How IT specialists found their first job

We launched an anonymous survey in which we asked professionals to share their experience of looking for a job when they were completely “green”, and to give advice to those looking for work right now.

As for advice, experts agree on these few points:

• study, improve your theoretical base and hard skills, this is one of the main criteria when looking for your first job;

• Don’t be afraid of interviews and don’t give up if the interview doesn’t go well. The more attempts, the greater the chances of success;

• Don’t expect your first job to perfectly match your profile; your main goal is to gain valuable experience.

And stories about the start of a career path are below.

How did you find your first job?

1. I applied for a designer position and became a Python specialist.

2. I entered “it company” into the 2gis search bar of my city, called the contact numbers and rattled off a pre-written piece of paper about myself: that I was looking for a job, and told them what I could do. After a couple of calls, the shyness disappeared, and I moved further along the list. Out of ~40 companies, we managed to agree on work with two.

3. The first job “happened” back when I was in school: the youth labor center helped me find a job according to the book at the age of 16 as a “landscape gardener” and a lawn garbage collector. I managed to find my first full-time job after graduating from a technical college, they also took me without experience, but the employer was important to the specialty I received, in which I have been working for almost two years until now. I intend to get a higher education and try honestly: with a resume and interviews. But this will already come with work experience.

4. I’m still studying at the university, at some point in the summer I applied for an internship at Yandex, solved problems, was invited to social security, they asked some basic things, then moved on. A couple of months later I was hired, and now I’m in my second year, working at Yandex, having missed out on the junior grade. This is how we live.

5. I looked at what the vacancy required and aggressively Googled everything on the list. I responded to everything, even accidentally to the team lead (they interviewed me seriously and even gave me adequate feedback). I lied about having work experience (they believed me). As a result, when I was hired, with tears in my eyes, I tried to learn everything I needed for the job in a couple of weeks, and lived in stress that I would be found out. Nobody understood anything, but I quickly leveled up on hard.

6. I found my first job as an administrator at a fitness studio through friends. Then I replaced the word “Administrator” in my resume with “Sales Manager” and went down that path. I don’t remember how I turned to HR, but now I’m HR BP, in principle, I’m happy with everything.

7. I was distracted by working in a field that I was very passionate about and had an idea of ​​what I was supposed to do. And in response to the rest, he said that he was ready to learn everything that I didn’t know, just take it.

8. The first job found me on its own. This was in 2021. In the university chat they were looking for a person who knows how to develop in Unity. I responded and came and started talking about what I could do, what I had already done, etc. The boss stops me and says: “I don’t know anything about this. Can you write in Unity? “Yes,” I answer. “You're right for us.” They begin to describe to me what they will have to do, and I give in, saying that I can’t handle it. With this we said goodbye. Three hours later I see a message: “Come on, let’s at least try.” As a result of a short dialogue, I was given a test, which I successfully completed. That's how I got my first job.

9. I'm an energy engineer. My first job was during university, after the 3rd year I had to do an internship. After passing, I was hired without an interview. After finishing my bachelor's degree, I quit my first job because I was enrolling in a master's degree. During my master's degree, I did not look for a job, but helped teachers at my department with younger students, checked tests, standard calculations, and course projects. Subsequently, the head of the department gave me a business card with a number and said that they were “waiting for my call.”

   I called and found out that this is a design institute. At the first interview, I said that I didn’t know how to design at all, but they still hired me into the electrical supply department. Over the course of 2-3 years, I learned how to design using various software systems, and subsequently decide on my profession. And now I work as an automated process control system design engineer.

10. Globally changed two specialty profiles. Everywhere I had to “look for my first job.” In both cases, the most important thing was to learn the basic theory. Each area had its own. And as a result, there was a small manual – a training manual, where the entire base was indicated, on top of which, already in the process of work, professional knowledge was layered over the years. To understand, the volume of each of these manuals was approximately 50-150 pages. In the resume I indicated what I had studied and what problems I solved. If there were professional internships, personal projects, achievements or advanced training courses, I also wrote. However, I’m not sure that this helped, since they never asked for this additional information. In both cases, he didn’t know how to do anything with his hands, so it was necessary to “give a strong base,” that is, tell the theory.

