How to get that first web development job
You’ve just graduated from university, or college and you want to get a job as a web developer / web designer, but it turns out it’s much harder than you realised. So how do you get that first job as a web developer?
Parents, and friends tell you that your lack of employment is down to the credit crunch and there’s no doubt that it is harder than usual to score that first job, but here’s the real truth; the truth that your lecturers and parents don’t know: for the vast majority of educational courses, everything you’re taught is damn near useless in a commercial environment and regardless of the credit crunch, that first job can be bloody difficult to land.
Web agencies want, no, demand junior developers to come in and to be able to start work immediately and most graduates can’t do that. Of course, a junior developer will learn on the job and constantly improve and with the help of a good middleweight or senior developer above them, they’ll improve significantly more but they need to have the basics down first.
The basics
The basic skills of a junior web developer will consist of:
- buying domain names and updating/setting-up DNS on those domains
- setting up a local web server with xampp or mamp
- building HTML/CSS templates from a Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks design
- backing up files in SVN
- installing/setting up a new website with the agency’s in-house CMS or open source varieties like WordPress/Drupal/etc
- keeping track of time and learning how long it takes to do key tasks
When I went to university to study Computer Science, I certainly didn’t learn any of those basic skills in lectures or in projects. Some, I picked up in a placement year, where I worked as web designer for the local council, but for the most part I picked those skills up on my own in my spare time and so did everyone else in this field – we’re all self taught by blogs, books and podcasts.
How I got my first job
In my first year at uni (2001-02), the lecturer in charge of industrial placements told us that there were ‘no jobs in web design/development‘, this made my heart sink. However, a year later when the work placements started to be advertised on the university notice boards at least half were for web based jobs. I decided then and there that I wanted to be a web developer and that such a thing was actually possible. Sadly, every placement I applied for wanted me to have experience which I didn’t have.
After six months of trying to get a placement which involved lots of (failed) interviews, I realised I needed some hands-on experience to get any sort of credibility with interviewers, so I started to maintain the website (for free) of the charity that my girlfriend’s mother worked for. My CV now had some experience and a URL on it. In interviews I talked about it to prove I had relevant experience, not to mention initiative and eventually with only one week before term was due to restart I got that work placement.
Fast forward to my final year (2004-05), and in January/March, I sent out a mail merge to around 30 different Manchester, Cheshire and nearby web agencies informing them of who I was and that I was graduating in six months. Nothing much happened; I might have got three emails all of which saying thanks but they weren’t interested just now.
Closer to graduation, I put my CV online with websites like reed.co.uk, cwjobs.co.uk, etc and starting applying for jobs – still nothing. With one month to graduation, I put my CV on Manchester Digital, and then I got an email which eventually lead to my first job at JJB Sports. By spreading myself out and trying different techniques I found one that actually worked!
How you can get your first job
I wouldn’t hire someone who:
- has a hotmail/yahoo email address (tip: gmail, your own domain, mac.com, or anything else looks better)
- doesn’t have a website/blog/online portfolio or a twitter account
- has no experience whatsoever
- I’ve never heard of
The last two points are the biggies. Experience is everything in this industry. You can get very far very quickly with no qualifications if you’re good as a web developer. A good education is brilliant but if the guy next to you has three year’s experience on his CV and you only have a degree then experienced guy looks better (in most cases).
The last point – means you have to get your name out there, so apply for jobs, talk on twitter, try to network, try to learn some important people’s names. Everyone in this industry knows everyone else therefore, if you apply to agency X and don’t get the job but you impress someone then a guy/girl working at agency X might tell his friend working at agency Y about you. Of course, it helps to be memorable, like this guy.
Getting the experience
If you have no experience and therefore no commercial references, you desperately need to get some. If I were in that situation (again) I’d be looking to:
- set up my own website/blog
- set up a website for a relative’s small business
- work for free (or low pay) in a local web agency – making tea if I had to
- take a lower paid (than expected) job as web developer
- read books/blogs and practice web development as much as possible
- make some money while waiting for that dream web development job
If you apply for a job with no commercial experience, but you have built your own website then you’ll instantly look much better than your competitor who has no experience and no website.
Summary
All web agencies are looking for people, and whilst it may be true that some are putting a hold on hiring right now due to the current financial situation, a lot more agencies are crying out for good junior web developers but they just can’t find them. Your mission is to seek out these people and let them know you exist and how good you are. You’ve save them time and money on advertising for people and you’ll save them from have to deal with recruitment agencies because they loathe that exercise.
