I'm throwing this out there as a tech lead who interviewed and made hiring decisions on juniors in the Austin, TX market.
First, working apps are big: put them on Heroku, link them up. I don't care how "straightforward" or "noob" they may seem, I want to know you're capable of shipping working products. If you can only get me 90% of the way to a solution, having to solve the last 10% for you on a regular basis makes you far less valuable to my team. Blog about the challenges or one interesting aspect of each of these projects: even 3 paragraphs can show me you know how to communicate technical things.
Second, GitHub all the things. Show that you know the "full stack": front-end markup, data modeling, a bit of jQuery can't hurt. HAML/SCSS are all the rage, not too difficult to pick up, and show you're "hip."
Third, go to Rails meetups: in Austin, we have a hacknight every Tuesday, and a monthly Rails meetup. If I've worked on a problem with you over a beer, your resume will naturally gravitate to the top when I have an opening.
All of those things are doable over weekends and evenings, and running with just these three tasks for 6 weeks would put you, in my experience, a hundred miles ahead of everybody else looking for a junior position.
Comments
I'm throwing this out there as a tech lead who interviewed and made hiring decisions on juniors in the Austin, TX market.
First, working apps are big: put them on Heroku, link them up. I don't care how "straightforward" or "noob" they may seem, I want to know you're capable of shipping working products. If you can only get me 90% of the way to a solution, having to solve the last 10% for you on a regular basis makes you far less valuable to my team. Blog about the challenges or one interesting aspect of each of these projects: even 3 paragraphs can show me you know how to communicate technical things.
Second, GitHub all the things. Show that you know the "full stack": front-end markup, data modeling, a bit of jQuery can't hurt. HAML/SCSS are all the rage, not too difficult to pick up, and show you're "hip."
Third, go to Rails meetups: in Austin, we have a hacknight every Tuesday, and a monthly Rails meetup. If I've worked on a problem with you over a beer, your resume will naturally gravitate to the top when I have an opening.
All of those things are doable over weekends and evenings, and running with just these three tasks for 6 weeks would put you, in my experience, a hundred miles ahead of everybody else looking for a junior position.
Good luck man.
Thank you so SO much for taking the time to drop some knowledge here.
This is fantastic. If I'm ever in Austin, I'd be glad to buy you a drink!