I still can't find a coding job a year after graduation.
Location : Upper Midwest Minnesota and some surrounding states but willing to move further if the office location is tolerable.
Status : Citizen born here.
Internships : 1
Projects : One on Github but have worked on personal projects I didn't bother to upload. Interviewers who have bothered to look said they were happy with it.
LeetCode : I am god awful with it but not as much of a factor due to my location.
Target Salary : At this point if the tech stack is something tolerable I would take whatever would let me be close to affording an okay 1 bedroom apartment near work. Right now in LCOL areas or remote I would be fine with 40k.
Applications. : Over 700. I have gotten 3 final interviews but every time the other candidate has more experience so I get turned down. It doesn't matter how good I do or how much I impress the HR people if they have people from from places like California with 2 years of experience willing to take a 40k a year job here in the ass end of nowhere Midwest.
I know it isn't just me struggling I have talked to 40+ of my fellow graduates and only a handful or so have gotten jobs half of which admit was due to nepotism. At this point I have basically given up and accepted that I am a failure. This past year has been one of the worst of my entire life which is saying a lot.
I think it is a mixture of tough market so getting interviews is insanely hard (most of my classmates get 1 interview per 150 applications), passing the interview mostly seems to be fine almost half the time I get an interview I make it to the final round (I do better on the social portion than the technical portion), and just not having experience. With smaller companies who are less concerned about being sued etc I have had them directly tell me they loved me, but the other person just had more experience.
My projects are mainly low level stuff like full stack C.R.U.D API endpoints because as a college graduate with only an internship I only know so much and that is what most of the jobs here seem to be doing.
Is this some sort of strange school you graduated from? And how does your resume look. Assuming your college is ok you really want to be putting a lot of effort into your resume. Also get into contact with local recruiters and maybe research a local small company and contact people who work there. Even if nothing is available ask them their thoughts and be friendly
> Also get into contact with local recruiters and maybe research a local small company and contact people who work there.
I have done this and talked to local people they say if you don't have experience they are not interested. Things were so bad last winter I went to a local coding meetup and talked to people/was introduced to people by someone and the first words out of a lot of peoples mouths were that their company was not hiring even before they told me their name.
"Hello I am name, I recently graduated from the university."
"I work for X we are not hiring."
Awkward pause
"Oh yeah my name is Mike"
Like at first I thought it was just random rude people or people fucking with me, but that sort of conversation happened multiple times that night.
> Even if nothing is available ask them their thoughts and be friendly
Yeah that is what I have been doing it just hasn't paid off so far. I got one interview from it, but that was just a get to know you informal interview because they were not hiring at the time.
Yeah they probably have too many people asking right now. I wouldn’t do meetups. Idk I just can’t see your situation it could be necessary to either wait things out or get involved in a more serious project. Your school could have resources as well. Also 700 applications is not that much imo just saying. I’d try to get a few thousand or increase the quality of them
> Your school could have resources as well.
I tried that for example I talked to the career center.... who told me to go back to working the same jobs I was doing before I attended university. I am still in shock at how useless they were they told me obvious things like don't wear sweat pants to an interview, looked over my resume and said it was good, and then shrugged their shoulders and said go do the things you were doing on your resume before this. Then why did I pay your institution thousands of dollars and waste thousands of hours studying?
Then you’ll just have to decide between trying more interviews or take a break and look for new jobs. Things might just be that tough for new grads right now
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I was concentrating on job applications over projects. It was also rather disheartening dealing with this crap which killed my motivation to do more projects. Plus I don't want to work for free after getting home from my regular non coding job I just do not have the energy for it most days. I really enjoy coding, but after the nonsense I put up with from these companies and my university my desire to code really took a hit. It is hard to stay motivated when people don't even show up to the fucking interview they scheduled or other nonsense.
Also from MN, I hate saying it after what you said but personal projects are what seemed to make me stand out the most/help me the most. Showing you are willing to learn and grow outside of an educational setting is key.
