Career Suggestions

[sportsandgames]

In a couple of weeks, I am graduating from college with a BS in Computer Science. I am looking for advice on how to get a career in programming. I unfortunately was unable to do an internship and I do not have actual work experience in programming. I did a nine month school project writing code for a satellite. But this is the only thing on my resume as experience.

I just need suggestions on how to improve my resume. I am interested in Java development and C/C++ applications. Any input would be helpful. Thanks

[bcarl314]

Some thoughts on getting experience:

Charity work: Contact your local school board, chuch, or lions club and see if they need any programming work. Often times these organizations are on the look out for cheap / free contractors and are more than willing to give glowing recommendations to people who donate their time.

OpenSource: Check out sourceforge for open source projects. Contact the developer team and see if there's any work you can help on. These people also love the help and can be a nice feather in your cap if you on a big project.

Word of Mouth: Tell your friends, family, and everyone that you're a programmer and looking for small or large projects. Let them be your advertisers. I get about 70% of my work from referrals.

Job Boards: Check out some job boards / freelance boards for projects and bid on them. Don't worry about getting the most money at this point, but don't bid for free either. I'd try to evaluate projects and bid at least $20 / hour (especially for Java / C++ work). As you gain experience, and if you're professional, word of mouth will start rolling in as well.

Just my thoughts.

[mtd]

I second that! Word of mouth is how my biz. got off the ground, and still makes up almost 80% of my business. I know from experience that volunteer/community service work usually does bring GLOWING reviews. Lastly, DO NOT undervalue your service; even tho you're still working on building your resume, realize that unless it is for a community service, you should still charge a decent price (just keep in mind that in every industry there is an 'entry-level' wage, but that wage is never $0!)

In a nutshell, bcarl314 knows his stuff! good advice....

[anshul]

Friends, I'm a graduate Indian Engineer passed this course in June 2004. I learned PHP/MySQL and got a USD 90.0 pm job after 6-months! Very frightening :eek: :o :( :mad: . I wanna learn Java/J2EE and get a good paid job. So I installed Tomcat 5 on my machine.

Can anyone of you help me to insert/retrieve FORM data into MySQL using JSP. Simplest example please ( please point me to some thread or url if you think ). My url is http://anshul.guideseeq.com/
I'll upload http://anshul.guideseeq.com/personal/ so that you may join me there.

[speedracer]

start networking. its mostly about connection when landing a job.
attend trade show to network. any trade show in your field is a good bet.

about your resume..for instance, if you want to work for a game company, play as many game as possible and write about like an evaluator and GM. and send it in with your resume as cover, etc. i personally get 10-20 resume a month at my work, and i usually will look at a resume if it will have something else..like: portfolio, Industry white paper, cover letter with what they can offer, etc.

Good luck.

[anshul]

Can someone of you, please help me in my Java/JSP Tomcat project?

[jettlarue2003]

another good way to start out and gain experience is doing bug finding for various programs. you even can get paid for it sometimes