Re:Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice...
by gen220 on Sunday October 20, 2019 @02:10PM
(#21305877)
I’d say yes, with an asterisk.
The trick is to treat finding your first job as a search problem, not a dice roll. You’re searching for employers that need someone with your skills and experience, and those same employers are also searching for you.
The asterisk is that I think this “5 company” approach is meant to be aimed at companies that don’t have the resources to do very “active” searching. A rule of thumb: if the company has a specialized university recruiter, they are probably too “active” for the list, if you’re a new grad with no intern experience.
You don’t find these companies on job boards or LinkedIn. You find them by “searching”, like an investor. You can begin by looking for local VCs, the look at the portfolios of those VCs, then at the LinkedIn history of people who work at those portfolio companies. By now you probably have seen 20 interesting companies, and you can proceed to whittle it down to 5 small companies that will already know you have the requisite energy and enthusiasm, since you went through the real effort of finding and choosing them.
The trick is to treat finding your first job as a search problem, not a dice roll. You’re searching for employers that need someone with your skills and experience, and those same employers are also searching for you.
The asterisk is that I think this “5 company” approach is meant to be aimed at companies that don’t have the resources to do very “active” searching. A rule of thumb: if the company has a specialized university recruiter, they are probably too “active” for the list, if you’re a new grad with no intern experience.
You don’t find these companies on job boards or LinkedIn. You find them by “searching”, like an investor. You can begin by looking for local VCs, the look at the portfolios of those VCs, then at the LinkedIn history of people who work at those portfolio companies. By now you probably have seen 20 interesting companies, and you can proceed to whittle it down to 5 small companies that will already know you have the requisite energy and enthusiasm, since you went through the real effort of finding and choosing them.
TLDR: yes, but not if your five spell out FAANG.