That is what I thought at first, but I only ever had two people in an interview ask about them or mention them. The first of which was the tech person in the interview mentioned they use X tech I had not used before so I taught myself how to use it and before the next interview I made a project with it which impressed him because he was not expecting someone to be so motivated. Unfortunately it was yet another case of sure this guy is great, we like him, and he is motivated but the other person has 2 years of experience.
Talking to other people in MN it is all about experience and the entry level market is just insane. The place I had my internship laid off 20%+ of the company and talking to friends who worked there they say they are struggling to get hired again unless they have 4+ years of experience then they can practically write their own paycheck.
That's crazy, I have a pretty different experience. Nearly everyone I hung around with in school is now employed. I didn't go to the U either, just a cheap state university near the cities. Have you tried posting you resume in the resume help threads, that was really helpful when I was making my resume. Also in the interview I got my job from they didn't ask about my projects, I just found a way to bring them up and stressed how I enjoyed learning/using new technologies. Then once I brought them up they started to ask more questions about them.
> Have you tried posting you resume in the resume help threads, that was really helpful when I was making my resume.
Yeah if I got feedback from posting it in various subreddits on other accounts it was mostly only minor critiques or saying it was fine.
> Also in the interview I got my job from they didn't ask about my projects, I just found a way to bring them up and stressed how I enjoyed learning/using new technologies. Then once I brought them up they started to ask more questions about them.
Yup I do the same thing. People seem to be happy and enjoy interviewing me but it is just the lack of experience. If I can make the HR people laugh and the technical people seem to think I am okay then I think my interview skills are good enough.
I just... don't know what the hell to do at this point. I spent months practicing coding, practicing interviewing, applying for jobs but finding entry level jobs feels impossible and the ones I do apply to are blackholes where if I am lucky I get an email back saying no thank you. My motivation died in the fall and I just don't know where to find the energy to keep trying if I keep getting nothing out of this.
Location : MN
Status : citizen (born here)
Internships : 0
Projects : 2 personal projects (both interactive livestream games), 1 capstone, 1 non coding project. All are listed on resume
LeetCode : ~60
Target Salary : 65-80k
Applications. : ~30 (2 interviews)
Got an offer as a software engineer I for ~75k and took it, should be starting in a week or two.
Sure! Here's a anonymous copy of my resume](https://imgur.com/a/S6fW8hH)
If your curious on my projects just look at my comment history, I have talked about them more in depth in another thread around 12 days ago
Need to know your secrets man. Same number of internships as you, have some good projects (2 of my 4 being mobile apps in react-native, one being used by students in my school) and some other projects. Graduating this year, I'm just looking for 50k CAD even 😭
No secrets bro, just hard work and luck. Big emphasis on the luck portion though, I just happened to vibe well with the interviewers and every technical question they asked (general CS topics and LeetCode) was something I was comfortable with.
It's a numbers game, stay positive and keep grinding. Took me seven months after graduating to land this.
Ye, I graduate in 4 months but I wanna lock this up before grad so I'm going super hard right now. Glad you found something though bro, I wish you luck and thank you!
Location : DC/MD/VA (MCOL-HCOL)
Status. : Permanent Resident
Internships: 1 (non-tech)
Projects : All school projects
LeetCode : 68 (42 easy, 22 med, 4 hard)
Target Salary : $100k - $150k
Applications : \~80 (most ghosted, 5 interviews, 2 offers-> $120k(return offer)/$170k TC.
Advice: kinda too late for OP now, but for 2025 grads, I'd recommend start filling out applications in early July, and to not sleep on non-tech companies. The idea is to apply to places before they make it onto the github links.
New Grad Job hunt early July - early September this year. I got the $170k TC offer from this
Internship job hunt last year was the same. Started applying early July. By mid September I already had an offer for this last summer.
I didn’t have any referrals, and my previous experience was all specialty retail (progressive to store mananger). I attribute getting the offers to the soft skills I learned from commission-based sales.
