1 00:00:00,790 --> 00:00:03,810 What do I do if I don't have enough experience. 2 00:00:03,820 --> 00:00:07,220 What if I'm underqualified for a job. 3 00:00:07,230 --> 00:00:13,650 Well first of all you should have this mentality mind when applying to jobs and apply to jobs that you 4 00:00:13,650 --> 00:00:16,650 feel you are under qualified for. 5 00:00:16,650 --> 00:00:23,070 If a job is asking you to do something that you already feel confident then you should ask yourself 6 00:00:23,430 --> 00:00:26,290 what am I going to learn in this job. 7 00:00:26,340 --> 00:00:31,620 Am I going to learn actually is this job going to put things on my resume that will make me get better 8 00:00:31,920 --> 00:00:37,530 and get a better position in the future or am I just going to do the same thing that I already know 9 00:00:37,530 --> 00:00:39,950 what to do or how to do it. 10 00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:46,430 Finally you have to keep in mind that job postings are put in order to weed out the weak candidates. 11 00:00:47,250 --> 00:00:54,180 I have seen way too many of these created by non-technical people or just making job sound tougher than 12 00:00:54,180 --> 00:00:59,150 it really is to remove junior developers or engineers from applying. 13 00:00:59,160 --> 00:01:02,550 So ask yourself is this job going to be tough. 14 00:01:03,270 --> 00:01:09,050 Good then that is why you want that's why you should be doing. 15 00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:10,410 Do you feel competent. 16 00:01:10,500 --> 00:01:13,300 You are very qualified for this job. 17 00:01:13,350 --> 00:01:18,440 Okay then maybe you should push yourself and apply to a job that's more difficult than you think. 18 00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:20,740 Every application should be a longshot. 19 00:01:20,820 --> 00:01:24,590 If you're applying to something that you're 100 percent qualified for. 20 00:01:24,690 --> 00:01:26,170 Where is your room to grow. 21 00:01:26,250 --> 00:01:27,910 So dream big. 22 00:01:28,140 --> 00:01:32,870 But in order to dream big you might have a bit of a roadblock. 23 00:01:32,910 --> 00:01:36,630 What if you don't have enough experience. 24 00:01:36,640 --> 00:01:42,140 See I don't love resumes and I don't think a lot of people do either but sometimes without a resume 25 00:01:42,180 --> 00:01:48,000 you cannot get an interview and in order to have a good resumé you need to have something to put on 26 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:54,760 it like great experience here's the cash so how can you have good experience if you're just getting 27 00:01:54,760 --> 00:01:55,900 started. 28 00:01:55,900 --> 00:02:00,670 It's like you have no hope if you're a beginner or if you don't have enough work experience because 29 00:02:00,670 --> 00:02:03,760 you're just out of school or you're changing careers. 30 00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:05,090 Well not quite. 31 00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:07,990 As with everything there's the regular way of doing things. 32 00:02:07,990 --> 00:02:15,120 Then there's the smart way you see experience doesn't come just from working at another company. 33 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:19,600 There are many ways that you can demonstrate experience without a past job. 34 00:02:19,600 --> 00:02:23,120 And here you'll find my favorite ways to show improve. 35 00:02:23,220 --> 00:02:24,750 You can get the job done. 36 00:02:24,930 --> 00:02:30,000 You will have to do every single one of them but two out of four of these or even better three out of 37 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:35,550 four will be greatest showcasing on your resumé and make you stand up. 38 00:02:36,420 --> 00:02:39,830 So let's go in order and see how we can do this. 39 00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:47,510 The first one is get HUB Get hub is a great way to demonstrate that you actually code that you've built 40 00:02:47,650 --> 00:02:49,240 projects. 41 00:02:49,310 --> 00:02:56,600 The number one thing you can do is to start making commits and making sure that you have a good history 42 00:02:56,900 --> 00:02:58,520 of things that you've done. 43 00:02:58,610 --> 00:03:03,230 And by the way if you're wondering how I got this cat picture in here I'll show you a little trick in 44 00:03:03,230 --> 00:03:11,150 the next exercise to make your contribution look a little bit nicer and busier in case you're just getting 45 00:03:11,150 --> 00:03:20,100 started and you don't have a good past history another way to improve your get hub profile or to just 46 00:03:20,100 --> 00:03:25,950 add more experience is contributing and participating in open social projects. 47 00:03:25,980 --> 00:03:34,920 For example I've created a zero to mastery organization where we have a ton of open source projects 48 00:03:34,950 --> 00:03:43,300 by the community that you can contribute to and they're made specifically for you to mess up make mistakes. 