#CareerAdvice #ComputerScience #JobReadiness #SkillsDevelopment
🎓 Congratulations on completing your bachelor’s degree in computer science! It’s completely normal to feel uncertain about your skills and future prospects, especially when you’re just starting out in your career. But don’t worry, with the right approach and determination, you can definitely improve yourself and become job-ready in no time. Let’s explore some practical steps you can take to enhance your skills and build a successful career in computer science.
Assess Your Skills and Interests
First and foremost, it’s important to assess your current skills and interests to determine the areas where you need improvement and the specific areas of computer science that truly resonate with you. Consider the following steps to gain clarity on your skills and interests:
1. Take a skills assessment test or online quizzes to identify your strengths and weaknesses in different areas of computer science.
2. Reflect on the courses and topics that you enjoyed the most during your bachelor’s degree program.
3. Explore different career paths within computer science, such as software development, data science, cybersecurity, and more, to determine which field aligns with your interests and goals.
Identify Your Learning Style
Understanding how you learn best can significantly impact your ability to acquire new skills and knowledge effectively. Take some time to identify your learning style and find the most suitable resources and methods for your learning process:
1. Are you a visual learner who benefits from watching video tutorials and diagrams, or do you learn better through reading and written materials?
2. Do you prefer self-paced learning or structured courses with assigned deadlines?
3. Consider utilizing online learning platforms, such as Coursera, Udemy, or Khan Academy, to access a wide range of courses and tutorials tailored to different learning styles.
Strengthen Your Foundations
Since you feel that your foundations in computer science are not as strong as you’d like them to be, it’s crucial to dedicate time to reinforce your understanding of the fundamental concepts. Here are some strategies to help you solidify your foundations:
1. Revisit your college textbooks, lecture notes, and assignments to review the core concepts and principles of computer science.
2. Engage in coding challenges and practice problems on platforms like LeetCode, HackerRank, or Codecademy to hone your coding skills and problem-solving abilities.
3. Seek out online tutorials and guides that cover the basics of programming languages, algorithms, and data structures to refresh your knowledge.
Build Practical Experience
In addition to theoretical knowledge, gaining practical experience through real-world projects and internships is essential for enhancing your employability in the field of computer science. Consider the following avenues to gain hands-on experience:
1. Contribute to open-source projects on platforms like GitHub to collaborate with other developers and showcase your coding skills to potential employers.
2. Pursue internships or part-time positions at tech companies or startups to immerse yourself in a professional environment and gain practical experience in your chosen field.
3. Create your own programming projects or software applications to demonstrate your creativity, problem-solving abilities, and practical knowledge to prospective employers.
Networking and Mentorship
Building a strong professional network and seeking mentorship from experienced professionals can greatly accelerate your growth and provide valuable insights into the industry. Here are some tips for expanding your network and finding a mentor:
1. Join online communities, forums, and social media groups dedicated to computer science and technology to connect with like-minded individuals and industry professionals.
2. Attend tech meetups, workshops, and conferences to meet potential mentors and build relationships with professionals in the field.
3. Reach out to alumni from your college or professionals in your desired field for mentorship and guidance on navigating your career path in computer science.
Continuous Learning and Adaptation
It’s important to embrace a mindset of continuous learning and adaptation as the field of computer science is constantly evolving. Stay updated with the latest trends, technologies, and best practices by following these practices:
1. Subscribe to industry-leading blogs, podcasts, and newsletters to stay informed about the latest developments in computer science and technology.
2. Enroll in advanced courses and certifications to deepen your expertise in specific areas of computer science and gain recognition for your skills.
3. Embrace opportunities for lifelong learning and continuous improvement to remain competitive and adaptable in the ever-changing tech industry.
Final Thoughts
Remember that improvement takes time, effort, and a willingness to learn from your experiences. By following the steps outlined above and maintaining a proactive approach to your professional development, you can certainly overcome your uncertainties and emerge as a confident and skilled professional in the field of computer science. Best of luck on your journey, and never hesitate to seek advice and support from the vibrant community of professionals and enthusiasts in the tech industry.
