Coding & Tech · Guide
How to Get Your First Developer Job
From zero to hired: what to build, how to apply, what recruiters actually want to see from juniors.
Getting your first dev job is harder than getting your second. You have no signal — no GitHub history, no references, no production experience. You have to manufacture signal. This guide walks through how to do that, what to build, and how to actually land interviews.
If you’re self-taught, bootcamp, or CS student, the path is roughly the same: skills + proof + outreach.
1. Pick a stack and commit
Don’t learn five languages badly. Pick one stack (e.g., React + Node + Postgres) and go deep. Employers hire for a specific stack. Breadth hurts until you have production experience.
2. Build 3 portfolio projects
Not tutorials. Real projects that solve real problems. Deployed live. With a README explaining trade-offs. 3 solid projects beats 10 tutorial clones. Think: a working SaaS prototype, a real API backend, a data-viz dashboard with a dataset you care about.
3. Put everything on GitHub
Daily commits for 90 days show consistency. Clean READMEs. No “learning” repos front and center — curate. GitHub is your visible work history. Recruiters check it in the first 5 seconds.
4. Deploy your projects
A project on GitHub with “coming soon” deploys isn’t a project. Vercel, Netlify, Fly.io, Render — all free tiers. A live URL someone can click on is worth 10x a screenshot. Deployment is a skill itself.
5. Write a technical blog
One post per month. How you solved something, what tripped you up, what you built. 10 posts over a year = huge signal of communication skill and learning. Even if nobody reads them, the writing makes you smarter.
6. Learn to talk about trade-offs
Junior interviews test whether you understand why, not just how. Why SQL vs NoSQL? Why REST vs GraphQL? Why monolith vs microservices? You don’t need the right answer — you need to articulate the trade-offs. See REST vs GraphQL.
7. Apply to 50 places, not 500
Quality over quantity. Customize each resume and cover letter (see cover letter guide). Mass-applying to 500 jobs via LinkedIn Easy Apply yields ~0 callbacks. Targeted applications work.
8. Reach out to engineers, not recruiters
Cold email engineers at companies you admire. “I built X using your tech stack, would love 15 minutes of your time.” Conversion is way higher than applying cold. A warm intro through an engineer beats 100 applications.
9. Practice interview problems
Leetcode easy and medium. Do 50-100 problems, not 500. Focus on patterns (two pointers, BFS, hash maps) rather than memorizing solutions. Our interview prep guide has more.
10. Prepare behavioral stories
“Tell me about a challenging project.” “Tell me about a conflict.” Prep 5-7 STAR-format stories. Use bootcamp projects, school projects, open source — any concrete experience. Generic answers kill interviews.
11. Consider contract or paid internships
Sometimes the straight full-time route is closed. A 3-month contract or internship at any tech-adjacent company puts “professional experience” on your resume. The second job is vastly easier to get.
12. Expect 3-12 months
Self-taught devs typically search 6-12 months for a first role. Don’t panic at 8 weeks. Track applications, refine the approach weekly, and keep building. Persistence is most of the job.
Your first 90 days
Build 3 real projects. Deploy them. Write 3 blog posts. Do 50 Leetcode problems. Apply to 50 companies with customized resumes. Cold-email 30 engineers. This is a full-time job. Treat it like one.