49 00:03:43,300 --> 00:03:44,450 Nobody's gonna yell you. 50 00:03:44,460 --> 00:03:46,850 These are just fun projects that are open source. 51 00:03:46,860 --> 00:03:53,580 They can contribute to and you can do as much or as little as you want but this will improve your experience 52 00:03:53,610 --> 00:03:55,680 and contributing to open source projects. 53 00:03:55,770 --> 00:04:01,230 And it's something you can add to your resume is now contributing to open source projects. 54 00:04:01,290 --> 00:04:07,830 Recruiters love seeing this because this demonstrates that you can work with others and also with something 55 00:04:07,830 --> 00:04:10,170 like get hub and version control. 56 00:04:10,170 --> 00:04:15,060 All right let's look at the next one the next one is Web site. 57 00:04:15,060 --> 00:04:20,490 If you especially a full stack or a front end developer or even a designer you should have your own 58 00:04:20,540 --> 00:04:26,840 Web site where you can showcase your skills this again is something you can speak about in your interview 59 00:04:27,140 --> 00:04:28,820 and about how you built the website. 60 00:04:28,850 --> 00:04:32,990 Or it gives you a good way to talk about your past projects. 61 00:04:32,990 --> 00:04:35,480 Now you're asking yourself Andre. 62 00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:38,660 Am I going to have to build a whole new Web site and waste a bunch of time. 63 00:04:38,660 --> 00:04:39,680 Well not really. 64 00:04:39,680 --> 00:04:44,960 Let me show you a couple of tricks you see you don't need to build your own Web site from scratch. 65 00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:48,740 There's a ton of free templates like creative Tim here. 66 00:04:48,740 --> 00:04:57,140 That just gives you a nice template for you to use and fill in with your information we can also look 67 00:04:57,140 --> 00:05:00,140 at this one and again free templates that you can use. 68 00:05:00,140 --> 00:05:05,020 I especially like the mountain template and you can see that. 69 00:05:05,060 --> 00:05:05,570 Yeah. 70 00:05:05,720 --> 00:05:11,540 I mean you can customize this to your own and make it look professional and it's already designed nicely 71 00:05:11,540 --> 00:05:21,900 and also customized for different experiences such as mobile tablet and in a day you can have your own 72 00:05:22,160 --> 00:05:28,700 Web site and just to show you how you shouldn't really spend too much time on your own Web site. 73 00:05:28,700 --> 00:05:32,410 One of my favorite people to follow is Kevin Kelly. 74 00:05:32,420 --> 00:05:35,840 He is very very popular among the tech community. 75 00:05:35,850 --> 00:05:41,840 He is just the overall really smart thinker and you can see his Web site over here. 76 00:05:41,870 --> 00:05:49,650 It's very simple nothing exaggerated very very clean but small very basic layout. 77 00:05:50,270 --> 00:05:57,110 And this is to show you that you don't need some crazy animations make it all flashy to stand out as 78 00:05:57,110 --> 00:05:58,970 long as you have a personal website. 79 00:05:58,970 --> 00:06:04,760 It just shows that you actually spend time building it and doing something that most people wouldn't 80 00:06:04,760 --> 00:06:06,190 do. 81 00:06:06,200 --> 00:06:12,920 Another thing that I want to show you is for example the job or that we have four of my students and 82 00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:16,850 this is again another open source project that the community built. 83 00:06:16,850 --> 00:06:24,200 If we just search through let's say Toronto developers here and we go to Christine a key I hope I'm 84 00:06:24,200 --> 00:06:25,340 saying the last thing right. 85 00:06:25,340 --> 00:06:28,800 You can see how simple yet beautiful her portfolio is. 86 00:06:28,820 --> 00:06:36,110 If we go to about me just a nice little bio with links to her profile if we go to projects we see some 87 00:06:36,110 --> 00:06:43,040 other projects and this is something that she can put on her resumé and immediately stand out from the 88 00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:43,370 crowd. 89 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:49,940 And it also gives her an opportunity to list projects that she can talk about when she gets to an interview. 90 00:06:49,940 --> 00:06:56,620 All right let's look at the next topic one to two big projects now. 91 00:06:56,870 --> 00:07:03,920 You can't really fake experience if you've never built anything beyond a to do list although or a hello 92 00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:08,360 world app you simply will not be able to get very good jobs. 93 00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:13,770 However most people think having 100 projects is the way to go. 94 00:07:13,820 --> 00:07:21,350 So they do a project today and build small projects many small tiny projects to have 30 of them and 95 00:07:21,350 --> 00:07:26,120 they start building all these projects that are very very simple. 96 00:07:26,140 --> 00:07:28,270 Now that's not actually impressive. 