5 Tips For Graduate Developers

Graduating from an IT degree/Masters is only the beginning. It is not your passport to a job. Here are 5 things you should be doing in order to make yourself more employable.

Keep your skills updated

The programming languages you have studied in university may no longer be in popular use. You may not have looked at java or c++ since you graduated.

How do you expect to get a job when there are thousands of others out there actively improving their skills?

The most sought after developers are the ones who constantly keep their skills updated and learn new languages. Make sure you have at least two of these top programming languages under your belt

(Source: www.udemy.com)

•    Java
•    C (The primary interpretation of many popular languages like Python and PHP are written in C language)
•    C++ (Powers Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Winamp)
•    C# (For Microsoft programmes)
•    Objective C (Apple OS X and iOS operating systems-great if you want to develop apps)
•    PHP (Powers WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal)
•    Python (Powers Instagram.com, Pinterest.com, and Rdio.com)
•    Ruby-Object orientated and dynamic (yammer, Scribd, Github, Groupon, and Shopify)

Contribute to online forums

If you regularly contribute to forums, include your username within your IT matrix on your resume. This will allow potential employers to take a look at the quality of your code and your problem solving skills.

There is a forum for every programming language. A good place to start would be github.com where you can create a free account and start contributing to open source.

Attend seminars and networking events

Ensure you attend a number of seminars throughout the year to keep up to date with what’s new in IT. What you learn in these seminars will help you to speak with authority on topics at networking events and in interviews.

Some good websites to take a look at for events are meetup.com and eventbrite.com.

Create an online portfolio of your work

If you’ve created some websites/programmes, it’s perfectly ok to take your laptop/tablet along to an interview and to show it to your interviewer to demonstrate your skills.

Take a look at some web designers’ company websites and you will see how they demonstrate their projects.

Learn SEO

It’s great that you can develop websites, but can you optimise them?? Most companies will pay another company to optimise their website after the developer is done. If you can incorporate this into your development you will be in high demand.

There are countless online resources to self educate yourself on this area. Here’s a great place to start

Good luck!!

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