I’m not going to bore you with who I am. Just know that I’ve been at this software development thing for 11 years now and Cloud for about 8. I’ve finally reached a point where I average about 3-4 interviews a week on a full job pipeline. My first job offer came in just under 4 weeks; a full hiring pipeline for most companies. So without further ado, here’s my advice to the graduating computer science class of 2026 on how to land your first job in tech.
Where to Start Applying
Make a list of the top ten companies you want to work for. Top 20. Top 30. If you’re into sports and it’s your dream to work for ESPN, apply there. NFL, MLB, NBA. Put it on the list. If your passion is fashion, put Vogue, Vanity Fair, Polo, Coach, Louis Vuitton, write it down. Life’s too short to wonder what would’ve been. If you want to be a member of the first engineering team that built the rover that discovered the 1st organic life on the moon Enceladus, apply to NASA! Get familiar with the companies and organizations you’re passionate about. It’ll make building the skills to become qualified for the roles much easier.
Getting the 1st Interview
I sat through endless recruiting events with the top aerospace companies on the planet just so I can give you this advice. If you want that initial interview, have every basic qualification on that job requirement checked and the majority of the preferred qualifications checked. If you have all those checkboxes marked off, you will at least get an initial interview call ⅕ for entry level roles. With no experience, you’re probably wondering how to do this.
Continue Learning
Oh. You thought that cap and gown meant you’re done learning? On the contrary, your education has just begun. Are you eyeballing jobs working in Robotics and you begin to see words like Jenkins, Gitlab RHEL Docker, C++ constantly show up in job descriptions? Figure out a gameplan with some Data Science:
- Create a .csv file of all the jobskills in the job descriptions you’re going for, open up a jupyter notebook, do some data cleaning.and run a RFC (random first classifier) of all the skills.
- Next, take the top ten occurrences on the list and start a project. Build an app on the 1st language on the list (C++ Python, etc), run it through a pipeline mentioned on the list (Jenkins, Gitlab) and add a Dockerfile in the application so you can build an image and launch it in Docker container that’s hosted inside of a VM instance inside a Virtual private cloud environment that you installed in PowerShell along with WSL (Linux).
- Make sure your using Gemini, Claude as a VSCode plugin. Word has it that AI speeds up development 10x and most of the dinosaurs like me (please don’t refer to us as dinosaurs or old people) are stuck in the 5 stages of AI grief and knowing how to create applications with AI fast, functional and fully tested in a pipeline loaded w/ SAST, DAST UITesting, Monitoring just may separate you from the pack.
The Resume
Take all those skills you learned preparing to apply for your top 10 favorite companies and throw them under the skills section of your resume. Ask your AI to format your resume in ATS. I always upload a .pdf despite Google saying otherwise. If it doesn’t parse properly, suck it up and fill it out manually the first time. The good news is once the resume is on the company website, the hardest part is done and now you can bulk apply. Yes. Bulk apply on the company website. There’s no penalties.
The Application
Avoid the cattle herd and go straight to the company website. One-click Apply on bulk apply sites equals one wasted minute. Atatatatatataa. Don’t question it. Just accept that your best odds of landing your screening interview are from parsing your resume on the company website.
The Screening Call / Video
Woohoo! Your 1st interview!
Dress: Business from the waist up. A business casual top will suffice.
Zoom Background: Do NOT choose a default background unless there’s a tsunami in your apartment and absolutely no available wall that doesn’t scream Animal House. Login at least 15 minutes early and hopefully one of the interviewers will too. This’ll give you a chance to form rapport before the interviewer. For me, I like to have my kitchen in the background. I want the recruiter to see the snowman finger painting my nephew made for me on my fridge or maybe they’ll ask me about the black and white photo of Joe Dimmagio and Lou Gehrig behind the mermaid magnet I got in Denmark. Or maybe they’ll ask me about the pasta maker next to the toaster. Then I can start bragging about the Lasagna ala Bolgnese I learned to make watching 3-star Michelin Chef Marco Pierre White on YouTube.. Give them a moment to break the monotony of interviewing and show them you have a life away from the desktop.
Attitude: Humble soup. Be polite, respectful, don’t interrupt the recruiter and be direct with your answers.
The Questions: The recruiter is going to go down a list of skills you should have to move on. If they only ask you if you know C++, and you do, say ‘Yes’. Don’t say, “Well, I guess I have two years from classes and I once built an app in c++ when I was in high school and..” Just say yes. If they ask how many years. Tell them “Yes.Two years” and move on.
Salary Range: With little or no experience and without certifications, entry level is the only way to go. Unless you’ve been building your own startup as a solo, bootstrap entrepreneur mastering css, html, linux, c++, atleast one cloud platform where your comfort running lambda or bash scripts and building entire networks from scratch, drink the humble soup and take the entry-level role that comes your way. As for salary range, ask the recruiter questions on salary ranges.
“Will I get turned down if I ask for the max range?”
“What do you suggest I ask for?
The recruiter’s there to help you. They know you’re new at this. They probably have kids your age. They’ve seen your resume, The best thing you can do is be polite, professional and prepared for the screening call. Again, humble soup.
2nd, 3rd, Final Interview
Dress: Throw on your best business attire and look sharp. If you want to have a beard, make sure it looks well-groomed.
Preparation: If you made it this far, you absolutely need to backup your resume and be sharp to discuss all the skills mentioned in the Basic / Preferred Qualifications. If you have a week to prepare, plan your schedule accordingly. Know what they want you to do. It’s impressive if you have no experience yet you know how to use all of the development teams tools. If you were unable to get a free trial on software they use, let them know that and follow it up with you reading the documents on it instead. Be obsessed with learning as much of what they do before the interview. The details of these products or coding languages are what wins you the job.
Rejected!
Spend about 1 minute being sad. That’s it. Don’t start making phone calls to all your friends and family and tell them how sad you are. SYMPATHY DOES NOT EXIST. YOUR ONLY REJECTED IF YOU ACCEPT REJECTION. Get up and go back to the drawing board. Remember all the questions you missed in the interview that are fresh on your mind. Write them down. Sublimate all that anger and frustration you have of getting rejected and direct that energy into learning. Make sure for the next interview you know every single detail about that skill. Do this every time you get rejected. For me it was not knowing Jenkins or knowing how to write an Ansible Playbook or not having a security scanner API in my Gitlab pipeline (Snyk’s awesome for this, btw). DON’T HOPE SOMEONE’S GONNA LIKE YOU FOR YOUR PERSONALITY. No respectful tech company is going to hire for happy hour. If that’s the path you want to go down, there’s plenty of failing startups with kegs in the kitchen.
Accepted!
Woohoo! You got the job! You signed the offer letter. Your work is done? Nope. Now do everything I mentioned under the rejected and learning sections and spend the rest of your time before your first day of work reading a textbook on your coding language. Continue building your project with all the tools your new company uses. Right now, as I write this, I’m reading over an entire textbook of C++17. Being top of your class in C++ four years ago means nothing if your knowledge of the language is covered with Rust (pun intended). Sharpen your tools before day one, be humble, respectful and professional. Always be learning and strategizing what skills and certification you need to advance your career. When you go home after work or the gym, set 30 minutes aside to studying for a certification.
Once again, congratulations on graduating!