97 00:07:28,270 --> 00:07:31,620 I mean this shows that you're working hard and coding along. 98 00:07:31,720 --> 00:07:38,830 But if I'm a recruiter and show me a project of maybe tic tac toe Well that's I don't really care. 99 00:07:38,830 --> 00:07:43,720 That's something that anybody can build with a bit of coding experience in a day or two. 100 00:07:43,780 --> 00:07:48,970 Frankly no recruiter or interview is going to check out all your 30 projects. 101 00:07:48,970 --> 00:07:53,740 Most of the time we want to hear your most difficult or the hardest. 102 00:07:53,740 --> 00:07:58,910 Biggest project you've worked on instead of spending your time on these small little projects. 103 00:07:58,990 --> 00:08:06,700 Spend your time on one or two big projects for example in other courses that I teach. 104 00:08:06,700 --> 00:08:11,930 We built a face recognition app and this app. 105 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:19,560 Well it has a front end using reaction yes a back end where we have a restful API server with Express 106 00:08:20,040 --> 00:08:26,950 we've deployed it to Roku we've created session management with authenticated routes. 107 00:08:27,180 --> 00:08:35,740 We store user information such as user name and also hashed passwords securely in our database on post. 108 00:08:35,750 --> 00:08:46,000 Chris we've deployed our app with Docker and we've also used readies for session management and caching. 109 00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:53,310 Now all of that may not mean a lot to you but having something like a one big project they can talk 110 00:08:53,310 --> 00:08:59,370 about all these things will make you sound a lot more impressive than somebody that just built a ton 111 00:08:59,370 --> 00:09:06,490 of tiny projects so focus on that have wanted two big projects that you can show off makes you stand 112 00:09:06,490 --> 00:09:06,870 out. 113 00:09:06,910 --> 00:09:11,030 And it also going to give you something to talk about during the interview. 114 00:09:11,140 --> 00:09:17,350 Put it up on your Web site or create its own Web site and you immediately can put this as the first 115 00:09:17,440 --> 00:09:18,440 item on your resume. 116 00:09:19,150 --> 00:09:20,830 Because here's the thing. 117 00:09:20,830 --> 00:09:23,620 If you don't have work experience. 118 00:09:23,710 --> 00:09:27,150 If we go back to the resume we used in the exercise. 119 00:09:27,190 --> 00:09:28,260 Remember this resume. 120 00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:36,620 Well if you had no work experience maybe for work experience that you can say something like Javascript 121 00:09:36,620 --> 00:09:45,350 developer or web application developer and talk about how you build your project here because to a recruiter 122 00:09:45,440 --> 00:09:51,350 it doesn't really matter if you worked at a certain company building an application or on your own or 123 00:09:51,410 --> 00:09:53,430 that could be a little bit too vague too. 124 00:09:53,510 --> 00:09:59,840 They don't need to know that they just need to know that you build things that are real that are big 125 00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:02,870 and complicated and you solved heart problems. 126 00:10:02,900 --> 00:10:11,210 So having one or two big projects that you can list on your experiences is a great way to add to your 127 00:10:11,210 --> 00:10:11,990 resumé. 128 00:10:12,200 --> 00:10:18,400 If you don't have enough past work experience at companies and I have a few students who have actually 129 00:10:18,400 --> 00:10:26,320 used this technique to get interviews even though they just learn how to code six months ago and then 130 00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:30,780 finally we have the blog post or blog. 131 00:10:31,150 --> 00:10:33,710 Let's have a look at what I mean by that. 132 00:10:33,780 --> 00:10:36,300 This is another thing you can include in your resume. 133 00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:42,220 Especially if it's related to a technology you're using or the company is using. 134 00:10:42,300 --> 00:10:50,550 For example I have here my medium profile and medium com allows anybody around the world to just post 135 00:10:51,240 --> 00:10:54,570 a blog post and it's very popular with the tech community. 136 00:10:54,570 --> 00:10:58,730 So there's a lot of tech related posts they can write on medium. 137 00:10:58,740 --> 00:11:00,610 And there's other platforms like this. 138 00:11:00,660 --> 00:11:07,350 What if you wrote a blog post about a specific technology that the company you're applying for is using 139 00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:11,240 or some sort of a technical problem that they're facing. 140 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:18,580 By doing that and just adding a link to that blog post it gives you again another leg up to most people 141 00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:26,320 and the great thing about platforms like this is that well if we go to one of my articles here you can 142 00:11:26,490 --> 00:11:31,840 post it to what we call publishers and publishers allow your post to be discovered by others. 