From the Nordics, and right now you can get a job very easily in cs just about everywhere if you have a degree / some experience. Reading your posts talking about 300+ applications sent without landing a job seems so different from where I am.
Or is this coming from people who spent 6 months trying to learn how to code and then send resumes to FAANG?
A side note is also that we don't really use LC, which also seems like the "be it all" in the American hiring process.
So how is the market right now? Can new grads land jobs?
Sarah:
The first job is the hardest one to get. There are two extremes:
- Some places don't like to hire early career/new grad folks as they don't want to train them. Honest to god after doing it there's a sizable number of folks, especially out of CS programs, that it's their first job (as in, they've never even had to bag groceries).
- Some places LOVE hiring new grads because they have trouble setting boundaries and will work 60 hours a week and overlook things like bad benefits packages.
There are plenty of places in the middle too. Good places are often a crapshoot. For LC-driven places Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. it really depends on if your interviewer is a dick or not and if the LC is something solvable. Lots of places do LC for new grads because asking about a product challenge that wants to be solved won't typically get a great answer.
Having been on the hiring side, the number one thing for getting in without work experience is SELLING YOURSELF. You need to be able to link together the work on your portfolio to the skills we're looking for. I don't do the recruitment, but don't go so much into the product of your project. Build a calculator? Great... tell me more about react, state management, CSS, etc. Deploy it onto vertical or something too. All one needs is like 3 projects with this, if you're coming out of school make sure it's not the same project as everyone else.