[ajug-members] Entry Level Java Jobs
Tom Boyce
tom.boyce at wellfound.com
Wed Sep 22 20:13:47 EDT 2004
I am in the 0-2 year category, but fortunately, employed. My skills are
rudimentary at best so to help build them, I have taken on a project for a
non-profit to build a statistical tracking program. It is browser based
(jsp/Servlet) using Tomcat 5 and MySQL and I am developing it in
NetBeans3.6. It is a fairly complicated application and I will be employing
XML, EJB's, struts and, down the road, Web Services. I want to use every
technology that makes sense. This is a totally volunteer project (no
money), but if you'd like to learn, I'll take on a couple of people. If
you're experienced and want to help - I can use you too - especially if
you're willing to guide the rest of us and/or provide architectural
guidance.
I generally work on this every evening and at least one weekend day. I may
start to travel as part of my job, so the work will be done independently
with only periodic weekend meetings when I'm in town. It may be possible to
do Web-ex meetings should the need arise.
If anyone is truly interested, email me directly at boycet at bellsouth.net
with any questions or if you want greater detail.
Tom Boyce
-----Original Message-----
From: ajug-members-bounces at ajug.org [mailto:ajug-members-bounces at ajug.org]
On Behalf Of Burr Sutter
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 7:06 PM
To: ajug-members at ajug.org
Subject: Re: [ajug-members] Entry Level Java Jobs
Hello AJUG'ers,
Based upon simple observation of the number of recruiters
and number of job postings on the AJUG website
(www.ajug.org/jobs) it seems that experienced people are
in high demand. There are normally several jobs a week
being posted. Most "senior" (5+ years Java) resources are
well employeed. Most "medium" (2 to 5 years
Java)resources also seem to be busy as well assuming them
have some key skills (e.g. J2EE, Struts, JUnit, Ant,
Commons Logging/Log4J, XML, JAXP, and Hibernate is working
its way up in important)
At some point employers can't hold out for the experienced
people and will need to dip down into the 0 to 2 year
range. If they don't start to utilize the more "junior"
people they'll have to postpone their Java-based projects.
And C# people are also in fairly high demand (it is
basically the same crowd).
Here are some thoughts for those people in the 0 to 2 year
range looking to break into the Java development game.
- Build some applications on your own with Tomcat, Struts,
Hibernate. Throw in some various flavors of EJB using
JBoss as a container. While your future project may not
use EJB you need to be able to speak intelligently about
the topic.
Don't build a recipe database for your wife.
Do find a friend who runs a small business and build
something for him/her. Deploy it for real. Even if you
don't get paid you now have a real reference.
- Join an open source project as a committer.
- If you can get an interview be prepared to demonstrate
your applications, show off your code and chalk-talk
(whiteboard) your chosen architecture.
The hard part is getting the interview. For that you need
to find a way to bypass the HR/recruiter person and get to
the hiring manager. Do follow up with emails and phone
calls! Find a way to let them know that you want the job,
you'll work for very little money just to get experience
and guess what you've built and deployed real software for
real users (even if it is your father-in-law's landscaping
business).
I've recently been in the hiring manager mode and was able
to screen over 20 candidate resumes, bring in 10 people
for interviews, pick 4 of the best candidates for the
money and if we needed one more person it would have
gotten down into that below 1 year range of experience.
Some were considered.
Also be prepared for a real technical interview. I used to
give written tests but now I simply ask some very specific
questions and ask the candidate to put the answers up on
the white board. One example might be to place three
strings "blue,green,red" in a collection and then iterate
through it. You would be amazed as to how many people who
have Java on their resume get knocked out by this simple
test. Another personal favorite is to decribe the various
mechanisms needed to maintain the state of user's
in-process order (e.g. shopping cart) in a web-based
application. Again, you easily find the people who have
really built a web application vs simply put it on their
resumes. Some are lucky and after a few moments of the
sweating and squirming in their chairs they blurt out
session. I then respond with a smile and say "yes, now
how does the session work?".
There are more but you get the basic (er, I mean Java)
picture.
Burr
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 17:40:54 -0400
"Berlin Brown" <bbrown at khafra.com> wrote:
>I have gone through a lot of this stuff, (I could be
>wrong), but saying you
>know 'java' or 'C#' is 'ok' but knowing what industries
>are doing with
>specific things, frameworks will really get you ahead. I
>actually got to
>look at some resumes for a position for projects with our
>team and everyone
>had 'java', the DBA I work with has java and C++ on his
>resume and he doenst
>even know it(he did take a class). The point, find out
>what companies with
>enterprise software are doing, for example
>JDBC(low-level),
>Hibernate(higher-level), learn J2EE or at least get
>familiar with them, show
>you know more than just java or more than just the
>language. And Struts is
>a big resume bullet, I havent seen too many web or J2EE
>jobs that dont have
>Struts somewhere in the description.
>
>I am not an expert at this, but that is what people tell
>me, so I am just
>passing it along to you.
>
>And on .NET, I know nothing about it, sorry, I dont think
>you will lose too
>much with spending most your time with java(but I could
>be wrong).
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <jimsbuddog at juno.com>
>To: <ajug-members at ajug.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 5:03 PM
>Subject: [ajug-members] Entry Level Java Jobs
>
>
>>
>> Dear AJUG Members:
>> The day has finally come. I've finished and now
>>have my Associates
>Degree in Computer Programming (with a 3.84+ average). I
>majored in Java,
>with minors in Perl, JavaScript, HTML, and C#.
>> I now need a job. Does anybody know of any
>>companies hiring entry
>level positions for Java, etc? I've got 20+ years
>programming in Cobol
>behind me, with all the extras (design, testing, etc), so
>I'm not really a
>rookie.
>> Thanks for any help you can give me. I know
>>recruiters don't handle
>entry level jobs, so this is one way that might work
>toward me getting a
>job.
>>
>> Jim Sladek
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ajug-members mailing list
>> ajug-members at ajug.org
>> http://www.ajug.org/mailman/listinfo/ajug-members
>>
>
>
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