143 00:11:32,020 --> 00:11:33,460 And it's very simple to do. 144 00:11:33,460 --> 00:11:39,250 You can write a blog post on Medium in a day and submit it to a place like Hacker noon and lots of people 145 00:11:39,250 --> 00:11:39,600 see it. 146 00:11:40,030 --> 00:11:48,550 And as soon as you show this to a recruiter or an interviewer again it automatically shows that you 147 00:11:48,550 --> 00:11:49,720 know what you're talking about. 148 00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:54,300 Or at least it makes you stand out from the rest and you can do this with YouTube videos as well. 149 00:11:54,330 --> 00:11:56,850 But I prefer writing because it's a lot faster. 150 00:11:56,860 --> 00:12:01,590 And it looks a lot more professional so let's just review here. 151 00:12:01,710 --> 00:12:05,060 What happens if you don't have enough experience. 152 00:12:05,070 --> 00:12:10,980 Well all of these four points allow you to gain that experience or show that you have experience without 153 00:12:11,670 --> 00:12:15,420 actually having traditional work experience. 154 00:12:15,420 --> 00:12:21,330 All you need to do is start something on your own and build something like a project or a portfolio 155 00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:23,580 or a blog post. 156 00:12:23,580 --> 00:12:29,490 This only shows initiative but you can focus this project on solely getting your interviews or you can 157 00:12:29,490 --> 00:12:37,510 participate in a hackathon or contribute to open source projects by taking this initiative you're doing 158 00:12:37,510 --> 00:12:43,500 more than most people that hoped to just land an interview by sending a generic resume. 159 00:12:43,960 --> 00:12:47,980 You'll immediately stand out from the crowd and give you something to put on your resume. 160 00:12:47,980 --> 00:12:52,710 That again is different than the average developer. 161 00:12:52,770 --> 00:12:59,610 Plus you have the added benefit of something to talk about in your actual interview remember. 162 00:12:59,710 --> 00:13:01,670 Nothing is given to you for free. 163 00:13:02,390 --> 00:13:06,020 And luck is for those who rather wait than go after what they want. 164 00:13:06,020 --> 00:13:13,520 So by simply building something just for fun such as a side project you're showing how self-motivated 165 00:13:13,540 --> 00:13:15,260 and ambitious you are. 166 00:13:15,290 --> 00:13:18,470 Experience doesn't mean on the job experience. 167 00:13:18,500 --> 00:13:24,410 Write about your portfolio projects maybe talk about your website and how you built it. 168 00:13:24,410 --> 00:13:26,000 Talk about your GitHub profile. 169 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:31,020 Maybe a hackathon you participate in and or open source projects you've worked on. 170 00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:37,940 Write a blog post on a specific technology that the company you're applying to is using all of them. 171 00:13:37,940 --> 00:13:38,960 Answer this question. 172 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:40,980 Do you have experience. 173 00:13:41,130 --> 00:13:47,280 Finally there are many things that you can add that are not developer related but can make you a great 174 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:48,060 employee. 175 00:13:48,060 --> 00:13:51,670 For example did you work as an instructor at a camp. 176 00:13:51,750 --> 00:13:57,110 Well you can now add ability to manage people and communicate well with others. 177 00:13:57,130 --> 00:14:02,030 Any skill that is related to getting the job done can be included. 178 00:14:02,120 --> 00:14:08,450 Also if you have only had six months of coding experience don't show that on the resume. 179 00:14:08,450 --> 00:14:16,720 That doesn't mean to lie but to hide that information because a recruiter only glances at your resume. 180 00:14:16,730 --> 00:14:21,140 They won't care if you're the best of all or in the world if they just see six months experience that's 181 00:14:21,140 --> 00:14:22,490 too risky for them. 182 00:14:22,640 --> 00:14:26,720 Your resumé will most likely be discarded no matter how good of a developer you are. 183 00:14:26,750 --> 00:14:34,280 So remember resume is only good to get your foot in the door by tweaking your resume to show that you 184 00:14:34,280 --> 00:14:40,430 have experience so that the recruiters thinks oh interviewing this person is low risk because they know 185 00:14:40,430 --> 00:14:43,100 what they're talking about is a good way of doing it. 186 00:14:44,430 --> 00:14:50,080 Do you have past experience having made good decisions in the past and have you worked on a challenging 187 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:51,710 problem and solve them. 188 00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:58,570 If you're able to answer yes to that well then a recruiter is most likely going to ask you for an interview. 189 00:14:59,740 --> 00:15:00,670 I'll see you in the next video.