In conclusion, know that it’s normal to feel uncertain about your skills and future prospects, but with the right approach and determination, you can definitely improve yourself and become job-ready in no time. Good luck!
just get a job and keep working on it
You can definitely do it, everyone can. The types of position you’re able to excel at depend a bit on your personality, but for the most part it’s a job like any other. You practice, you get better.
Stop asking yourself “can I do it”. That’s a typical way procrastinators (trust me, I’ve been there) put off work. You spend a week planning how you’re going to structure your practice, then it’s time to get started with the *actual* work and you start worrying and doubting yourself and putting off actual work. Never actually sitting down, learning for 4 or 5 hours, then doing it again tomorrow, and the day after, and every day after that.
Yes, you can do it. You can *definitely* do it. Now do it.
You can do a few things to help.
1. An internship can be a corporate ‘safe space’ that will let you learn, with an expectation from your boss that you are going to make mistakes.
2. How much of your confusion is due to imposter syndrome? i.e. believing you’re bad at something just because you compare yourself to others. Do a deep dive on your skillset and determine whether you’re actually unskilled, or you’re just being hard on yourself. Maybe it’s a combination of both — fresh graduates aren’t experts in their field.
3. Look for local charities and get some volunteer hours going in the area of computer science. If you’re ineffective, there’s no big loss (unless you crash their entire system lol) – they will be happy for the free work, and you can get some hands-on experience.
4. Can you talk to any of your professors? They might have suggestions.
5. A lot of colleges have career centres that will help you craft a resume and sell yourself effectively. Does yours?
What you need is a job and work experience. I felt the same. Experience _counts_ and until you actually do something productive and grow into a person that has something to offer others don’t; you will keep feeling this way.
The people transitioning to software from a different field have dedication and longterm planning. Also there’s a selection bias there. None of these you have right now but that’s ok. You have 3 years of classes and a piece of paper that proofs competence/potential
The good thing? Once the snow ball of competence gets rolling it’s very rewarding and will positively affect the rest of your life. Don’t think big, little steps at a time
Ideally just start coding. Learn git as a minimum. Do some coding exercises (advent of code for example) and just start up some random hello world projects for frameworks (be it backend or frontend). Install mysql. You will start getting familiar with things if you just start doing simple things. Of course it’s nicest to be on a payroll and learn things on the job whilst getting paid. You are behind if you want to become a software dev, but so is half the people who do computer science and nothing else. And guess what, there’s no other field with a plethora of online tutorials as software
If you don’t want to become a dev, can’t land a job you can always transition to becoming a product owner, customer relations or sap person or something. At least you have some knowledge in IT. There’s good money and validation there too. The nice thing in IT is you can meander your way through jobs until you find something you’re happy at
Maybe pic up a FOSS project of your interest? Have fun about what you are doing. If not do not do it.
OK, I know this isn’t that easy.
People like to think a Bachelor makes them experts. It doesn’t. It equips you in a structured and well guided way, plus a certificate as proof, with the things you need to get started. It also shows that you can pull through all this and have the brains and/or can put in the effort
Are you brazillian?
Do you know what kind of job you even want? A lot of people assume that the only thing they can do with a comp sci degree is become a developer and that isn’t true. If you do want to be a developer than you’re going to need to practice and build a portfolio but if you’re open to other ideas there are a lot of alternatives. Personally I went down the road of QA (Quality Assurance), I do some coding for automation and I also do manual testing so I don’t need to be as strong as a full developer. There is also IT type work where you can be a sysadmin or devops/infosec type roles. I would encourage you to do some research on positions you find online and see what fits you best. While getting better at programming is going to help you not matter what, you can get a better idea of exactly you need to learn if you have a specific position/field in mind.
