[ajug-members] Entry Level Java Jobs

Burr Sutter sutter at bravepoint.com
Thu Sep 23 07:03:45 EDT 2004


Hey Tom,

Thanks for this great suggestion. I'd love to know if any 
AJUG'ers take you up on the offer.  I often hear about 
people looking but not always about people taking action.

Thanks,
Burr


On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:13:47 -0400
  "Tom Boyce" <tom.boyce at wellfound.com> wrote:
>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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