There is still hope for techies

Society Business and Career
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Hey, this is for all the recent graduates or ppl pursuing CS. Every day we read some some scary stories of ppl getting laid off or about job saturation in the IT field.Indeed it is tough these days.

Well alhumdullilah I’m on a verge of securing a full time job as a “.Net developer”.I was never an outstanding student or a geek . I just had a couple of internships here and there that didn’t do much in todays market.

My uncle asked me to work in his engineering firm. After extensive reading,research I found out the current industry is all about providing internet,intranet,online services and solutions. Considering I’m more comfortable with Microsoft Technologies I pursued to learn ASP and .Net and somehow tried to incorporate with engineering projects. I started off creating simple applications for the company and then one thing lead to another I created couple of impressive projects for the company. Unfortunately my uncle’s firm is on the downside because of the economy and he wasn’t able to pay me however he took care off all my other expenses.So basically what I’m trying to convey here is I invested my time in doing something useful rather than waisting my time at home waiting for an interview. You have to be on your edge all the time.

Technically speaking I’m still an entry level. I graduated on December 2002 (wasted foour months doing nothing but job search)and started working with my uncle on April2003. So now after six months of hard work and sacrfice(that is not working at Mc donalds for money) I got an interview with the company and by God’s grace I got enough hints from them that they are planning to hire me full time and willing to SPONSOR me for H1 or Green card. The reason I’m posting is not to brag about my achievements but educate other techies that hard work and ofcourse your parents prayers doesn’t go in waste. Talking about prayers. My parents and grandparents spent days and nights praying for me and during the interview my mom had a Quran khani. Never underestimate the powers of prayers.Again I’m an average CS guy who worked really hard.If I can get a job(Inshallah) so can you !. The economy is also getting better so prepare yourself to be ahead in the game

Things you can do

  1. Don’t make hasty decisions. Invest some time and do some serious study of technologies that is hot,(J2EE,.NET, PHP/perl/mySQL, XML etc).

  2. I understand not everyones relative has a firm, if they do then its great. You can take the approach similar to mine. You can also do is develop some real time applications at home. Trust me what I did at my uncles place I could have done it at home. Try to master the technology. Yes it may not count as a real " experience" but atleast in entry level postions you will have an edge over other candidates. You will be far better off than fresh college graduates.Atleast your employer won’t have to worry about training you. You can contribute to the orgranizations right away.

  3. Mr fraudia is a wonderful guy..He will give you very useful tips and I got benefitted by it. Thank you bhai for your help. I really appreciated..

  4. Prayers and prayers. It will do wonders! :slight_smile:

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Good luck dude ...

Just an advice, never forget where you came dfrom and never stop learning. Always strive to broaden your horizen.

Peace

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Hi Sherry,
A heartening and encouraging anecdote indeed - thank you for sharing that with everyone here :)

I concur with everything you've said about hard work, and prayers. Time and time again, I see people give up after sometime and get too overly involved, moreover stalled by the extraneous work they're doing for money... there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping a side job... afterall, it lets you handle your expenses... but at the same time is also very detrimental to one's self-esteem.

My recommendation is inline with yours. If you're having a hard time finding a job, try to be productive in some other way - being in HR, I can tell you that employers often look at what you've done with your time while you were unemployed.

Similar to what you did for your uncle's firm, people can embark on volunteer technical projects for their local hospitals or charitable organizations. I did som technical training and web work for the Ontario March of Dimes in my final year of undergrad. Furthermore, you can even offer services to SMEs' for free - just make sure you keep you're in command of your intellectual work and can use it as your professional portfolio - load the portfolio on your personal website, link your online resume' to it, put the link on your hardcopy CV, burn it on a CD and take it with you to the interview!