What everyone told you already. Get to work in a company that lets you learn. I’m 22 and I’ve been working in my current company for 2 years. When i entered I had 0 experience, only studies. Everything I know is from here
Well if you can, you can try diving into cs50x. I understand that this advice may not fit here but the reason why I am suggesting is that it really tells you what computer science actually is and mainly it will give you the confidence you deserve. Even non tech people from different fields switched to programming after taking cs50x with additional courses. It’s just that this course might be time consuming because it genuinely asks for your commitment. However even if you can study it alongside other courses, it really should clear the basics so much. I really love and can feel the impact of knowledge from this course.Â
I really hope all the best for your future, take care.
As you mentioned, you have already completed your bachelor’s degree, making you more than capable for this opportunity. Consider the following steps: initiate independent projects. While you expressed concerns about your creativity, you can explore project ideas online. Begin constructing and showcasing your work on GitHub; this not only enhances your chances of securing a job but also facilitates success in technical interviews, providing a comprehensive reflection of your capabilities on your resume.
On the other hand, you mentioned uncertainty about yourself. It’s essential to make a decisive choice. If you genuinely aspire to work in this field, take the initiative by working on personal projects. Although it’s possible to acquire knowledge on the job, relying solely on that without intrinsic motivation may prove insufficient, particularly in a future where entry-level positions are at risk of automation. Moreover, if you find yourself disliking the work, long-term success becomes even more challenging
Not a doctor, but I’d suggest you consider whether you have ADHD. Procrastination and Imposter Syndrome are large factors.
Source: Lead Software Engineer with ADHD that suffered from crippling self doubt ore-diagnosis and throughout most of his career.
Creativity isn’t required for most roles in programing. (Curiosity is, though…) Just don’t get a job working on a front-end is all.
I’ve been in tech for 14 years. I’ve made load tests, automation frameworks, test applications for an XML syntax parser which wasn’t HTML, worked on build and CI/CD pipeline stuff, tools and chatbots and scrapers, content delivery/caching, etc etc. Not a damned bit of it was creative.
You played yourself. Now is the part that you actually learn. By teaching yourself. At the very least you actually have a CS degree.
Honestly, tell yourself you are great, that you have to be some kind of intelligent to get through a bachelors program.
Get onto leetcode and churn through exercises, cheating is fine when you get stuck. Yes your a graduate but most of these aren’t fundimentally simple programming knowledge tests, they’re logic problems. As a professional eng for many years, I get stuck on them too. Once you’ve learned how to get an exercise working, look how other people optimized it and do your best to understand the methods they’re using. It’s kind of stupid, because leet code is honestly very different from real professional programming, but it’s the main thing that tends to be tested in interviews. Especially entry level interviews.
At the same time just get out there and apply everywhere. Just secure a job. In one sense this is the hardest point in your career. If you hate programming you can transition to data science, or product management, project management, security consulting, SDET, people management, design, architecture… Or many many other things. Hell, you can decide to transition to banking and finance and study accounting. Financial math is easy compared to comp sci math, and tax law is much logically simpler than CPU architecture. The comp sci degree is a great starting point, just don’t give up before you’ve even started using it.
I don’t have any advice. But I just wanted to say I am 28 and went back to school and just graduated in December 23′. I feel the same exact way (although I may have been a better student lol).
Everything from school seems so abstract . I can be presented with a new algorithm, understand how it works and it’s runtime complexity but how that actually fits into the day-to-day of a software developer is beyond me.
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I am just working on small projects until I figure out a sizeable one to build out. It is hard but I am hoping it works out for…both of us!
As someone who felt exactly the same way before, best you can do is literally just build some shitty website using your choice of frontend and backend then also trying to see if you can deploy it anywhere
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Don’t activate that AWS or Azure free credits unless you really gonna do something with that or have some app prototypes built already
It perfectly fine that is what we are, their is always things to learn don’t be hard to yourself just continue learning and you will see big improvements.
Most people that get their first job in their field after college feels lost. That is where the saying fake it till you make it is all about. Get a job, even if it’s low paying, so you can get some experience because that’s what most jobs care about nowadays. As you work in that position, look for better opportunities.