You may want to use a recruiter (or several); they will get a commission from the company where they place you and can work on finding you a job at the same time you are looking on your own. However, they will not always be looking out for your best interest overall though, so make sure to hold fast on anything that is non-negotiable for you.
Also, consider applying to positions that aren't looking for software developers specifically to get your foot in the door. There are many technical positions that can involve software engineering, like QA, application support, IT, devops, helpdesk etc. A lot of these positions that need "bodies", but are good stepping stones for entry level positions.
+1 to networking, though user groups for a given technology (e.g. .Net user groups) might be better than "networking" events which can be a lot of false leads.
And on your resume (saw it looking at your comment history):
* Include an introductory objective sentence or two at the beginning (I'm so-and-so interested in...seeking such kind of work).
* You may want to have a skills section with bullets of your skills, a lot easier for recruiters and hiring managers to quickly read
* Create multiple version of your resumes for different positions you apply for. E.g. Something that's more tailored for frontend and another tailored for backend. You may even just want a few versions that are organized differently to do some A/B testing.
* Are you writing cover letters? I'm not sure how much weight they carry these days (I can't say I've seen any from candidates in a long time) but really anything that sets you apart won't hurt.
* You may also want to create a public Github repo with representative samples of your work.
* The mygoldanimals.com URL in your resume doesn't work, you may want to indicate that it's no longer maintained.
Recruiters say I lack experience. I have interviewed with Robert Half Technology, Addison Group, and Talener.
I have been rejected from QA. The interviewer was not convinced that I would be interested enough, since most people don't go dev -> QA (I had a 2 month developer contract at a startup).
I have multiple versions of my resume. I actually paid a service called ResumeRaiders, where they wrote an objective. I've received lots of negative feedback from that.
I have a Github full of small projects (ASP.NET site, API, AngularJS, various JS programs, etc.), but I felt it did more harm leaving it on my resume.
mygoldanimals.com hosting is paid by the client. It was working last month. If you do a Google search, you should see it's an actual business. I'm not sure what's going on with that, especially since the shared host provider has been bad over the year. It's unfortunate that it's currently not working.
It's sometimes a judgement call, though. If an incremental approach is too expensive, haphazard, or just not technically sound, doing a soft launch and gradually transitioning users can work well too. This obviously has it's own drawbacks and complexities but it's a good alternative if an in-place upgrade isn't feasible. That said, at the end of the day an all-or-nothing release really should be the last resort.
I'm in the US, so it's possible all this may not apply, but my two cents:
What has been your job hunting strategy so far? What kinds of positions have you been looking for?
If you're just sending your resume online you need to do a lot more. Don't hesitate to reach out to recruiters or individuals at companies directly (but be professional about it). You have to treat finding a job as a job in of itself. Track leads, use multiple forms of communication (online, email, social, snail mail, in person even), and follow up on positions you apply to if you don't hear back in a reasonable amount of time.
Personally, I've found the best leads are through people I already know or people I meet. I would look if there are any meetups or networking events nearby you can attend. If that doesn't work, perhaps you can virtually create a presence online by contributing to open projects or be more active on visible forums (HN, Stack Overflow, etc.).
Also, maybe you can broaden your scope to a wider array of positions so you can just get started working somewhere. Sometimes once you start at a company other positions open up that you can transition too.
That aside, a few notes on your site:
* The Voter link doesn't work.
* The Mlinar link opens a page with the same CS:GO language.
* Your grammar is a bit stilted. I'm guessing English isn't your native language, but if English speakers are your your target audience you may want to clean it up.
* The individual portfolio pages need richer descriptions of the kind of work you were doing.
* You have a few mailto links, but you don't actually list your email anywhere.
What's your previous work history and educational background? That's the first thing that's going to come up with any employer. It could be in your benefit or not depending on what you were doing previously. How you frame it to potential employers will be key in getting callbacks.
Since you don't have a deep dev background I would suggest a portfolio site with links and descriptions of side projects and any other relevant work.
Regarding a resume, if you're going to include all the different technologies you've been looking into you should provide some indication of your level of experience with them, e.g. beginner, advanced, etc. Personally, I get a bit put off if resumes from inexperienced candidates contain a laundry list of technologies without ranking and it just turns out they've only used them in passing.
