The Scrimba Podcast

Alex Booker (00:01):
Hello and welcome to The Scrimba Podcast. On this weekly show, I speak with successful devs about their advice on learning to code and getting your first junior dev job. My name is Alex and today I'm joined by the awesome Gregory Witek, an experienced hiring manager currently working at booking.com which is a multinational hotel booking website. This, to me, was a fascinating conversation about the state of the junior developer job market and how you, an aspiring junior developer, can best position yourself for success.

Gregory Witek (00:34):
There are certain tutorials, there are certain courses that are very popular and then people put the projects that they did from these tutorials in their portfolios and in their resumes. And if you do the same projects as everyone, then what is the difference between you and other candidates?

Alex Booker (00:50):
Do not let the title of this episode worry you, I'm borrowing it for a post by Gregory with the same title. Gregory and I both feel it's important that you understand the realities of the job markets and how some companies are thinking about hiring juniors because, put simply, you have the best chance of winning if you understand the game that you are playing. In this episode, we will also learn from Gregory what he looks for in a junior developer as a hiring manager himself. You are listening to The Scrimba Podcast, let's get into it.

Gregory Witek (01:24):
So, I studied computer science, a very typical background. I've got a master degree in CS and I started as a backend developer, I used to write Ruby code for almost 10 years. So, I worked here and there. I worked a bit in Europe, I worked a couple years in Singapore. At some point, I became an engineering manager, it was natural because the company where I was was growing and they just needed someone to start managing developers so I volunteered.

Alex Booker (01:47):
I've always felt like that's a great way to have a big impact.

Gregory Witek (01:49):
Yes, exactly. That's what I realized at some point. If I teach a couple people to write better code, it makes a bigger impact than me writing this code myself. Currently, I live in the Netherlands, I work for booking.com as engineering manager. Right now, I'm still quite new to the company so I'm not very much involved in hiring right now but I've been hiring people for a couple years. So, I did tons of interviews, I worked with some boot camps, I attended some boot camp events to see how they work, to see how we can help the graduates to become professional developers, et cetera.

Alex Booker (02:20):
The most exciting thing about this episode, I think, is that we're going to talk a little bit about a post you wrote a few months ago published under the title Why Nobody Hires Junior Developers Anymore. I think it's quite a stark title but, when you read the post, it's full of value and very well thought out. We'll be linking it high and proud in the show notes, definitely. Can you maybe tell us a little bit about what motivated you to write it and what is the summary of that post? What's it all about?

Gregory Witek (02:45):
In the beginning of pandemic, a lot of companies put all the hiring on halt. People who are looking for new roles just were told, "Hey, sorry, we have hiring freeze," lots of companies did that. And after the first wave, after a couple of months, the things changed 180 degrees. Senior developers were sought after everywhere, suddenly the salaries started going up, more and more companies were moving digital so were hiring more and more and that changed a lot. And I follow a lot of online sites, forums, Reddit, et cetera and I noticed that a lot of people were saying, "Hey, how is it happening that there are so many senior developers that are needed but, I, a junior developer, cannot find a job? I've just graduated and people who graduated from my school a year or two years ago had no problems finding any job but, now, I cannot find anything, I cannot get any interview."

Gregory Witek (03:33):
So, I noticed this discrepancy, this difference that senior developers had absolutely no problems finding job and early stage developers couldn't even get an interview. So, I started thinking about it and why does it happen and then I wrote the blog post. The title, obviously, is a bit exaggerated because it's not that nobody hires junior developers, but with the number of people on the market and with the need for developers in general, it seems like there are almost no opportunities for people who are looking for their first job. That's what the blog post is about. I explained why it happens, how pandemic broke the market for junior developers, how does it happen that everyone suddenly needs tons of developers but nobody wants to invest in early stage developers and give them a chance.

Gregory Witek (04:13):
I end the post with a bit of advice of what can change, how we can change it on, at least, this micro scale, how hiring managers, how CTOs in their companies can change it a little bit. But overall, in the big picture, I believe that things will change themselves, everything will go back to normal because the current situation is just unusual and it cannot last forever. So, things will go back to where they were before.

Alex Booker (04:37):
But you also wrote about this idea which is the tragedy of commons. I think it comes from economics but you applied it to the developer job market.

