WEB DEVELOPMENT - SECRETS TO STARTING A CAREER in the Web Development Industry

Key Takeaways

hey there so I'm doing the first kind of informational video that I've ever done uh as a response to getting a lot of questions probably 50 people have asked me just in the last 30 days this question and the question is how do I go to get a job in the web development industry I'm on the learning process how do I know when it's time to look what does that process look like who's going to hire me how just tell me about that world and so this video is going to kind of dive into that world for those of you guys who are on the learning curve or look into now or eventually jump into the web development industry and a career in that which by the way great industry great career I cannot say enough good things about it so let's get into it there's been several times along uh over the years where I've had to interview people for the company that I'm looking for I was either uh a key role in hiring that next person or I was just among the interviewers um and so I'll kind of talk from the employer perspective so you can kind of see where the employers are are going for cuz if you're a good fit for the employer then you're ready to get a job so as an employer I'm looking for a resume cuz that's what I'm going to get and and I'm looking for indicators on this resume and as the and with the person when I sit down to meet with them uh the first thing I'm going to be asking is is this person on the playing field that I'm on um they don't have to know everything I know they don't have to be able to do what the good people on the team can do but they've got to at least be able to be on the playing field uh so the indicators of that are one what tech Technologies do you use everyone uses HTML CSS so that's kind of a prerequisite to getting into web development you've got to know the languages the web is built on so you know HTML CSS how can you show me that you have a modern usable skill set take a day and learn how to use SAS and how to compile SAS um or less for CSS these are going to happen really fast and easy um but when I see that on there I know you're not just some HTML CSS coder oh SAS and L and stylist okay this is good this means that you learn you know new stuff um another very common thing you're going to see HTML CSS jQuery tons of jobs that say those three things as pretty much what they're looking for uh contrary to popular belief there are lots of employers looking for people who can do basic HTML CSS and jQuery uh because they have a lot of high-end devs to do all the complicated stuff but they need people to push through the content they need to be able to say here's a Photoshop PSD file I need you to be able to you know slice an image out of it and then do the rest in HTML CSS so Photoshop slicing HTML CSS and know some basic jQuery uh to do a little bit of custom functionality on your page um I'll get back to jQuery in a second on what that means and how good at jQuery need to be um another key indicator if I see GitHub on there okay good this person takes code seriously um designers don't really care about GitHub coders live on GitHub so create your own GitHub repository do some pull requests get comfortable with it if you know how to put a repo on GitHub how to make branches and do pull requests there's some videos I have on that I'll put them in the description uh you're good to go with that another thing is is create your GitHub account and put your own work on GitHub so they can actually see that you use GitHub repositories for your own work okay another big plus they actively use GitHub day in and day out huge indicator um some indicators that don't have to do with skill is uh but are still key indicators is what text editor do you use do you use Sublime Text because that goes a long way because every series coder I know right now uh I'd say at least 80% of them use Sublime Text that doesn't mean that the coders that don't use it are bad coders it just bad coders or or should I say newbies often times don't use professional level tools yet if you can show you use professional level tools uh that's going to get you off off the mindset of oh he's a newbie and doesn't know what he's doing other things what operating system do you use Windows is fine you can totally do web development on Windows and do a great job at it but most web developers are going to use Mac OS or they're going to use Linux uh so if you have a Windows machine cons consider installing for free it's free and you can install it alongside of Windows auntu Linux so you can boot up to either one um if you see Linux on a uh if I see Linux on a resume I'm I'm I'm not going to think newbie here because development newbies just don't use Linux they they usually have their Windows computer maybe a Mac computer which is cool but if I see Linux on there I'm going to be like okay this is this is a person that that takes what they do seriously and they really want to learn professional ways of doing things and Sublime Text and all that they all run on Linux anyway the terminal it's all the same Linux and Mac OS are very very similar um in the way you would develop on them so that's kind of some key indicators I'm looking for resume wise let me go back to jQuery um how do you know when you know enough jQuery because jQuery you can learn you're going to be learning it for like five years uh the first thing I'd want to learn is Dom traversal you're good with selectors you can if I give you an unordered list with liis in it can you find Li number three and then can you do something to all the liis that are siblings of Li number three if if you someone clicks on Li number three can you find the panel that that is a part of you know can you navigate the Dom decently well in jQuery um I'm actually building a full jQuery course on that with about 12 lessons that'll cover all these issues and and if you know the stuff in the course you should be good with jQuery that'll be in the description if if I have that at the time you're watching this video