Fast Track to Tech — Your Future Career: How to Get Tech Jobs
Introduction to the Tech Industry and Tech Jobs
Interested in working for companies like AirBnB and Google? This post summarizes key takeaways from YNCN’s How to Get Tech Jobs? event held on September 18, 2020, as part of the Fast Track to Tech Series.
The series aims to provide students with an introduction to the tech industry and common roles (your major does not matter!) such as software engineer, product manager, and designer.
As a supplement to the recording linked above, here are some questions we received during the event (that aren’t in the recording) that we thought would be helpful to capture here.
Do we need to tailor our resume for each job application?
If you want to tailor your resume for each job application, a really easy way to do so is to have a spreadsheet of all the projects, extracurriculars, school things, and work experience you have. Then you can pick and choose the experiences and create
- a general resume for each category of role you apply to
- tailored resumes for each opportunity you apply to (tailor based on the job description).
That being said, it is not completely necessary to tailor each one — most students just create a resume for each type of role they are going for (ex. software resume and a PM resume).
How should LinkedIn compliment your resume? What is the difference?
You have more space on LinkedIn to showcase a summary of who you are, actually include links and previews of projects, and share your coursework and interests. You can also show recommendations from previous colleagues. You can also use LinkedIn to become aware of job postings and apply through there. It’s like the online version of your resume with a lot more information.
Read through the building your online presence article for more!
Can you only work on things you’re experienced with during hackathons? Otherwise how do you talk about it during an interview if you don’t know much?
Hackathons are a great way to learn new languages/frameworks/skills since there are mentors and workshops to help you. The condensed time period also keeps you motivated.
Hackathons are generally 24–48 hours, so recruiters know that your project will likely be made in a short time frame. You can express that you have learned a lot through the experience and talk about that. Since you made it, you will know the most about your own project and the process you went through. There are also mentors at hackathons that can help you solve problems and walk you through issues.
Where Should I Start?
Now that you know more about how to build up your resume and get started, we encourage you to pick one resource to check out from the list below and start working towards a role in tech! We believe in you!
The event was a success and students had the chance to get their questions answered by an upper year mentor with multiple tech internships under his belt! If you are ever looking for more advice, check out the More Resources section below. Feel free to contact YNCN on social media or email for any other questions!
More Resources
- YNCN has hosting a resume review on September 30. You can find more information on our website here. It’s also available through our Facebook and Instagram.
- https://udemy.com/course/the-web-developer-bootcamp
- https://coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone
- https://freecodecamp.org
- https://codecademy.com
- https://pramp.com
- https://interviewing.io
- Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview — Gayle Laakmann McDowell
- For PM: Decode and Conquer — Lewis C. Lin