Gregory Witek (04:45):
So, the concept of tragedy of commons is that we have some shared resource that is scarce, that can be anything. I think the original idea was about pastures but the idea is that, if we all use these resources, then it will deplete. Therefore, we need to invest in conserving it, we need to make sure that it's sustainable to use this resource. If you have a lot of people that rely on the same resource and one of them doesn't do their part of maintaining it, then the rest, while they still work on that, they will not notice because it's just one person that breaks the rules. But at some point, you've got this tipping point, you've got this threshold where, if enough people start breaking the rules and just taking the resource but never giving back, it will start depleting.

Gregory Witek (05:30):
The work that others are doing is not enough to recover the resource, therefore, at some point it will just deplete and those people who break the rules are gaining from it because they're never paying back, they're never giving back. And those who follow the rules, who want to be good people, are actually losing. So, eventually, everyone just gives up and say, "Okay, I'm not contributing to it because it just doesn't make sense." And I've seen examples in lots of different industries, I can tell a bit about tourism industry.

Gregory Witek (05:58):
I used to live in Southeast Asia and in Thailand, for example, there is a famous bay called Maya Bay that is really beautiful and tons of tourists were visiting it every day. And the boats were going there, the tourists were going there, they were leaving tons of trash, the fragile environment of that bay just couldn't handle it. At some point, the government of Thailand said, "That's it. We need to conserve it," and they closed it for anyone for, I think, two or three years. So, for the last three years, their tourist companies, all these trip organizers couldn't benefit from that because, previously, they weren't willing to limit their usage, they weren't willing to work together to make sure that it's sustainable so, now, they lost everything.

Gregory Witek (06:42):
On the other hand, I've seen on other islands, small organizations of diving schools where people were saying, "We've got these two or three beautiful diving spots, we need to preserve them." So, all of them are contributing and making sure not to overflow it with amateur divers. And yeah, on a small scale, it works because, if they are just five or 10 people using a resource, then you can have agreement. But if you have a lot of people using that resource, it's very hard to control it. And in a global market like hiring, it's just impossible to say to every company, "Hey, please invest in junior developers because we all, as an industry, we need junior developers."

Gregory Witek (07:19):
It's just impossible to do it globally and, with remote work, this hiring market becomes just one. You don't have local markets anymore, you can find job anywhere. So, it's impossible to tell every single company, "Hey, please do your job because, otherwise, this market for junior developers will break." So, that's what's happening, that so many companies say, "Hey, we only hire seniors," there are just not enough seniors because nobody wants to invest in junior developers.

Alex Booker (07:47):
You're alluding to the fact that, a couple of years ago and probably before, there were quite a healthy supply of junior devs and junior dev jobs. In that time, some junior devs have gone on to become more experienced and, obviously, by seniority, it increases with time. And one thing we've observed in 2021 and 2022 is that senior devs are getting paid a lot of money for a variety of reasons. Well, they're not motivated to improve the situation because if they're getting paid more money, well, if they introduce more talent into the market, then that could potentially dilute their salary. But on top of that, they're not thinking consciously enough about the future.

Alex Booker (08:19):
Maybe right now, they're not strictly dependent on junior devs and there's plenty of junior devs going around, you could say. But in the near future, that might fall down because they're neglecting bringing new people into the markets. And obviously, if you don't have junior devs, you don't have senior devs either because they can't possibly begin that career progression. Am I understanding you right?

Gregory Witek (08:36):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, junior developer is, from a company perspective, it's an investment. If I hire a senior developer, I can expect that, in a couple months, on average, they will start being productive so I will start making money out of them. For junior developers, this is a longer period. It might be, I don't know, six months, it can be one year. And what happens is that, after one year, those developers can get a job in another place. There is a company that will come and will offer them, I don't know, 50% more salary or maybe double salary. So, I invested in the junior developer, it cost me money and now when I start to get the return of that investment then the junior developer moves elsewhere.