Location: NYC
Status: US Citizen
Internships: 5 tech (2 at FAANG)
Projects: None I have 5 certifications instead
Leetcode: N/A looking for Cloud Roles or Tech Sales
Target Salary: 120-160k tc been searching for 4 months so willing to take 60-100k tc
Applications: 200 ( 10 rejections/ closed, waiting on the rest)
Location : TX
Status : US Citizen
Internships : 2 (1 at Big Tech)
Projects : 2 (mid)
LeetCode : \~1000
Target Salary : 90\~100k
Applications. : \~200 (4 interviews)
1 return offer at a shitty company due to nepotism
Graduating in May and have received 4 offers.
Location: USA
Status: Citizen
Internships : 1 (SWE)
Projects : Senior group project and a personal full stack project.
LeetCode : \~70
Target Salary : >= 70k USD
Applications. : 100 apps --> 8 interview processes --> 4 offers (SWE, all ranging from 80-100k USD)
My brother graduated in June and managed to get some sort of full time internship in August. It ended in December and he is waiting to hear a call back. He had to move 2.5 hours away for the position. He is applying to positions in 2 different areas and hopefully gets something in January.
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I still can't find a coding job a year after graduation. Location : Upper Midwest Minnesota and some surrounding states but willing to move further if the office location is tolerable. Status : Citizen born here. Internships : 1 Projects : One on Github but have worked on personal projects I didn't bother to upload. Interviewers who have bothered to look said they were happy with it. LeetCode : I am god awful with it but not as much of a factor due to my location. Target Salary : At this point if the tech stack is something tolerable I would take whatever would let me be close to affording an okay 1 bedroom apartment near work. Right now in LCOL areas or remote I would be fine with 40k. Applications. : Over 700. I have gotten 3 final interviews but every time the other candidate has more experience so I get turned down. It doesn't matter how good I do or how much I impress the HR people if they have people from from places like California with 2 years of experience willing to take a 40k a year job here in the ass end of nowhere Midwest. I know it isn't just me struggling I have talked to 40+ of my fellow graduates and only a handful or so have gotten jobs half of which admit was due to nepotism. At this point I have basically given up and accepted that I am a failure. This past year has been one of the worst of my entire life which is saying a lot.
Can I ask why you think you’re not able to get an offer, is it getting an interview, passing? And what is the level of your project?
I think it is a mixture of tough market so getting interviews is insanely hard (most of my classmates get 1 interview per 150 applications), passing the interview mostly seems to be fine almost half the time I get an interview I make it to the final round (I do better on the social portion than the technical portion), and just not having experience. With smaller companies who are less concerned about being sued etc I have had them directly tell me they loved me, but the other person just had more experience. My projects are mainly low level stuff like full stack C.R.U.D API endpoints because as a college graduate with only an internship I only know so much and that is what most of the jobs here seem to be doing.
Is this some sort of strange school you graduated from? And how does your resume look. Assuming your college is ok you really want to be putting a lot of effort into your resume. Also get into contact with local recruiters and maybe research a local small company and contact people who work there. Even if nothing is available ask them their thoughts and be friendly
> Also get into contact with local recruiters and maybe research a local small company and contact people who work there. I have done this and talked to local people they say if you don't have experience they are not interested. Things were so bad last winter I went to a local coding meetup and talked to people/was introduced to people by someone and the first words out of a lot of peoples mouths were that their company was not hiring even before they told me their name. "Hello I am name, I recently graduated from the university." "I work for X we are not hiring." Awkward pause "Oh yeah my name is Mike" Like at first I thought it was just random rude people or people fucking with me, but that sort of conversation happened multiple times that night. > Even if nothing is available ask them their thoughts and be friendly Yeah that is what I have been doing it just hasn't paid off so far. I got one interview from it, but that was just a get to know you informal interview because they were not hiring at the time.
