DragonMan
DragonMan
Freelancer

"Seeking Guidance: Overcoming Low Academics, Career Gap, and Landing a Developer Job in India

Hello everyone,

I'm 2020 graduate. Due to my low academic scores (below the eligibility criteria), I have been unable to get responses from recruiters. I initially thought about preparing for government exams, but that did not go too well. In the meantime, I have been doing freelance work while studying. However, I cannot count that as formal experience.

Currently, I am applying for jobs - my portfolio is ready and I am trying to make some open source contributions. However, I have two major challenges in getting recruiter calls:

  1. My 10th class academic score is low.

  2. There is a 3 year career gap after graduation.

I am unsure how to tackle these situations. Could you please suggest approaches to land a job given these circumstances?

13mo ago
JadeArgent
JadeArgent
Independent Law Practice13mo

Look, no one's ever verified if I even have a degree and I doubt any of the people I work with will care if I call them up and tell them I've never studied a word of formal education in my life

You're already working on freelancing projects, just try and build a portfolio out of it, have a good LinkedIn profile (and other industry specific profiles like github) and make sure to network well

For reference - I sent my CV to a recruiter for T1 firms a month or so ago - she sent me a rejection mail Right now, I make way more than anyone with my experience (or even more) would at a T1 firm and am on track to double it soon, so... I mean, these recruiters only look for traditional buzzwords, I've not studied from a so called T1 institute, I don't have any T1 law firm experience on my resume, she threw it out, simple

Also, there's the thing about finding your market too, traditional companies/firms (like the T1s I mentioned) go for on paper merits, for example, I have a family member who admits she has no actual skill but a Big 4 consulting firm picked her up from her T1 business school to make PPTs

I work more with Startups, I know they get a lot of flack, but there's a real dearth of GOOD talent in the industry and they're willing to look past this nonesense, value your skills and pay for it

DragonMan
DragonMan
Freelancer13mo

Thanks for your comment. It gives me hope of get into job as a developer. How to I find these startup companies and If I found how to make sure it's not a fake company. Could you please guide me .

JadeArgent
JadeArgent
Independent Law Practice13mo

Well, you have to see what platform is used by people in your chosen industry

For mine it's mostly twitter and LinkedIn I'm pretty active on LinkedIn - but twitter I'm a little weirded out by

Just be super active in these circles, keep reading about new companies, send cold DMs and messages, network a lot

What do you mean by fake companies?

baatli_wala
baatli_wala
Amazon13mo

I have been in this industry for 3 years now. No one asked for my marksheet even once.

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