Gregory Witek (09:14):
So, if there are companies that are only hiring developers with already experience and they don't hire early stage developers, they don't hire new grads themselves, they don't do this investment. They only take the ready developers, those who can already be productive then, ah, me who hires junior developers, I feel like a sucker because I just invest in people and then I'm not getting anything out of it. So, naturally, companies are, okay, I cannot afford it anymore. Especially smaller companies, they don't have hundreds or thousands of developers, maybe just five or 10, and they hire those fresh grads, they hire boot camp graduates but then they realize, okay, those developers don't stay long enough because now the bigger companies, the richer companies are coming in and taking them from me.

Alex Booker (09:57):
They're fishing, basically.

Gregory Witek (09:58):
Exactly, yes. And they're not giving back to the community, they're not doing their job, they're only relying on others doing their job.

Alex Booker (10:07):
If you are enjoying this episode of The Scrimba Podcast with Gregory, please do us a favor and share it with your friends on social media or in your community. Word of mouth is the single best way to support a podcast that you like so thanks in advance. Next week, I'm talking with Busa, a successful Scrimba student from London by way of Turkey.

Busa (10:28):
As much as I could, I try to find out how I liked to learn. I was walking on the opposite path to things that I enjoyed during the university. I watched many videos, worked every day at home like I had a real job and that's all.

Alex Booker (10:44):
This was a super charming and insightful conversation where you will learn how Busa found success in one of the most competitive cities in the world, London, without a computer science degree. That's next week on The Scrimba Podcast but, for now, back to the interview with Gregory.

Alex Booker (11:02):
I do think it is a problem, in a way, in tech to get the biggest salary bump. Historically, you've had to change roles and maybe, historically, that was a 20% bump, but in today's market, it can be a lot more actually. And so, you might say, "Well, okay, these companies, just hire the juniors then pay them a nice salary bump every year." But maybe the more realistic view on this is the big companies have a lot more money, they can just get whoever they want essentially. And so, if a person hiring for a junior in the first place still feels like a bit of a sucker because they couldn't match the compensation anyway.

Gregory Witek (11:34):
Bigger companies can always take someone from you, sometimes it's just the name of the company. But the fact that you need to jump jobs to get a salary raise that you deserve, this is a problem and I don't think that there's an excuse. I think that if, after a year of hiring junior developer, that person becomes productive and you know that they are worth more, you know that, on the market, they can be paid more, you have to adjust. You cannot just say, "Hey, I just spent so much time training this developer then I will keep paying them peanuts for the next half a year because I need to get their return," it just won't work. I think that companies need to adjust to that and need to realize that you need to do both. You need to do both training and you need to pay people fairly.

Alex Booker (12:15):
My impression from the pandemic was that a lot of companies and, therefore, users went online, there were more virtual events and socializing. I thought that would create a surge in demand for developers because now they want to add more features and solve new problems. And I thought that would create more opportunities for juniors but it seems like it's only created more opportunities for seniors. Why is that likely the case?

Gregory Witek (12:38):
We need to think about companies as systems that there is input, there is output and the company reacts to different environment impacts. And now, you have this situation where you have much more demand suddenly for your services or for your products because people are at home so everyone goes digital, so your company needs to scale up suddenly. If you need to scale up, it means that there is more pressure on your developers, on your current people because we need to do more work. How do you ensure that those people can focus on this particular opportunity? This might be opportunity once in a decade. If you don't do it now, after a year, it might be gone. So, what are you doing?

Gregory Witek (13:15):
You're trying to get your people focused on the things that matter now and you put investments on hold. The investments like, okay, let's build something that will give us money in five years. No, you put that on hold, you're focusing everyone on what matters now, you're trying to ride this wave and junior developers are investment. So, you're saying, "Okay, we do not have time to train junior developers, we do not have time to hire them right now because we are focusing on this particular work." On top of that, you have people leaving because of different things related to pandemic. People are tired, they're burned out and, since developers, we are very privileged to be in a market that pays really good salaries.

Gregory Witek (13:54):
So, a lot of developers, especially senior lead developers can afford to take a couple of months break and say, "Okay, look, I'm going to take a break, I'm going to move somewhere, go rent Airbnb for a couple months, stop working, just chill out." You have developers that are burnt out and say, "Hey, I need a break. I cannot work right now," and that all comes together with growing demand for your product. So, you are trying to get your developers as focused as possible on these couple of initiatives that are critical and everything else is just put on hold. That's what happened with hiring junior developers.

