Here is what worked for me. I started a programming career as a university dropout, got bored of it after 15 years and started a successful freelance consulting practice, got tired of that after a while and recently redesigned my job from the ground up for more stable income and even more freedom of action than I had as a consultant.
Advice #1 is: learn how to network. Start doing it now even if you think you’re “too young”.
Send email to people—strangers—you think of as exemplars of the kind of success you aspire to, and ask them for one hour of their time, to give you some insight into where your own career might go, and possibly refer you to someone who could help further your goals.
Keep a Farley file, or maybe use LinkedIn to keep your contacts organized, but at any rate start thinking of these contacts as “your network” and of your network as one of your major assets in building the kind of career you want. Cultivate people in your network for their own sake, not as people who can help you. If at all possible, think first of how you can help them.
After a while—and one thing to remember is to be patient, it could take up to a couple years—your network will start generating opportunities for you. At that point, know what you want. You won’t be able to say “yes” to everything, but it’s crucial that you’re able to say “yes” to something. You will have to take risks.
Get a notebook and write done every adult you know including relatives. Call each person in your book and ask for advice in getting a job and ask for new people you could contact for job hunting help. Write the names of these new people in your notebook, call them and ask for advice and new names. Repeat until you have a job.
My opinion: people who generally like people / interacting with people tend to do this anyway although with less of a structure. People who generally dislike socializing or dislike people in general will find this seriously difficult.
So far (37) I got away with simply applying for advertised jobs. However I write a professional blog, which has not much readership but has quite an effect when I link it in my application e-mail, and I make it a habit to save anonymized PDFs about my most impressive works which again sets my application away from others who just send a CV / resume.
These two—professional blogs and a references folder—are IMHO the the best two impersonal ways to make a job application stand out and give a high chance of win. However it is still just advertised jobs and I am starting to think they somehow have a common tendency of sucking :) The good ones go in the network so networking is still preferable, just simply painful for the asocial types.
Basically, a software development process think tank funded by companies who have a vested interest in ensuring that the research and education on said processes (Agile, specifically) is of better quality in the future than it has been so far. In practice this means that as of this month I get paid to write, attend conferences, organize seminars, network with people to try to match up cients and contractors when a bid is going around.
Those were things I did “pro bono” when I was a consultant; at one point I decided the consuting gigs were interfering with the volunteer stuff, and I had to choose one or the other. I picked the one that was more fun, the trick was to figure out the money angle, then convince businesses to go along with it.
To be frank I have only reached half of my financing goals so far, so this is still a work in progress with failure a possiblity.
Here is what worked for me. I started a programming career as a university dropout, got bored of it after 15 years and started a successful freelance consulting practice, got tired of that after a while and recently redesigned my job from the ground up for more stable income and even more freedom of action than I had as a consultant.
Advice #1 is: learn how to network. Start doing it now even if you think you’re “too young”.
Send email to people—strangers—you think of as exemplars of the kind of success you aspire to, and ask them for one hour of their time, to give you some insight into where your own career might go, and possibly refer you to someone who could help further your goals.
Keep a Farley file, or maybe use LinkedIn to keep your contacts organized, but at any rate start thinking of these contacts as “your network” and of your network as one of your major assets in building the kind of career you want. Cultivate people in your network for their own sake, not as people who can help you. If at all possible, think first of how you can help them.
After a while—and one thing to remember is to be patient, it could take up to a couple years—your network will start generating opportunities for you. At that point, know what you want. You won’t be able to say “yes” to everything, but it’s crucial that you’re able to say “yes” to something. You will have to take risks.
Get a notebook and write done every adult you know including relatives. Call each person in your book and ask for advice in getting a job and ask for new people you could contact for job hunting help. Write the names of these new people in your notebook, call them and ask for advice and new names. Repeat until you have a job.
My opinion: people who generally like people / interacting with people tend to do this anyway although with less of a structure. People who generally dislike socializing or dislike people in general will find this seriously difficult.
So far (37) I got away with simply applying for advertised jobs. However I write a professional blog, which has not much readership but has quite an effect when I link it in my application e-mail, and I make it a habit to save anonymized PDFs about my most impressive works which again sets my application away from others who just send a CV / resume.
These two—professional blogs and a references folder—are IMHO the the best two impersonal ways to make a job application stand out and give a high chance of win. However it is still just advertised jobs and I am starting to think they somehow have a common tendency of sucking :) The good ones go in the network so networking is still preferable, just simply painful for the asocial types.
What is that design?
Basically, a software development process think tank funded by companies who have a vested interest in ensuring that the research and education on said processes (Agile, specifically) is of better quality in the future than it has been so far. In practice this means that as of this month I get paid to write, attend conferences, organize seminars, network with people to try to match up cients and contractors when a bid is going around.
Those were things I did “pro bono” when I was a consultant; at one point I decided the consuting gigs were interfering with the volunteer stuff, and I had to choose one or the other. I picked the one that was more fun, the trick was to figure out the money angle, then convince businesses to go along with it.
To be frank I have only reached half of my financing goals so far, so this is still a work in progress with failure a possiblity.