Generally, you may not want to spread yourself too thin learning so much this early in your career. Getting some deeper experience with a few key technologies could be very desirable to potential employers. It sounds like you've been mostly concentrating on web stacks in which case you may want to focus your job hunt on web developer positions specifically rather than full stack or back end.
Hey, thanks for the response. Years ago I was doing network and Windows system administration for a few years. Went back to school to get a degree in the humanities.
To be clear, I am planning on going the portfolio route. Part of the problem is that I have a few exciting ideas, and one is a full stack project, while two others would work best as iOS apps. Thanks again.
That's hugely relevant experience! And if you can bring good communication skills to the table, even better. Half the battle hiring qualified candidates is establishing if they are organized, communicative, and professional. I too have a humanities degree (poli sci) and as I've become more experienced the critical thinking and communication aspects have been extremely helpful. Use that to your advantage.
It sounds like you know how to navigate the technical waters well enough, I would say weigh which technology stack is more appealing to you and dive in. iOS and rich front end are both in fairly high demand, you might want to investigate your local market a bit to factor in whichever seems to have more opportunities if you don't plan on moving any time soon.
Oh, and the other thing, be prepared for in depth technical exercises in interviews. They're no fun, but a lot of places ask academic and somewhat irrelevant algorithm and data structure questions regardless of if your applied skills are great. My wife got me this book, and language not withstanding, it seems to cover the typical types of technical questions interviewers ask: http://amzn.com/098478280X
I ran across this site the other day when I was looking at overhauling my .emacs file since I'm only an occasional emacs user these days. This guy has a great starter repo of his customized .emacs.d directory that takes care of a lot of the setup work to use all the customizations and modes he's using: https://github.com/magnars/.emacs.d
One note, if you do clone the repo, make sure to use the --recursive option (as the readme instructs) since there are a bunch of other git repositories imported in the repo.
That is, even if you didn't want to use it outright for your config, prelude's init.el and modules are a good resource for learning how to wire things together with Emacs Lisp.
> One note, if you do clone the repo, make sure to use the --recursive option (as the readme instructs) since there are a bunch of other git repositories imported in the repo.
Doing this, you can tell that this guy really doesn't care for the Emacs package-repositories :)
>Why are we doing that kind of help for free? Aren't there liabilities? Don't businesses charge thousands of dollars for that kind of support/freelance programming work?
Yes, many companies have large lines of business just providing support. At the end of the day it's all about the value it provides your company and your clients. If you're able to retain and attract users/clients then some free support could be worth it as a sign of cooperation and goodwill. If they're already paying customers you may need to better define what's covered by your SLA and various support agreements. However, if they are asking for advanced help outside of those agreements then you can just say you don't provide additional support. Or if your company has the resources you can always charge them for engineer support (for example, MS charges $259/h for advanced support during business hours).
Some plans offer a high deductible PPO option, e.g. if you're out of state/out of network then you pay up to $1k deductible and the plan covers the rest. Though that may not be feasible depending on your company size and existing plans. As others suggested, reimbursement may be the easiest route.
The best case scenario is that you tell them ahead of time and they are agreeable and supportive. The worst case scenario, if it's at-will employment, is that they terminate you immediately. If other employees in your company have given notice far in advance and they've been treated well then you're probably fine, but it's always a possibility that your employer may use this knowledge to their advantage.
Also, consider applying to positions that aren't looking for software developers specifically to get your foot in the door. There are many technical positions that can involve software engineering, like QA, application support, IT, devops, helpdesk etc. A lot of these positions that need "bodies", but are good stepping stones for entry level positions.
+1 to networking, though user groups for a given technology (e.g. .Net user groups) might be better than "networking" events which can be a lot of false leads.
And on your resume (saw it looking at your comment history): * Include an introductory objective sentence or two at the beginning (I'm so-and-so interested in...seeking such kind of work). * You may want to have a skills section with bullets of your skills, a lot easier for recruiters and hiring managers to quickly read * Create multiple version of your resumes for different positions you apply for. E.g. Something that's more tailored for frontend and another tailored for backend. You may even just want a few versions that are organized differently to do some A/B testing. * Are you writing cover letters? I'm not sure how much weight they carry these days (I can't say I've seen any from candidates in a long time) but really anything that sets you apart won't hurt. * You may also want to create a public Github repo with representative samples of your work. * The mygoldanimals.com URL in your resume doesn't work, you may want to indicate that it's no longer maintained.
Good luck!