Gregory Witek (14:28):
When the hiring freezes stopped, people were still leaving companies over this time. So, there were a lot of roles to be back filled and there were a lot of new roles opened. And first you focus on critical roles, you focus on the lead developers that left the company, you focus on senior developers so these are the roles that you're filling in the first place. And only after you've got everything under control, then you will start thinking, "Okay, now let's start hiring junior developers, lead developers now that we've got the situation under control."

Alex Booker (14:57):
If I understand you right, and I'm reluctant to ask because the answer is scary, but it does sound like companies are like, "Eh, we can hire junior developers anytime. We can just open the door next month and the floodgates will open and we can tackle that when we need to, whereas now we want to capitalize on this more timely opportunity." Is that a fair assessment do you think?

Gregory Witek (15:15):
It certainly feels like that. If you open a junior developer position right now, you will get a lot of candidates. While for senior positions, sometimes you get three, five candidates and you realize that, "Okay, I have to get help from, maybe, external recruiters." And you go to these recruiters and they tell you, "Sorry, but we are fully occupied right now because everyone is hiring." So, there is this discrepancy that senior developers are badly needed and there is always someone above you in the hierarchy of companies. There are these companies that are bigger, that are richer, that are better known, et cetera so they take people from the market. So, that pool of developers that are available to you with your budget, with your brand, et cetera is smaller so you have to spend more resources, not to mention the raising salaries. You have to spend more resources, spend more time getting, finding those developers while, with junior developers, you know that they are there.

Gregory Witek (16:08):
So, you're saying, "Okay, if I hire a junior developer right now, I don't have anyone to lead the current project. So, that developer will be there but I still need someone to work on these mission critical things." It's not good to admit that but, yes, the situation is like that that there are not enough senior developers in the market. And I don't want to say that there are too many junior developers on the market, I still think that the market is growing. There is a place for everyone in this industry. Eventually, when all this calms down, when things get back to calm, then people will start hiring more junior developers because they are needed, it's just not at this particular moment. And that might last a couple more weeks, a couple more months, maybe a whole year, it's hard to say but it's not sustainable. It has to stop at some point.

Alex Booker (16:55):
There is this opinion by hair a lot that it's harder to onboard and work with junior developers in a remote era. Did you agree with that?

Gregory Witek (17:05):
I think that it's more difficult to onboard anyone remotely but only for companies that haven't been doing it since when they were created. A lot of companies have moved to the remote work or this hybrid work and they have no idea how to do it well. Even right now, after almost two years, they don't know how to do it well. I've seen onboarding processes that are terrible and that are so reliant on being in the same room that it takes time for companies to adjust to it and not knowing that … Let's say, we send you a laptop to your home and I know that our onboarding process is not fully reliable. There might be something that you might need to set up and figure out on your own. There might be some things that require us to jump on a call but maybe even set up the system, whatever. As a senior developer, I know that you will figure it out sooner or later. As a junior developer, I'm not sure if you're able to do it and how much time it will take.

Gregory Witek (18:03):
So, companies always think, okay, first let's figure out the thing for people who are here now then let's bring people on board who are able to onboard themselves. And then, once we figure out this process, once we know that, okay, we are confident in our remote onboarding, then we can bring less experienced people. And some companies, there are companies like GitLab or RemoteHQ, they've been doing remote since the beginning. So, their whole onboarding process has been organized around being remotely but that's one, 2% of all companies, probably even less. Most companies had to switch to that overnight in 2020 and they've been working on that since then but it's still far, far from perfect. And I changed jobs twice during pandemic and my onboarding process, the remote onboarding process, wasn't seamless. It was challenging to get some stuff done.

Alex Booker (18:58):
By the way, GitLab have this open source handbook for all employees which I think you probably know about, Gregory. But for people listening, it's really cool to check out because it talks a bit about their onboarding and stuff. Should we change the tone a little bit and talk about some of the more practical things people can do in the face of this market, Gregory?