By no means, am I an expert on this employment. These are just my experiences and advice. You may be a student on a fantastic university/college course teaching you everything you need to know – not all courses are crap but sadly, a lot of them are.
If you’ve got an experience or some advice on getting that first job that you’d like to share; I’d love to hear it.
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Some good points, Phil. I’d agree with Hotmail/Yahoo email accounts being a turn-off – especially since domains are so cheap – as well as the need to have your own portfolio – a very basic minimum requirement of anyone who wants a job in web development, I would have thought.
We’ve got a few work experience students joining us (for a week each) over the next few months, and with quite a few applicants, we had the job of picking over the applications. For us (considering we weren’t expecting experience), we looked for passion about the web in general, and an indication that they hadn’t just selected the ‘web design/development’ category because it sounded fun – e.g. some background reading on web design etc.
My thoughts exactly (well, not exactly, that would be telepathic plagiarism) – my first job as a web designer came about because I’d been dabbling in building sites for a couple of years while at school, doing stuff for free, but getting to know the ins and outs of how it all worked, so by the time I applied for the job I wanted I didn’t look like a total noob.
I re-built / designed the homepage for the company I was interviewing with (saved on a brand appropriate coloured 3.5″ floppy – yes it was that long ago) which highlighted some of what I thought was wrong with their current site – I think it showed them that I was a) keeping up with the trends (no blink tags please) and b)experienced enough to launch into something straight away.
While that was 10 years ago (crap!), if you think you’re not qualified enough, the lesson still holds true – do something off your own back. Make sure it’s something you’re interested in (otherwise it’ll feel like a job before you start getting paid) and just do it. Build something. Get it wrong. Ask for help. Fix it. Find out why transferring a .co.uk is different to a .com when the hosting company you’re with starts to suck. By the time you’ve faffed around on Monster for a week wondering what you can and can’t apply for, you’re a week behind getting on with what you want.
As Nike say: Just Do It.
And my first website? A guide to getting all the stars on Super Mario 64, hosted on GeoCities. We all start somewhere.
My first website was also Geocities at some ridiculous URL like geocities.com/rodeodrive/somewhere/1298/ you know because web addresses should be like real addresses!
Nice article Phil. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to put together a portfolio before approaching potential employers – I got my first real web gig on the basis of a handful of personal sites and sites I had done for friends. If nothing else they demonstrate how keen you are and the ability to self-teach. I’m entirely self-taught, and even though I wish i’d had a higher education grounding in computer science/ design, the qualifications are less important than being able to demonstrate your ability to apply the skills, and learn new skills in an ever-changing technical landscape when it comes to finding employment as a web developer.
Well thought out post.
Just a quick preface; I’m a 17 yr old web dev, supporting myself fully by “freelancing.”
Just by having a professional internet presence (and 2 years of self-taught html/css experience), I can pick up more quality leads from acquaintances, friends of friends, etc. than I can handle time-wise.
This obviously from more of a “freelancer” (I hate using this term because of the garbage-like quality it tends to carry with it), than an employed developer, but yeah, it should a breeze to pick up well-paying leads if you’re fairly competent with a CMS and have a nice portfolio.
Be personable, professional and know your stuff – it pays!
Some good points Phil, there are definate opportunities out there for those who want to go and grab them. I would say that now is the perfect time to go out and show people what you can do, which makes the point about taking a lower paid job absolutely spot on.
I also think that junior developers/designers should make sure they define their key skills, don’t spread themselves too thinly or they’ll become a jack of all trades (which may be goof if they aren’t passionate about a specific discipline just yet).
Lastly, I’m not sure why having a gmail account is any better than hotmail or yahoo? Having johnsmith12345@hotmail.com doesn’t look very professional but ‘johnsmith’ would be acceptable IMO (he says having put a hotmail account in the email box ;) Needless to say hello@youdomain.com would be the better choice all round.
Great article!!
In uni i thought i would never be good enough to be a web developer, i grabbed at my first job, where i was excepted to create miracles from nothing with little experience and help.
But in august 08, just before everyone was laid off, i had a lucky escape. I was given a great opportunity as a junior web developer at thehutgroup.com. I’m now constantly learning and gaining experience, in a company which keeps getting better and better.
As a second year student who’s looking to go into web design, this post was right on the money :) I’ve got to agree with you, we don’t learn any of the basic skills we need in lectures (though we did race through SVN in an hour once).
