It’s a job just to find an entry level job. There is a common misconception from the outside public that it is a cake walk to find a job in the technology field. If applicants have little work experience and little to no network, it feels like a monumental task to find your first job. I was in that exact scenario when looking for my first internship. It took four months of intense searching to land it.
It was a food-service startup based in California. The interview process was surprisingly fun and relaxed. The first interview was an easy coding challenge, while the second interview was 12 hour take-home coding challenge specific to their business. There was a stark difficulty difference between the two, but I managed to complete the second challenge in time (with the help of some YouTube videos on AWS tutorials). Needless to say, I was very excited about the opportunity (as were my family and girlfriend).
However, I was located in Indiana at the time and was lucky enough that they gave me the option to work remotely rather than relocating. It didn’t seem to be an intimidating factor at the time, since I was already enrolled in online education at OSU. The tech stack was in JavaScript and I had barely touched the language. They used new technologies I was not familiar with (MongoDB, Docker, Strapi, etc.). It was quite the adjustment for me and it took a long time to ramp up. I was able to contribute in small but meaningful ways during my time there.
In the end, I decided that a physical office setting was a must-have for me (hybrid work environment was optimal). I had a much easier time during my second job search and found an internship locally . Overall, it was a much better experience than my prior internship and I learned more valuable skills from this opportunity. I was given more ownership and responsibilities with less grunt work. There was more collaboration with the end users (data analysis tools for process engineers at my company). It was also a full-stack position where I obtained hands-on experience with front-end, back-end, and database management.
For those of you who are still struggling to find that first job. Just know that it just takes time. When you do finally get it, the hard work will make it taste that much sweeter.