Gregory Witek (19:14):
Yeah, absolutely. As I said, the title of my blog post was not 100% true. There are companies that are still hiring junior developers, there's not as many of them but they are there. And definitely, people who put a lot of work and enough effort, at some point, they will get this opportunity. In the past, you didn't need to put that much effort, it was easier to find these opportunities. Right now, it's harder so you need to put more effort but it doesn't mean that it won't work, it doesn't mean that you should put it on hold and wait a year and get back to maybe your previous job if you switched careers, et cetera. You still can get a job as a junior developer, it just requires more effort.

Alex Booker (19:53):
Not all companies are made equal. You have the MANG or FAANG type companies, you have other huge enterprises and these are probably the companies you were talking about, Gregory, that are capitalizing on very timely market opportunities. But there are also successful SMBs that might be investing in their product over time with their funding, for example. They're really just trying to build the best product and that's one way they can thrive in the market in the long term, maybe that's their belief. They don't see a timely market opportunity like you described. There's also more average businesses. Maybe businesses that have a technology department that aren't on the cutting edge at tech. And there are also, I think another category you mentioned in your post is, web agencies and places like that.

Alex Booker (20:35):
Do you have any thoughts about which of these types of companies a typical self-taught developer should maybe focus on or aspire to work at if they want the maximum chance of success in the next year or so?

Gregory Witek (20:46):
So, certainly, software houses hire more junior developers. I think that's just nature of the business because, for a software developer, one hour of developer's work equals a certain amount of dollars. So, as a junior developer, you will bring company less money but you quickly get to a point where you become profitable. Right now, maybe they're not hiring as many juniors as they used to because they still have this problem that seniors are leaving and you need to have a certain number of senior developers to shop to clients, et cetera. But certainly, this is a type of company where it's easier to start.

Gregory Witek (21:19):
Also, I think a lot of just smaller, more local companies are eager to hire junior developers. These companies don't necessarily have job offers on LinkedIn, maybe they have it in some local job boards, maybe they have it only on their careers page. There are lots of companies that, they are not very well organized, but they're willing to hire someone because they need some help. I know that it might be not the best start of the career, especially when you see that some people, after boot camp, some self-taught developers, get that job at Google, get that job at Netflix and you apply to a company of five or six people, but it's a start. You need only one job offer, you need only one job and one year of experience to get your foot into this industry and get higher from, get up from there.

Gregory Witek (22:06):
I don't know what types of companies necessarily hire more junior developers right now but look broader, search for job offers in places where others are not searching. If you only look at LinkedIn, that's where everyone searches for jobs. If I look for junior developer opportunities right now at LinkedIn, around me, in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, there are hundred or thousands of job offers there but everyone sees them. But if I go to some local job boards, then I can see something that is not necessarily on these global platforms. The other way to find more job opportunities is to just look at people around you. You have connections on LinkedIn, you can see some companies that are small, that have 20, 50 employees. Maybe they are not actively hiring but maybe you can send them an email saying, "Hey, I'm looking for my first job," maybe they have this an open position which really doesn't have any title but it's like, "Oh, if you want to work with us, just send us a message."

Gregory Witek (22:58):
I got my first job not via applying through any job portal, I just sent a message on a Polish equivalent of LinkedIn. There was a small company looking for mid-level developers, they were not looking for juniors but I said, "Hey, I'm a junior developer. I'm still a student but I'm learning fast. So, how about you give me internship and then, after a couple months, you hire me?" and that worked.

Alex Booker (23:19):
Do you agree with this advice that I hear quite a lot, actually. People say getting that first job is the hardest but it is also the first domino and, once you knock that, the rest will fall.

Gregory Witek (23:28):
Yeah, certainly. If you have certain experience and, even on LinkedIn, if you said that, "I'm a software developer, I have one year of experience," you will start showing up in the search results and you will start getting messages. And even when you send a resume somewhere, you will already have that one position, I am a professional software developer, and that changes a lot. I don't know why because, sometimes, this one year of experience in a not so good company, it might not be that valuable, you might actually learn a lot of bad practices and later you will have to unlearn them but it works magic. Once you find your first job, it will become much easier. Don't give up before you get there because it won't be always that difficult. It's just this first step that is the hardest.