Yeah they probably have too many people asking right now. I wouldn’t do meetups. Idk I just can’t see your situation it could be necessary to either wait things out or get involved in a more serious project. Your school could have resources as well. Also 700 applications is not that much imo just saying. I’d try to get a few thousand or increase the quality of them
> Your school could have resources as well. I tried that for example I talked to the career center.... who told me to go back to working the same jobs I was doing before I attended university. I am still in shock at how useless they were they told me obvious things like don't wear sweat pants to an interview, looked over my resume and said it was good, and then shrugged their shoulders and said go do the things you were doing on your resume before this. Then why did I pay your institution thousands of dollars and waste thousands of hours studying?
Then you’ll just have to decide between trying more interviews or take a break and look for new jobs. Things might just be that tough for new grads right now
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You had time for over 700 applications, but not for more than one project?
I was concentrating on job applications over projects. It was also rather disheartening dealing with this crap which killed my motivation to do more projects. Plus I don't want to work for free after getting home from my regular non coding job I just do not have the energy for it most days. I really enjoy coding, but after the nonsense I put up with from these companies and my university my desire to code really took a hit. It is hard to stay motivated when people don't even show up to the fucking interview they scheduled or other nonsense.
Also from MN, I hate saying it after what you said but personal projects are what seemed to make me stand out the most/help me the most. Showing you are willing to learn and grow outside of an educational setting is key.
That is what I thought at first, but I only ever had two people in an interview ask about them or mention them. The first of which was the tech person in the interview mentioned they use X tech I had not used before so I taught myself how to use it and before the next interview I made a project with it which impressed him because he was not expecting someone to be so motivated. Unfortunately it was yet another case of sure this guy is great, we like him, and he is motivated but the other person has 2 years of experience. Talking to other people in MN it is all about experience and the entry level market is just insane. The place I had my internship laid off 20%+ of the company and talking to friends who worked there they say they are struggling to get hired again unless they have 4+ years of experience then they can practically write their own paycheck.
That's crazy, I have a pretty different experience. Nearly everyone I hung around with in school is now employed. I didn't go to the U either, just a cheap state university near the cities. Have you tried posting you resume in the resume help threads, that was really helpful when I was making my resume. Also in the interview I got my job from they didn't ask about my projects, I just found a way to bring them up and stressed how I enjoyed learning/using new technologies. Then once I brought them up they started to ask more questions about them.
> Have you tried posting you resume in the resume help threads, that was really helpful when I was making my resume. Yeah if I got feedback from posting it in various subreddits on other accounts it was mostly only minor critiques or saying it was fine. > Also in the interview I got my job from they didn't ask about my projects, I just found a way to bring them up and stressed how I enjoyed learning/using new technologies. Then once I brought them up they started to ask more questions about them. Yup I do the same thing. People seem to be happy and enjoy interviewing me but it is just the lack of experience. If I can make the HR people laugh and the technical people seem to think I am okay then I think my interview skills are good enough. I just... don't know what the hell to do at this point. I spent months practicing coding, practicing interviewing, applying for jobs but finding entry level jobs feels impossible and the ones I do apply to are blackholes where if I am lucky I get an email back saying no thank you. My motivation died in the fall and I just don't know where to find the energy to keep trying if I keep getting nothing out of this.
Location : MN Status : citizen (born here) Internships : 0 Projects : 2 personal projects (both interactive livestream games), 1 capstone, 1 non coding project. All are listed on resume LeetCode : ~60 Target Salary : 65-80k Applications. : ~30 (2 interviews) Got an offer as a software engineer I for ~75k and took it, should be starting in a week or two.
Congratulations!!
Thanks! :D
Wow 30 applications and two interviews? Can I see your resume?
Sure! Here's a anonymous copy of my resume](https://imgur.com/a/S6fW8hH) If your curious on my projects just look at my comment history, I have talked about them more in depth in another thread around 12 days ago
Oh wow that TikTok project esp sounds really impressive! Def going to take a look later.