I got my first (and only real) when I was 17 by asking if anyone could give me a web dev job in an IRC channel I used to frequent, and someone from Leicester sent an email to a guy he knew in Burnley. A few days later, I was in the office showing them a sample of my code. There’s been a few “freelance” jobs since but it just wasn’t worth it. Being a student without a huge portfolio, I wasn’t confident to charge any more than about £8 an hour (Which is around £12-13 pro rata)
As you said, companies want junior developers to come in and start work immediately. Fortunately I arrived at the beginning of a new project and was able to see how it developed and recieved support from the senior developer when I asked. Being able to ask the best way to approach things helped me improve my skills, and the company has benefitted as I’ve been returning to them and working on projects since. I don’t know if it’s because I only work there every now and then, or if I’m simply in a different role to a typical web developer, but I don’t do most of the things you listed. My time has either been spent developing internal applications (such as lighthouse integration) or doing server setups (stock virtual machines for testing) – none of these “out of the box” xampp setups. The test server should mirror the live server as well as possible imo. I do agree though that svn usage and time tracking are critical. If you can show your boss exactly what you did, and when you did it, they’ll be able to help identify when you work best, and what on, maximising your efficiency.
So, so round all that off. I obtained some commercial experience before university, and I’m glad I did. There’s a lot of competition out there, and a lot of competant programmers to fill the few jobs there are available. In the current world, where we all live off Facebook and Youtube, and use Google with all our essays… it’s no wonder than everyone on my course is looking at getting a web dev job once they graduate. Fortunately, I got some experience thanks to a nice senior developer, which should set me apart from the crowd.
PS: My first site was a Final Fantasy VII fansite, also on geocities circa. 2001/2002
PPS: It used frames!
Also, apologies for the exceptionally long comment. I’m new to this commenting thing and sometimes get a bit carried away…
Great article, although I think you can be lucky to get a job with few of the ideas you mentioned (this is my own personal experience) it most definately gives you better prospects in finding a job or getting a head start on your way to becoming a rock star developer or designer.
I’m not sure why you place more weight and professionalism in gmail than hotmail when they are essentially similar products, however having a personal portfolio/site is a must and with that you should have a personal domain email address.
In my case I pretty much took the first job that came my way and i’m still there over 2 years later and loving it.
In defense of gmail: Someone with a gmail account has at least took the time not to have a hotmail/yahoo account, they’ve understood that gmail is better. I’m not saying dave@gmail.com is better than dave@dave.com but it does display an ounce more credibility than sno0py349@hotmail.com – but only an ounce.
This is more of a web designer job not so a web developer job article.
If you want to get a web developer job write a lot of code in a server side language and learn the MVC pattern and choose a framework for example in Java(Struts, SpringMVC, Wicket), Python(Django), Ruby(Rails), PHP(Zend Framework).
This is a web “developer” not a web “designer”, Web designers usally as you said blogs, use photoshop and create templates and design the UI part of a web site. Developers not have time to blog they are just coding coding and hacking hacking.
Also as developer I suggest to learn a Functional language because for the parallelism world is coming is the way to go I suggest Erlang, Haskell, F# or Clojure.
OtengiM, the point I’m trying to make here, which I think you’ve missed, is that people looking to get into the industry need to invest in the key skills that their formal education may have missed as well to look into ways to actually make themselves employable.
OtengiM, Why are you getting so pedantic about Phil’s terminology?
The last agency I worked gave me the title of “web developer” – Only a very small part of the job was focused on server-side technology, and even then it was normally only Velocity stuff.
“Web designer” carries a lot of bad connotations – to me the term === okay at Photoshop, not too bad at CSS/XHTML, but sucks at JavaScript.
I call myself a web developer because I spend most of my time programming in JavaScript.
FYI, the company I worked for would’ve called people like you “software engineers”
I agree with James
Interesting read.
As someone who interviews candidates (mainly Java Programmers) as a Team Lead/Architect, we don’t expect junior developers to know a lot. But here are some other points for interviewing:
Practice – Get with a friend and have them be the interviewer. It will show in your confidence.
Be Honest – If you don’t know something, say so. However, see if you can work out an answer or discuss how you would approach figuring out something you didn’t know. Use an example from your previous employment experience.
Samples – Even if you don’t have the employment experience, take time to teach yourself technologies in the field that you are interested in and create samples. That experience counts too. Be prepared to discuss it including having it criticized (but not take personally).
Interview – There are no bad interviews. Learn from the experience. It goes along with practice.
Some great points there Colin. I’ll admit to having given some pretty awful interviews in the past but I definitely learnt something from all of them.