    During the interview I honestly said that I had no practical work experience, but I decide everything as I go. A common next interview question was “What if you can’t solve the problem yourself?” He answered: “First I’ll go quickly and search on the Internet, then in the documentation, then to an experienced colleague.” The competent interviewees were satisfied with the answer. The incompetent tried to create problems along the way: “What if there is no documentation, and what if there is no colleague? What if you need to decide urgently and quickly? What if it’s a day off?!” In general, they were not satisfied with any answer. With the former, I often got to a technical interview.

11. I was looking for an intern position, and everywhere I said that I had no experience. At first, he “worked” for free for three months, after this experience he got an internship at another company with a further mandatory contract for two years and a fine of 200 k. After four months of internship and seven months of working as a junior, he went to the bank and paid the fine.

12. I only had experience as an economist (three years). I responded to any vacancy that contained the word sql (this is the only thing I learned on my own). The first month and a half there were 0 interviews, even initial ones with HR. Then, in two weeks, I had five interviews at once, three of them I successfully passed and received three offers: for a systems analyst, an SQL developer and a data analyst. Based on the search results, I calculated: ~650 responses, of which five were interviews and three offers. I have been working as a systems analyst for 3 years.

13. Started studying in November 2021 (design, marketing). I had some basic knowledge. Then I moved on to layout, js, etc. Four months later I got a job at a local company that needed a content manager. The tasks and requirements quickly outgrew this title, and I myself pushed to appoint myself a web developer, since in fact I already was one. I worked for two years. Now I’m looking for a second job, and it’s already more difficult (three months of active search so far).

14. Now I'm 32, former lawyer, and now jun+/middle DevOps/SRE. I started getting into IT at the end of 2021. At that time, everyone was shouting about how cool it was to be a developer, but an analysis of the vacancies showed that experienced devs were needed, but the entry threshold for admins/eniks was much lower, and there were significantly more vacancies. Having sensibly figured that you first need to get into the topic, and then look around and understand what will be more interesting, I decided to take the path of administration.

    I entered the second tower (distance learning) in the IT specialty, and also took prof. courses. retraining to become a Linux administrator under the program from State Services. A couple of months later, after looking at the resumes of specialists, plus or minus my level, I put together a resume. He almost didn’t mention his work as a lawyer, he stated that he had a month’s experience and indicated that, in addition to his main work, he was engaged in enikeyism. In my resume I described that I know dns, dhcp, vlan, systemd, OS installation/configuration. In general, the main thing that was required to work as a junior administrator is from the job description in the specialty. As a result, they called enikey to the local provider. At the interview, they asked superficially about ip v4/v6, dhcp, dns, how I would diagnose the problem of inaccessibility of sites on the Internet from a user’s PC. In my opinion, he answered quite well, and in the end they offered to be an enikey for 30k/month for a probationary period. This is how I got my first job in IT.

    After a couple of months, I successfully completed the probationary period, and my salary was raised to 50 thousand rubles, but this was just the beginning of my journey. After looking at various directions and talking with friends, I learned about the profession of DevOps/SRE engineer and decided that this is where I wanted to go. Why? There you need to automate administration, monitor beautifully, run clouds, containers and Kubernetes, and they also pay a lot for it. As a result, I received a very tasty offer to one large company for a DevOps/SRE vacancy, where I currently hold the position of a senior specialist. In general, I have found my place in IT and I wish the same for you.

By the way, to find out what salaries are now in the IT market, look at salary calculator. It will help you find out the minimum and maximum salaries in your field for any grade, from Juna to the senor. The filter system will help you fine-tune your search.

Obviously, the stories of specialists in different fields and at different times can inspire and give food for thought, but they cannot be used as a guide to finding a job. We asked experts to give advice to those who have just started looking for their first job.

What advice do you have for someone looking for their first job?

1. Daring, being persistent, hammering with calls/visits/letters to the company in order to somehow stand out from the mass of juniors.

2. Experience is gained through part-time jobs, freelancing (depending on the desired job profile) and internships, where there is a great need for “green” and responsible students without experience who are ready to develop in their profession and constantly learn.

3. Most often, the term “work experience” means the presence of such activities in your life. Think about the employer's requirement to “have work experience” as proof that you have had some kind of work, some kind of schedule and routine in which you performed tasks and assignments for other people and not even necessarily for something. Some employers will even be satisfied with volunteer work; it is important to satisfy them with what you can do.