Alex Booker (24:13):
You said that in this first year, in this first job, your experience might not be that relevant and, in fact, you can substitute work experience with a very low barrier to entry by collaborating on projects on GitHub or any other developer and I think that experience is super valuable. But what you described, I think, Gregory, is discoverability. Like you said, if you have that one year of professional experience, well, now LinkedIn recruiters, they might be filtering based on that criteria and, until you meet it, you don't even have a fair chance. When I hear something like that, I think, well, maybe a good approach is to sidestep that. If you can avoid applying altogether or avoid having to be discovered altogether and network essentially, but it's really about making connections and earning the opportunity to tell your story.

Alex Booker (24:59):
You can tell them a little bit about what you've been doing and where you want to go and demonstrate some of your, not just hard skills which are the coding bits, but also your ability to communicate. And frankly, I think, if you can think outside the box enough or build the gumption to find an opportunity a slightly unorthodox way, I actually think that's a great testament of character for a professional because it shows getting a job is a problem if you look at it that way and it demonstrates your problem solving abilities.

Gregory Witek (25:25):
If you're currently unemployed and you're looking for a job, then finding a job, easier job, treat it as your job and don't do it ad hoc, just plan it well. So, think about, okay, what are the channels where I can find it? So, add all these job portals to your bookmarks and check them every day, sign up for updates. If you attended a boot camp or if you know some boot camp, contact the alumni, ask them, "Hey, how did you find your first job? Did you network with someone? Did you apply everywhere?" Check some meetups, there are meetups all around right now. They're mostly remote so it's more difficult to interact with people there because it's just limited to watching a presentation. But if you can attend a meet up in person and have a chat here and there, that might be a worth investment of your time.

Gregory Witek (26:09):
Doing open source, of course, you can be discovered. But all these things, you cannot do just one. You cannot just do open source and hope that one day someone will find you and offer you a job. That might happen, it happens to people that they are found through their open source work. We hear about these stories a lot just because they are great stories but they are not common. If they were common, we wouldn't hear that much. So, you need to diversify. You need to apply on LinkedIn, you need to send some emails to recruiters. You can contact recruiters directly on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, I'm looking for my first job. If you have anything ever, just drop me a message." You can interact with people on Twitter, on GitHub, you can do some open source. The more you do, the more opportunities are there.

Alex Booker (26:52):
One question that is quite difficult to answer, Gregory, I don't know how to answer it myself sometimes even though I have some thoughts, is just this idea of when are your coding skills good enough? When does someone know that they are ready to find success and start applying? Or maybe that doesn't matter, maybe they should just start getting experience applying and interviewing, if they can, as early as possible. What do you think?

Gregory Witek (27:12):
I think the earlier you start applying, the more information, the more feedback you're getting. Some companies will reject you immediately, some companies will give you an interview and then they will reject you after the first or second call. But then you can always ask them, "Hey, what can I do so that, in a year, I can apply to your company and I can get that job?" A lot of companies, again, they will ignore it, they will not send the any feedback. But there will be a couple companies saying, "Hey, you totally missed this question, you had no idea what you were saying." So, it was clear that you just don't know it yet and that's a valuable information because, then, you know what you need to focus on.

Gregory Witek (27:50):
A lot of people focus on building yet another portfolio project but that, sometimes, makes absolutely no impact. I don't often look at portfolios of the candidates unless I see some well-known open source project, I see that they are contributors so I check what kind of contribution it is. Are they maintainers? Are they just fixing typos, which is valuable as well, but I just want to understand what they're doing. But if you're doing yet another reapplication and then you have 50 of them in your portfolio, maybe that doesn't make sense because everyone does it. So, focus on something that will help you to get through that next interview stage and feedback from companies is very valuable. Therefore, the earlier you apply, the earlier you get this feedback, the more time you can spend on improving your skills.

Alex Booker (28:40):
And just one follow up idea is that, say you are rejected, regrettably, and they are generous enough to share some feedback, this kind of feedback is a gift, honestly. And there are a few ways to solicit good feedback. I would just suggest you Google it, how to ask for specific feedback, because you might increase your chances and that's important considering how valuable it is. But then, imagine you follow their feedback and then you apply again in a few months once you've addressed it, that's so cool because then you just show that you are tenacious, maybe, and teachable, obviously. You have the humility to ask and then the dedication to implement that advice. I think that's so clever. If people can do that, that would be awesome.