OK whats with this yahoo/hotmail bashing.
Emails should not be having stuf like 124/xyz’s other than that, all works.
Besides to all you gmail fanboys out there do not forget what was happening just months ago to those who had registered their domains under gmail.eg,torrentz,makeuseof,etc.
So don’t bash for pity useless reasons.As the saying goes,”don’t throw stones at others when your own house is made of glass” or something
like that.
Varum, you’ll notice how I say above that anything looks better than a hotmail/yahoo account – this is not gmail fanboy behaviour just a simple fact.
If you apply for a web development job with a hotmail account on your CV and it looks terrible. It shows you haven’t even bothered to investigate and therefore come to the conclusion that gmail is [a bit] better for sending/receiving emails then hotmail is and if you haven’t made that leap yet you’re unlikely to be the type of web developer constantly looking to improve your skills.
Some good advice there for getting a job, I think one of the key ways to get a job i to get some experience – i know what your going to say – you can’t get a job without experience, you need a job to get that experience.
But you can get practical experience, be it doing websites for friends or family and for freelance customers, to me this would divide people into to categories.
Those that have qualification and have been job searching. and those that have qualification and job searching, and have been actively gaining experience and honing/learning skills.
If you can go to an interview with several sites both on course and in your own time it shows:
Pro Active, Project Management (especially if paid for by a business), Customer interaction skills, Technical skills and Eager to learn, to name but a few.
Steve, I agree 100%.
I think this is a great post!! What do you recommend the email address be? I know some domains would be better then others.
Last names?
This is so relevant to me. I have recently graduated and have an MSc in Design and Digital Media, but have no experience. I am quite passionate about web design and advertising. Managed to create a portfolio in between job hunting, and tweeting and catching up on all my fav web design blogs.
Anyway, cut the long story short, still not employed after 3 months of searching and I have now contacted agencies offering to work for free. Will get a weekend odinary job to keep the money coming in.
All I want is an entry point. God knows I am geared up and ready to go.
Thanks for the inspiration.
You wouldn’t hire someone who has a hotmail account? But you would with a gmail account? Absolutely outrageous thing to say. Says a lot about you.
Also, you wouldn’t hire someone you have never heard of? So basically you’ll only hire Andy Clarke, or Jeremy Keith.
“# building HTML/CSS templates from a Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks design” – Only for junior developers?
‘You wouldn’t hire someone who has a hotmail account?’
There may be occasions when I might but honestly, probably not; for all the reasons explained above. If you’re applying for a job as a web developer/designer and you have a hotmail account – seriously what are you thinking? Take 30 minutes and £10 and get a unique domain name.
You can’t see people’s email addresses in these comments, but it’s not a shock for me to see all bar one of the commenters have either a gmail (or a unique domain name) for their email address (even you). Read into that what you will.
“Also, you wouldn’t hire someone you have never heard of?”
Michael, I mustn’t have made myself too clear here… You might be a great web developer but the vast majority of jobs are passed through word of mouth, not through advertisements. If you’re looking for work – you’ve got to get out there find those vacancies before the recruitment agencies get to them.
I don’t mean I’d only hire web ‘celebrities’ rather I’d only be able to hire people who I knew of beforehand or had applied. The point is if you’re out of work but you’re on twitter/have a blog/comment on a blog/go to a networking event and manage to make contact with a local person in the industry you’re chances of getting work are greatly increased.
“# building HTML/CSS templates from a Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks design” – Only for junior developers?
This shows you haven’t read the article properly because I’ve mentioned that this a basic skill that a junior web developer will probably be expected to have. I’m a front end developer by trade so why on earth would I suggest that my major skill that makes up 90% of my income is only for juniors?
Great article! Though I already got my first and second job and has started my own company it was interesting and I can only agree. I was lucky to get my first job just before finishing college but I worked hard sending out CV’s to whoever seemed interesting.
I’ve recently been a part of a recruitment and noticable, still many people use emails like hotmail, yahoo etc. so they just end up in the bottom of the pile. Lots of them didn’t even have anything to show, proving they even knew what HTML or CSS was.
So I would say it’s easy to get a job if you’re great. Hell, even you’re just good. Just go out there and show that you can produce a website that is semanticly good and user-fiendly. If you have a fantastic website, a company may not even care that you’re a PHP developer even if they’re actually looking for an ASP.NET developer. Just show them that you’re able to learn quickly and that you can produce a user-friendly website. The important thing is that you can adapt and learn.
That’s my thoughts…
Craigslist is a good place to start looking for first jobs…