Forget Coding Projects: This is How You Get Hired

Are you pouring hours into coding projects with little to show for it in your job search? In this video, we’re debunking the myth that projects are the key to landing a tech job and revealing what really matters to hiring managers.

🔹 Why Projects Aren’t the Golden Ticket: why focusing on coding projects might not be the best strategy for getting hired.
🔹 Why Hiring Managers Don’t Care About Projects: the truth behind why hiring managers often overlook your GitHub repo.
🔹 The Reality of GitHub Portfolio: Find out why hiring managers don’t have the time to sift through your GitHub and what that means for your job search.
🔹 Better Alternative Strategies: I’ll introduce a ranking system to evaluate more effective strategies for landing a tech job.

⏱️ Timestamps:
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0:00 Stop Wasting Time
1:39 Projects vs Job
1:53 Why?
2:59 - CrowdStrike Incident
3:28 - GitHub & Portfolio
4:34 - Ranking System
5:41 - Strategy #7
6:53 - Strategy #6
7:35 - Strategy #5
8:07 - Strategy #4
9:12 - Strategy #3
9:32 - Strategy #2
9:59 - Strategy #1

📎 Resources:
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✅ Download the FREE Job Search Keyword Toolkit in a PDF file
✅ FREE Study Plan to Learn AI/ML Engineering FAST with ChatGPT
✅ The Ultimate Resume Handbook
✅ FREE Interview Prep Resources
✅ FREE ATS-Friendly Resume Template

🚀Learn to code
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🎙️Other videos you might be interested in
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👉Top AI Engineer Salary
👉Software/AI Engineering Career Paths and Top Key Skills
👉Don’t Be An ML or AI Engineer If You’re Like This…
👉How to Become an AI Engineer (Without a Degree)
👉Learn AI/ML engineering FAST with ChatGPT

🖥️ My SETUP
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📣✨Connect with me
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I give advice for navigating your engineering career journey successfully.

⭐️About me
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Hi, I'm Jean, Founder of Exaltitude. I've been working in tech for the past 20 years as an engineer, an engineering manager, and a team builder. I was the 19th engineer at WhatsApp and worked with Facebook as an Engineering Manager for six years after the $19B acquisition. I'm excited to share the ins and outs of a Software Engineering career based on my experience as a hiring manager for top tech companies.

Credits
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🖼️ All images, graphics, and b-roll videos used in this video were sourced from Canva.

* I may earn a small commission for purchases made through affiliate links on this website. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Your support helps me continue creating content for you.

[TheAnonJohn]

A: I want to do an internship
B: Do you have experience?
A: I want to gain experience in the internship
B: Anyway here is your rejection

[Nicoa]

To summarize, work on a project that requires approval by someone else, work for free, or get hired for an internship

[sunrocketz]

If you don't have 20 years of experience on a library published 3 months ago, you're not qualified for the junior role.

[r]

Now days, a prior internship is actually a requirement for an internship. The landscape has changed.

[itscooldawgdonteventrip]

Basically launch your own company and make your own money don't wait on those people to wired you something because they are afraid that you will do something wrong while you learnt a lot and have great diploma. The people who started that IT stuff didn't have diploma it was so young yet they built everything now they want to gatekeep. Let them do that. And do your own stuff.

[consios]

Now we have to work for free for the privilege to make money in a job lol

[HeyArnold-pqje]

I think the biggest thing is relationships. It not always what you know but who you know. Learn the things you need to know while building relationships with people who already have jobs in the industry and make friends with people in these companies, Show them what you are learning and let them review your code and they will try and get you a job where they work. At least that's what I did.

[brycehickson]

Best way to get hired: Get hired 😂

In all seriousness, this was a great video and I appreciate your time. I was recently pushed out of a startup that I worked at for 4+ years, and I'm trying to bootstrap my own business.

At the same time, I'm hedging my bets in case it doesn't work out. Trying to make sure I'll stand a chance in this tough job market. Great insight from someone who has real experience on the subject.

[bringeshchowdavarapu]

In my POV the path can be like:
1. Build chrome extensions or build apps
2. Contribute to open source
3. Showing 1, 2 as experience to land an unpaid intern.
4. Showing 1, 2, 3 to get a paid intern.
5.1, 2, 3, 4 to get an full time
😂

[pmarreck]

1) Reach out to the edge of your network (friends of friends or occasional acquaintances)
2) Talk about what interests you
3) Hope they consider you
4) Repeat with someone else

Recruiters have to be one of the most useless ways to find new work IMHO

[sawk_]

GET EXPERIENCE
1. Contribute to open source
2. Find pro-bono work
3. Freelance work (if possible)
4. Put all this work experience on CV

APPLY FOR INTERNSHIPS
5. Regularly apply for internships the whole time

[threeone]

If an industry uses interns that indicates your competitors are willing to work for below market or free.
Looked at another way if money is important you're in the wrong field.

[SaraFlara]

Every internship I see is only for recent grads or those in school so they arent even available for most

[Prophet]

The market is oversaturated with talent. The tech industry is now doing what the Auto-industry did during the recession in 2008-09.

Id advise finding a apprenticeship in a blue collar trade job. Its not as glamorous, it also doesnt pay as much..But those jobs are always in demand..Especially stonemasons, metal workers, plumbers, Riggers, crane operators etc. This is the new normal for tech.

Not saying you shouldnt pursue a job in the tech industry, but be prepared to be out of it for a long time. So its best to get skills in a multitude of industries.

These CEO's and investors know they can pay less and keep the same amount of productivity with a smaller headcount. Granting them more profits..

[wforbes]

I feel for engineers just starting out without work experience... but just to put it out there - when I'm hiring I do take 1-2 hours a day to review candidates github code and portfolio.
I have no idea how these companies manage things by having non-technical people do the hiring and only relying on some arcane algorithm-based technical interview.
If someone has some decent portfolio code that solves business problems, they can speak coherently about our stack, and they show some indicators that they researched things between the 2nd and 3rd interview - they're in.
Internship proves they've at least seen a scrum workflow with a team, and worked in large scale codebases. So I agree there. Thing is - over half of all dev jobs are not at tech companies... including all the dev work I've ever gotten. So an internship at Amazon is going to look alot different than our little 300 user internal business app.
Solid video though, it's very interesting to hear the perspective from the other side of the fence.

[bestopinion]

Being hired as junior is tough. Even if you apply with years of experience. I believe this is the first wave of AI replacing people in software development.

[edilsondesouza]

I'm on the hunt for internships right now, and I just came across your video. Thank you for all the info.

[MrBonbatong]

Like you said at the beginning, having a real profesional who has experience in recruitment is way more valuable in terms of tips that someone who is not. Thanks for sharing!

[pratikthorat]

I agree with your points but the market is so competitive that even for internships people are asking experience. I was not able to get one solely because I lacked prior experience. Even Unpaid internships are tough these days.

[dellkarxis]

Im not a graduated developer yet and I know from the beginning (back at the start) our proyects are good for learning, the world's need is diferent. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼💪🏼 I agree with you 💯