Gregory Witek (29:14):
Yes. And as a hiring manager, I really like to interact with people that I interviewed in the past and it didn't work. Maybe I rejected them but maybe they rejected an offer that my company made them, maybe they withdrew in the middle of the process because they found another job. But I remember those people and then I see them again and I'm happy that we reconnected and that there is another chance that we might be working together. So, I think that applying second or first time after a couple months, each company has different rules how long you need to wait, but seeing those candidates, I feel really good because it means that, okay, they really want this job which means that they are motivated to work here. And I see the improvements which means that, if I gave them a feedback, they took it and they worked on that which proves that they will work further. I see their progress.

Alex Booker (30:02):
What have you seen that would be relevant to junior developers that make them stand out as candidates? What are some of the things that would really impress you?

Gregory Witek (30:09):
Something that goes beyond the standard tutorials. There are certain tutorials, there are certain courses that are very popular and then people put the projects that they did from these tutorials in their portfolios and in their resumes. As a junior developer, the truth is that, unless you graduated from a university, if you are a self-taught developer, if you graduate from boot camp, probably your resume is similar to other resumes because you don't have much experience. And if you do the same project as everyone, then what is the difference between you and other candidates? So, if you do something that is creative, it doesn't have to be completely new idea, but it can be an idea with a twist. I took this project from a course and then I added something that was my own idea on top of that, that makes a difference.

Gregory Witek (30:57):
But again, the problem with the portfolio is that a lot of people just don't look at it. So, sometimes, maybe, in order to stand out, you can just put something catchy in your resume. You can put a project there and say, "I added something creative there." Resume is the thing that I will read, probably whole resume if it's one to two pages. If it's seven pages, I won't. So, I will read it and then you have this one opportunity to draw attention from me so that I stop and say, "Okay, hmm, let's consider that person." Put effort into making sure that there is something that draws my attention in that resume because there is a chance that I will look at your portfolio, that I will see your [inaudible 00:31:35] GitHub, but a lot of recruiters just will never see it. So, if you put 90% of your efforts there and only 5% of people will look at it, then you're not increasing your chances.

Alex Booker (31:45):
Give us an impression of what volume of applicants you get and, therefore, how much time you can allocate to each of them. I'm just assuming, if you had six or seven, maybe you could afford to spend a bit more time trying to find the best in each candidate, give them the benefit of the doubt. But when you're talking about tens and tens, if not hundreds, it is just not possible, you need them to stand out.

Gregory Witek (32:06):
So, that varies a lot between companies. In smaller companies, they might get a single digit number of candidates. A company that doesn't promote their job offer on LinkedIn, they just use some local job boards or maybe local career site. If you are sending your resume to a well-known company and you found this job offer on LinkedIn or on the career site of a well-known company, probably there are tens or even hundreds of candidates for that position. So, your resume is one of a hundred resumes. There is a chance that, by the time you send this resume, actually recruiter will not even look at it anymore. Because the recruiter will say, "Okay, I found 20 resumes that match our expectations, let's go with that ones first and, if we don't find anyone, then we will look at more."

Gregory Witek (32:49):
Again, when we talk about the first job, you will not stand out, really, in terms of your resume skills so, sometimes, timing matters. If you see a job offer, just apply to it within one, two, three days because, if you wait a week, then it might be already filled. Maybe it's still open, technically, but maybe there are already enough candidates in the pipeline that they will just not accept new resumes.

Alex Booker (33:11):
It is alarming how much I learned about getting a job from apps like Tinder, believe it or not, and searching for apartments. Because on Tinder, often, people are looking for a reason to reject you and that applies a little bit to jobs. And when you talk about the state of apartments and house markets and things right now, a bit crazy, there's more demand than supply, essentially, and so you sometimes really have to be there when the ad goes live, you need to set up the email alerts. And you can do that on LinkedIn and other job platforms and you need to be cognizant of the fact that, just generally, the earlier you apply, the better chance you have of being recognized.

