contributions
• Participation in relevant organizations and non-profits — e.g. programming presentations/workshops
• Startup experience
• Pre-qualification from a really hard field — proving your adaptability
• Endorsement from others about real work
• etc.

Whatever you do go beyond grades, words, and credentials to position yourself as a doer that built real stuff in the world and helped real people.

Do a lot. Say little -> A running product tells a thousand words.