4. Get 3+ years of experience, tweak your resume, find a mentor who will immerse you in the processes that most companies want to hear, and get settled, everything will be fine.

5. Develop any of your projects.

6. Theory is the basis. Without a base there is emptiness and decay. Learn the basics and respond to everything. It doesn't matter where you start, as long as you keep looking for opportunities to grow inside and outside the company.

7. It’s hard to start from scratch, especially when changing professions and without experience. Analyze vacancies in your city, look at the most popular areas. There is nothing wrong with starting with technical support or enikey (just not in a board or printer repair office), but you will already be in the know, you will understand what you like and are interested in. At first, you will most likely work in an office. You will meet developers and administrators, learn a lot of new things, and then, with due diligence, you will be able to move horizontally to the team of interest. Also look at the job requirements and upgrade the required skills; now there are books, guides and articles on almost every topic. First of all, you need to adequately assess what benefit you can bring to the business, and at first be mentally prepared to work for food for the sake of experience.

8. Don't set the bar too high. The first job is good not because of its quality, but because of the understanding of the principle of difference between study and work. Don't be afraid of a lot of tasks. While you are young, you still have the resource to try more and focus on those tasks that are closest to you.

9. Monitor the vacancies you like, the technology stack, main tasks and what you should do (this point is not always true). Improve knowledge depending on requirements. You can lie about your experience, cheat a little, but they will ask according to your experience. Don’t be afraid to take interviews: nothing bad will happen if you don’t pass the interview, this way you can find out gaps in knowledge.

10. Gain experience by doing something for yourself, family and friends. Don't lie on your resume. And most importantly, don’t do things that don’t make you “burn” yourself!

11. Study, gain knowledge. Knowledge should not be just memorization, but an understanding of what you teach. So that the knowledge gained can be applied in different situations in life. Don't worry or be afraid of anything. There are many vacancies, there is a lot of work, and you will get something.

12. Always keep in mind that obstacles can be not only a lack of skills, but also low HR qualifications. Read more theory and learn to present it clearly and simply, this is how your communication skills (soft skills) are trained.

13. Don't give up, you can do it 8 times.

14. Don’t be afraid to go to lower positions with a pittance salary to gain experience, and most importantly, don’t stop learning.

15. Freelancing, of course, is dead, but you need to do something for free for six months: for yourself, friends, acquaintances, company, that’s not the point. The main thing is to get real experience.

16. Write in your resume your experience in solving educational projects, all languages, frameworks. Just don’t write what you don’t know, it will be awkward when they ask about it. Create a LinkedIn page. Enter information about yourself on VK. Leave your contacts. So, for example, because of this, I was suddenly hired into a large game development company.

17. Must-have – prepare for social interviews using recordings on YouTube, the best thing you can come up with for preparation.

18. In my opinion, the most effective are courses from big tech companies, such as ShMR ShBR, T-Fintech. This is a real way to find a job, you just need to get to the top of the best students, after which you will be invited to interviews, I got a job this way myself. Also – spin the experience. Without this, just look for galleys for 30k and hope to get a normal experience.

19. Gain strength and patience, study and prepare to work every day, from morning to evening (unless you are a genius who understands everything in minutes). More practice and don’t be scattered about everything in the world (all languages, frameworks, etc.), push one direction to the level to begin with. When searching, don’t lie, but learn to present yourself. Distribute your energy and time. When you get into the rhythm, try freelancing for practice and a working portfolio. I won’t say anything about pet projects; neither then nor later did I have time for them.

Our experience suggests the following:

1. Start working as early as possible. Don’t wait until you graduate from university; if possible, work in parallel with your studies so that by the time you graduate you will already have professional experience.

2. An effective resume and cover letter. Focus on your achievements, such as participation in competitions, conferences, volunteering and the social life of the university. Update documents according to the vacancy. After publication, call recruiters and inquire about the fate of the resume.

3. Internships are a great chance to prove yourself. You will receive practical skills, recommendations and your first successful cases.

4. Don't make your salary a priority. Remember that at the initial stage the main goal is professional development. Material rewards will come with time.

5. Look beyond recruiting sites. Use free and paid reviews, contact career consultants and mentors.