Junior Web Development Position a Myth?

My recommendation is learn how to write a proper resume, possibly dumb down you want to be qualified, but not over qualified.

Practice interviewing skills. Learning how to interview comes from life experience and work. I recommend talking to mirror or using your webcam and record yourself. Ask friends to interview you and get their honest opinion.

Try searching for different types of keywords on job boards. It's bit of luck and timing. Keep on trying.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

Remove everything not related to web dev on your resume. Keep all the jobs relevant to the position. It's make you look like unfocused. A perfect candidate will be all dev jobs and experiences.

Keep the resume single a page. High light the most important skills that the employers want.

Goodluck. :P

Christopher Denny : Let's meet. I'm also in Portland, and I'm happy to talk to you about my experiences as well. I looked at your resume, and I'd say it needs some help. Instead of mentioning things that you may or may not agree with why not take it to the folks at Worksource? All services at State WorkSource offices are free. I will say my experiences there have been varied, but there are plenty of workshops and the HighTech Networking Group at the Beaverton office at Willow Creek could also be a good resource for job leads, resume, and cover letter help.

I will also say not everything you're experiencing in Portland is due to something that you might lack. Portland is a super-saturated job market for IT with many colleges and coding schools pumping out students all the time. If there's tons of people vying for Jr. Programmer positions, a company can start upping the requirements and can afford to be "picky" with what they want. I'd consider looking outside of the Portland market.

I have interviewed and have been offered several web development positions in Montana (I am actually wanting to do Android/Java and not web development). What worked for me was I read about trends in web design and development (I know you are not a designer) and to build my website with the latest design trends (think apple.com or teamtreehouse.com).

Once I had a website I would then offer my services dirt cheap to businesses and non-profits in my city. The plan here was to get any experience working with clients and to build a portfolio. After a few clients I reworked my website, resume, and had asked some friends to help me with my interviewing skills. After all of this, I started to get job offers.

For you specifically, I would work on your interviewing skills and reflect on all of your past interviews. What questions did they ask, and what were their reactions to your answers? Could you have better prepared yourself? Were they looking for more real-world examples?

If you are getting into interviews then they have already approved your skills. Once in the interview it is up to you to show who you are as a person and exactly why they should hire you. And nekilof is correct, Portland is a highly saturated market with people from all over flocking there for jobs.

This video worked for me (albeit within 48 hours)

I was wondering the same thing.. I make a decent living now (not a lot, but definitely above average), but I wanted to get into web development with hopes of getting away from a standard 9-5.

I can't help but have this fear of not being able to achieve the end result that I am hoping for. That being said, I've read a lot of success stories, and know people who have gotten great jobs, even starting their own business. Also, am enjoying my experience here at Treehouse, so that helps ☺.

Looked at your portfolio page and it needs a lot of work. As others have said, you should definitely allow a full view of real websites you have done, or even practice projects, as opposed to a small photo of your work. Definitely read up and learn modern designs to improve your "worth" in the industry.

In your resume, focus on job related skills. I dont think its good practoce to refer to your self im the third person. Also focus more on achievements (ie "Analyzed CompanyX's website. Modernized the design and and functionality, resulting in improved user experience and a 10% increase website hits the following month.")

Hi please understand I mean this in no way to be harsh, and I myself am just starting the process of trying to figure out a layout for my own site and my own "branding." Because that is what a portfolio or personal website as well as resumes do they package us up and provide a presentation. That in mind I think you should take some time to look at the Design Foundations course (3 hours) here on Treehouse. Aside from learning what is aesthetically pleasing, how to brand, use of color and fonts to create a visual message (all of which by the way when you create a wire frame for your site could be easily be reformatted and used for a matching physical resume) there is a Design Critique Sheet which I think would be helpful in your case. Apply it to anything you put out for the world to see particularly employers. (as Paul Rand said "Everything is design. EVERYTHING") You will find a downloadable Design Critique sheet in the Design Foundations Course in the Understanding Aesthetics sections and under the downloadable files in the Art of Critiquing. It starts with things like Who created the composition (that would be you) and who is it for? (that would be the employer) then describe the composition and being specific and view how an employer would view it. What message are you conveying, is it a message tailored to the employer? Because I have to say honestly I don't think either are presenting an image you as a professional developer wants to present or that an employer is really receptive to. Ask yourself how the employer views it. I'm sorry personally I don't think it is positive even if they said positive things. Anyway there is an entire checklist to go through and I would say don't do it just yourself, because sometimes we have issues with honesty with our own creations. Give the check list to a couple different people, tell them to be brutally honestly, and have them fill it out for you and work to make changes off of that. A lot of people will write something they won't say to you face to face. You also might want to consider changing the domain name. You can have a fun name, but make it like brand.

In terms of your resume, like I said if you have a good resume/portfolio site it can be used as a template and easily translated into a physical resume. I advise looking around the web and seeing what other people are doing on theirs. I have created a folder of links to resumes and pages I like for one element or another to inspire and guide me. I understand the desire among designers/developers/programmers to be well different and quirky, but resumes and websites for work still have to be professional. But it IS possible to be quirky, unique and still professional. Here are some of what i find to be great examples (note use of bar and pie charts to show off skills are incredibly popular and visually pleasing)---

You can see how this one can easily be compressed and shortened to be a physical printed resume too---http://www.goslingo.com/

Fun use of charts and color. Visually pleasing but still minimal and conveys a quirky yet professional message ---http://www.ryan-hwang.com/about.php

This one was a CSS Design Award special mention- I love his transition in his charts it looks like he does a .3 linear transition--- http://sergiopedercini.com/

Another one I like that design easily lends itself to converting to a print resume and uses a pie chart---http://www.fradtags.com/

Anyway that is my advice, that is the process I am in myself right now. You might also want to check out the Brand identity course (about an hour).

Good Luck!

Christopher Denny no problem. I am just finishing up the web design track so if you have any questions on the courses feel free to ask. all the goldish/yellow courses are design and there is some great CSS stuff in the track too. If you don't do the track, at least take a look at it. As far as print resume, it appears to be becoming popular to use graphics (like charts and icons and stuff in resumes for creative fields rather than just the paragraph after paragraph of print).

The other thing I meant to ask is WHERE are you looking for jobs? What source are you using to find job listings. Because you want to make sure you are going to tech specific job boards. You will find a lot more listing there. Also are you open to working remotely-telecommuting and/or long term contract because that will really open up a job market, with remote work even beyond your geographical location. Think about it you may start on only a 1 year project, but it could extend beyond that. If not you have a year real experience with a company to put on your resume and you are moving out of the junior developer into the mid level jobs. Here are some of the boards I know of. Maybe you use them maybe not.

http://www.dice.com/ https://angel.co/ ----Angel list caters to start ups https://weworkremotely.com/ ALL remote jobs http://www.workingnomads.co/ ----they curate remote tech jobs from all sorts of sources on the web to list them in one place. https://www.authenticjobs.com/ http://jobs.smashingmagazine.com/ https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?t=c&r=redirect