Alex Booker (33:46):
I am currently under the impression that LinkedIn is not a great place for juniors to look for roles because most companies, especially hiring at any scale, they need to pay LinkedIn money to post the jobs. And so, it makes way more sense for them to try their own job board, which is free or mostly free first, then maybe there's job board scrapers that will pick it up. And so, LinkedIn seems to be the place to go if you have a more specialized role, but junior dev roles, due to the current state of the market like we spoke about, they don't tend to land on LinkedIn that much and, if they do, they tend to be very, very competitive like you alluded to. Is this assumption of mine on the right track or am I just off base, do you think?

Gregory Witek (34:23):
I would agree with you. When it comes to job offers themselves, yes, for junior developers, probably it's not worth as much. But almost every professional is on LinkedIn and almost every recruiter is on LinkedIn, therefore, it's a resource, you can find a lot of useful things. So, you can find companies around you, you can see how many employees they have and you can find a link to their website and maybe they have careers page and then you can check that careers page once a week to see whether there is something there. There are recruiters who, you can just drop them a message and say, "Hey, I'm looking for a junior developer position, is there anything that you know or maybe one of your colleagues has some position," or something like that. So, you can write to recruiters.

Gregory Witek (35:01):
So, yeah, in terms of the job offers themselves, I would say that, yeah, LinkedIn is definitely better for senior developers, mid-level developers as well but it's still valuable resource because you can find a lot of information there.

Alex Booker (35:11):
Yeah, use it like a social network. But in terms of a job board, maybe consider it but realize that there are other opportunities out there, other platforms and so on.

Gregory Witek (35:20):
One more thing is that, if you apply anywhere, probably they will check your profile on LinkedIn.

Alex Booker (35:25):
Yeah, true.

Gregory Witek (35:27):
So, just being there and having your profile filled with nice-looking photo and with some experience. If you don't have professional experience, put volunteering experience. Use some keywords in your description, use some objectives. If you want to relocate somewhere, put the name of the place where you want to relocate as your current location because, then, you will pop up in the search results. If I'm looking for senior developers in Amsterdam, even if you don't live here, you will be listed as Amsterdam and then later you can tell me, "Hey, actually I will be relocating from UK. Is that a problem?" "Well, not anymore. We want to hire you so we will help you with relocation, et cetera." But if you say I'm now in London in your profile, then you will never pop up in my search results.

Alex Booker (36:11):
We are pretty much out time, I think, Gregory. I just wanted to ask you one last question. It might be a bit of a personal question so I hope you don't mind my asking, but clearly, you've been very generous with your time today. Coming on the podcast is one thing and that's about an hour, but it's so obvious, from everything you said, this is something you've given a lot of thought to and, as people know by now, you've written about it previously. And one more thing I'd like to plug of yours is your YouTube channel which people can also find a link to in the show notes. What is your motivation to help junior programmers and new developers in this position? Because it seems like something you're quite passionate about to me.

Gregory Witek (36:43):
Yeah. So, it gives me a lot of satisfaction. I don't know, it just gives me joy to help people. I always like teaching people, mentoring, I'm passionate about it. But also, it gives me ideas for my future blog posts, for my future videos. And when I was a junior developer, I had a couple of good programmers around me but I never really had a mentor that could help me navigate the career. And I made some pretty bad decisions in my career just because I never had anyone that could explain me how things work and I'm trying to fill this gap a bit because I know there are lots of people like that. They work for a company but they never have anyone that they can honestly ask about, "Hey, how do I make the most of my career?" And I think that it just feels good to help people to get that knowledge.

Alex Booker (37:31):
Gregory, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, it's been my pleasure.

Gregory Witek (37:34):
It's fantastic to be here. Thank you again for inviting me.

Alex Booker (37:36):
That was Gregory Witek, an experienced hiring manager and backend developer himself. Thank you for listening. If you've made it this far in the episode, I would encourage you to subscribe for more helpful and uplifting episodes with recently hired juniors and industry experts alike. We tend to alternate interviewing one of each every other week so that you can learn from people just a few steps ahead of you who got a job as well as people like Gregory who have been doing this for a long time and can share a little bit from the inside what companies are looking for from a junior developer. You can also tweet me, your host, Alex Booker, and share what lessons you learned from the episode so I can thank you personally for tuning in. My Twitter handle, along with Scrimba's, is in the show notes. Until then, I will see you next week.