Phase one: applying for junior positions
I came to the UK some time ago. Originally I am from Poland. Country consider rather as a poor one . My dream was to just earn meaningful money. Not only on the scale of my place but on the scale of the world. Despite the fact that I was preparing for this venture, unfortunately, a pandemic happened to us for years. I migrated literally between two lockdowns. At a time when in Great Britain ‘normal life’ went on literally only two weeks. A week after arriving, everything was closed again.
Phase two: applying for mid ones
As you know, closing a large part of the economy is not conducive to employment … Nothing, I had no choice, so I started applying for various positions. Due to my broken English and only 2.5 years of experience, I thought that I would start with applying for junior positions. I started applying for junior positions as an emergency before I moved. Totally no answer. And so I sent my CV for a while. I was still talking to recruiters who only mentioned building the candidate base. Due to the lockdown, the recruitment was suspended. After some time, it turned out that the positions I meet are running low. However, there are no offers.
Phase three: applying for whatever
Not having a choice, I started applying for mid positions first. Also unsuccessfully. One day, a recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn. He sent me an offer. I had little experience with this tech stack, but I liked it a lot, but look at ‘Senior Software Engineer’. I think well, no, no chance. However, I had nothing to lose. So I applied, thinking that he would not even speak up. After some time, the recruiter says that I am invited to an initial interview. I think okay, I have no chance, but I also have no choice. At least I will learn something…
Something is becoming weird here…
I had a very nice conversation. I liked the manager a lot and everything looked very nice. He mentioned that the next stage is a task to be done at home. I was thinking, well now I know that I am not a senior, he will not even send this task to me. They sent. Then I thought, okay, I have no other offers anyway. I’ll try, at least learn something. The stack tech they were using I haven’t touched in over a year. I was sure I would have to do the paperwork non-stop. Lack of time and experience and the fact that everything has changed made me write some spaghetti. But I didn’t have much choice. So I wrote and dismissed the task with the thought “okay, to the next stage, he will not invite me anymore”. This time they did not invite. I’m kidding of course that they invited me!
Just keep it up
I’ve already had my third interview. I told you honestly that I don’t feel like a senior and I haven’t touched the tech stack in which I work for 1.5 years, but I had a very good conversation. After all this conversation, I thought, okay, I have no experience in general or in these technologies, you have to apply. It wasn’t long before I found out that they wanted to make me an offer … Here I am! After a short time, it turned out that the tech stack, which was almost completely new to me (because a lot has changed since I used it), is not that bad. I adapted in no time and learned a lot. Not only in terms of itself.
Following the blow for training, I applied for a few more senior positions. Funnily enough, since I applied for a junior or mid-career, no one invited me. For the senior, I had 3 interviews (despite little experience).
Only later, after signing the contract, I realized that I did not meet the requirements for my previous job. In the company where I worked previously, the advertisement required C ++, Java, Python, and a number of other technologies, which I spent maybe a week in total. In the beginning, there was even an intention to hire a full-stack, which I liked very much. However, in the course of work, it turned out that for the 1.5 years that I spent in this company, I did not go beyond Angular too much.
Summary
The conclusion from this is that if you are afraid to apply for any position because you lack skills, years of experience, or anything else – oil it!
It is not your job to judge your suitability. What you can control is press that fucking button or write an email or whatever. Show yourself to the world and let them judge you. In fact, you can’t lose anything in such a situation. Even if someone rejects you, you will at least find out what the conversation is like. Which will allow you to be better on the next one.
If you would like to know more about learning programming. Things like soft skills, attitude, mental models, different approaches. I invite you to the rest of the articles. Here I write about:
3 Most Important Things You Need Whilst Learning Programming
Take care (and start applying)!
PK / RP
Senior Software Engineer with over 7 years of experience and entrepreneurial background. Most often, apart from delivering good quality code on time, responsible for introducing good practices, teaching programmers and building team bonds andestablishing communication on the line of development-management. Privately Kākāpō and Wombat enthusiast, traveler and retired acrobat.