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General Discussion

Max Weston
Max Weston
11,432 Points
Posted by Max Weston
Max Weston
11,432 Points

Advice for applying for Internships/Junior Web Developer roles

Hi all, just seeing what peoples personal experience is with this sort of thing. how many examples of work did you have when applying for your first role within the industry? how many different technologies did you know? Of course i understand this is generally going to be totally different person to person and is going to differ between designer/front-end developer/server-side developer on the skills front.

5 Answers

Jason Wayne
Jason Wayne
11,688 Points
Jason Wayne
Jason Wayne
11,688 Points

That's actually a good question, would like to see what others share what they have experienced.

In my humble opinion, the number of work doesn't really weigh as much as the quality of it. Of course, having many number of works + quality is great. But if you have one great and awesome website that is used or visited by tons of people, it's better than having multiple small websites.

Try and do some freelance work, that'll give you a nice portfolio before searching for a role.

=]

Max Weston
Max Weston
11,432 Points
Max Weston
Max Weston
11,432 Points

Hi Jason, thanks for your insight.

I've personally only just started applying for roles but have a couple of freelance projects under my belt. It seems to me even for intern-ships/junior roles the requirements can really vary from some just wanting a few example sites and knowledge of the basics (HTML5/CSS/Javascript/some PHP) to requiring experience with Angular.js/Ember.js/PHP frameworks which I don't really know much about (yet) but from what I know I would consider more advanced. I guess there is different levels of "Junior".

thanks anyway :)

Samara Soucy
Samara Soucy
6,733 Points
Samara Soucy
Samara Soucy
6,733 Points

I just got a job as a Web Developer (I guess I get to skip the "junior" title) and the biggest factor in my favor was my portfolio. I had a couple projects (1 in jQuery, 1 in Java) that were cleanly coded (comments! use them!), and went beyond the basic lessons here.

To prove it they had me design and build a small project in a day (http://sourcesearch.samarasoucy.com/ is what I came up with) and I had to do a couple basic code challenges in the interview- including coding a basic search function on a markerboard (aka no way to debug to see if it worked along the way).

I think what it boils down to is, while they can teach you a framework or a few commands you didn't get here, you need to be able to show that you understand how to write good code.

Jason Wayne
Jason Wayne
11,688 Points
Jason Wayne
Jason Wayne
11,688 Points

Hello Max!

Yes, that's true. Different "junior" web developer have different requirements depending on the firm, what do they actually use.

Good luck to you!

Max Weston
Max Weston
11,432 Points
Max Weston
Max Weston
11,432 Points

Hi Samara

here is what I've got so far portfoliowise: http://www.maxfweston.co.uk

just gonna try to do a few more freelance projects at the same time as applying for things.

thanks for the great answers.