but if you're watching this video the day it came out I don't have that quite yet but it's coming you're going to want to know how to do J career user events so when the user clicks on this mouses over this you can fire off Smart JavaScript things um you're going to want to know jQuery ajax somewhat you're going to need to know how to do get requests with jQuery ajax get say a list of tweets um and put them into your website you know through AJ so you'll need to know jQuery ajax that's probably going to be the last part of your learning experience um with jQuery and then you need to know how to use jQuery plugins you need to know how to grab a woo slider or Flex slider and put it on your page and make a slider out of it which is really easy uh the first time might be daunting but there's instructions for all these plugins on all their sites uh and that's what makes jQuery great is there's plugins for all this stuff you need to be able to grab a panel plugin and be able to make a tab panel by configuring that plugin and so if you can do that you're pretty much good with jQuery you don't have to know how to build your own plugins that's a plus if you've built your own plugin uh but you definitely don't know how to do that and that's pretty much if you know HTML CSS and you're solid with jQuery uh you'll have competition and getting that first job might be difficult but that's the base skill set you need to get into the industry um what also have you done is a is the next huge thing I'm going to look for if you don't have job experience you can create your own job experience by building sites for other people one thing I did when I was starting out I was 18 at the time so I've been doing this a long time uh but I I did free sites for nonprofits that I supported like Foster or adoption agencies or my church um which most likely they have a a site that's 10 years old and terrible anyway so anything you can do just converting it to bootstrap will be a massive Improvement um and they will love love love love love you for that um and then you can actually on your resume say volunteer lead developer 4 or lead developer 4 and they can say as a volunteer capacity you know kind of hide it in there somewhere and so by the time it's time to look for a job you've got history um you can put on your resume that you have job history that you're not a newbie in this you've done it and I can even show you my GitHub repositories for these sites so you can see that I actually coded them myself um the last thing would be possibly learn learn WordPress learn how to make WordPress sites uh you don't have to do this but a lot of agencies and smaller design shops crank out WordPress sites day in and day out and if you know how to crank out a fast WordPress site buy a template off of theme forest.com pop it into your WordPress you know pop it into WordPress and and hack it there are a lot of people looking for people with that skill set it might be a good first step into the industry um so that's pretty much the whole skill set if you if you say yes to all those questions hands down you can get a decent job in the industry hands down it'll be paying a a a decent salary um and as you grow in those you can get a really good salary in webd right now it may change in the next 20 years but for right now if you're good it's going to be a good job um and so how do you actually go about finding the employer will be the last thing I mentioned in this video how do you actually find those employers um the the first tip for sure is put your resume online uh this is a recruiter driven industry so there are thousands of people out there whose full-time job is to find people like you even if you're new and place you in a job their job is to find you and then find a job for you and so uh get your res online some of the ways you do that is you apply for jobs on Monster and if they still do this you can check that you want to make your resume available you can probably also post your resume on monster big big big big point though do not put your cell phone number on your resume if you're posting it online because that cell phone will ring from recruiters for the next 10 years after you found the great job you will still get phone calls that there's an excellent job for you um leave your phone number off it's a good idea to actually create a professional email account that this is this is your public web developer email account cuz you will get daily emails for the rest of your life as a web developer you don't get a ton but you just you know you just want to be aware of that it's it's the great thing about this industry but there's minor drawbacks you want to stay off the radar in some ways um and so lots of job postings indeed.com has job postings monster Career Builder uh you can look Craigs list generally people using Craigslist are not going to use recruiters which means they're not going to be looking to pay top dollar for someone in the field so odds of you finding a great job on Craigslist are a lot less if you're starting off and you're just looking for part-time work work on the side to build your portfolio Craigslist will be a great place to find that kind of work uh and so that's kind of it but generally speaking I would look for companies that are using recruiters cuz those are going to be more serious companies uh those are going to the companies that don't have the time a day to go looking for 5,000 people they're like look I'm just going to pay the recruiter $10,000 to find me a great candidate because I'm going to spend way more than $10,000 finding those candidates myself these are good indicators that you're looking for a good company here so um that pretty much wraps up my intro thoughts if you had asked me out to coffee and said hey tell me what you think about this industry that would be pretty much what I'd give you so hopefully that's helpful feel free to comment if you have any question questions and I'll definitely do my best to answer any questions you guys have and hope this was a help to you guys have a good one