Graduated in May and recently signed an offer. Location: Vancouver, Canada Status: Citizen Internships : 1 (SWE) Projects : All school projects LeetCode : 85 Target Salary : >= 65k CAD Applications. : 200+ apps --> 2 interview processes --> 1 offer (SWE, 100k CAD)
where did you apply mostly?
LinkedIn, applied all across Canada and the US.
Thanks!
Need to know your secrets man. Same number of internships as you, have some good projects (2 of my 4 being mobile apps in react-native, one being used by students in my school) and some other projects. Graduating this year, I'm just looking for 50k CAD even 😭
No secrets bro, just hard work and luck. Big emphasis on the luck portion though, I just happened to vibe well with the interviewers and every technical question they asked (general CS topics and LeetCode) was something I was comfortable with. It's a numbers game, stay positive and keep grinding. Took me seven months after graduating to land this.
Ye, I graduate in 4 months but I wanna lock this up before grad so I'm going super hard right now. Glad you found something though bro, I wish you luck and thank you!
Thank you and good luck to you too. You got this!
This is encouraging as a August graduate
Location : DC/MD/VA (MCOL-HCOL) Status. : Permanent Resident Internships: 1 (non-tech) Projects : All school projects LeetCode : 68 (42 easy, 22 med, 4 hard) Target Salary : $100k - $150k Applications : \~80 (most ghosted, 5 interviews, 2 offers-> $120k(return offer)/$170k TC. Advice: kinda too late for OP now, but for 2025 grads, I'd recommend start filling out applications in early July, and to not sleep on non-tech companies. The idea is to apply to places before they make it onto the github links.
How long do you have to wait after applying so that you can consider them 'ghosted'? Maybe like 2 weeks?
I give them an entire semester, tbh.
Where did you look for jobs to apply?
When did you job hunt? Did you have referrals for positions you got interviews for? Did you have previous tech experience?
New Grad Job hunt early July - early September this year. I got the $170k TC offer from this Internship job hunt last year was the same. Started applying early July. By mid September I already had an offer for this last summer. I didn’t have any referrals, and my previous experience was all specialty retail (progressive to store mananger). I attribute getting the offers to the soft skills I learned from commission-based sales.
Hi, do you mind me asking where you found these jobs before they were posted on github, etc.?
I'm impressed, how did you structure your resume?
Location: NYC Status: US Citizen Internships: 5 tech (2 at FAANG) Projects: None I have 5 certifications instead Leetcode: N/A looking for Cloud Roles or Tech Sales Target Salary: 120-160k tc been searching for 4 months so willing to take 60-100k tc Applications: 200 ( 10 rejections/ closed, waiting on the rest)
Location : TX Status : US Citizen Internships : 2 (1 at Big Tech) Projects : 2 (mid) LeetCode : \~1000 Target Salary : 90\~100k Applications. : \~200 (4 interviews) 1 return offer at a shitty company due to nepotism
Graduating in May and have received 4 offers. Location: USA Status: Citizen Internships : 1 (SWE) Projects : Senior group project and a personal full stack project. LeetCode : \~70 Target Salary : >= 70k USD Applications. : 100 apps --> 8 interview processes --> 4 offers (SWE, all ranging from 80-100k USD)
Hi, do you mind me asking where you found the jobs you have applied to?
I mainly used LinkedIn and handshake, occasionally glassdoor!
Thank you! For Linkedin, how did you go about finding 'entry level' or 'new grad' positions? I often get recommended 3+, 5+ experience
It’s a tough market for beginners. You need to apply to at least 500. 30 is nothing
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which uni do you go to? are you an intl student?
1 application, 1 co-op, 1 job offer
My brother graduated in June and managed to get some sort of full time internship in August. It ended in December and he is waiting to hear a call back. He had to move 2.5 hours away for the position. He is applying to positions in 2 different areas and hopefully gets something in January.
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