Essential Career Tips From Industry Experts

Industry Experts Tell All

We’re passionate about a few things at Code Institute, but our ultimate goal is to ensure that our graduates find their ideal job in software development. We want to help you to navigate your new career landscape with confidence and capitalise on all the job opportunities that come your way.
We created our Graduate Careers Week to prepare our students for technical interviews, to provide them with expert tips for building an ideal tech CV, and to facilitate networking with leading tech companies. We ran everything from mock interviews with technical recruiters to CV workshops with employers. Let’s take a look at the best tips that the experts shared with us.

The Importance of Networking

How can we quantify how important networking is? A 2016 research study has shown that 85% of all jobs are filled via networking – it’s pretty damn important!
All our experts had one piece of advice in common; the first step to optimising every job opportunity is to examine your current network of contacts. Your key to the perfect jobs market might be in your phone contacts or your email list. Are you leveraging all your contacts in the best way possible?
Carve a few minutes out of your day and take the time to go through your contacts to see who you could reconnect with that would help you progress. If you think meeting for a coffee is possible, touch base with your contact and let them know that you would love their expertise and advice. This is a positive way to establish a connection with them. You never know where a coffee might lead to.

Leverage Your Social Media Connections

Social media is another effective way to use your contacts, and an important way to establish new ones. LinkedIn is a great tool to discover companies you’re interested in and current job opportunities. There are 500 million professionals on LinkedIn; a figure which makes up 1 in 3 professionals worldwide, 10 million active job listings and over 9 million company pages.    
Have you reached out to recruiters on LinkedIn? It doesn’t matter if you don’t know them personally, connecting with as many relevant recruiters as you can will open up your job search so that you will appear in candidate searches. 94% of all recruiters vet potential job candidates through their LinkedIn profile. Your social media presence is a reflection of your professional success so make sure you’re proud of your profiles.  
If you work on your personal network it can help you to increase the likelihood of being recommended for a job by someone you know. Developing your contacts is extremely important if you want to progress professionally. Remember that every opportunity you have whether professional of social could lead you to your dream job. First impressions last – make the right one for you!

CVs: Everything You Need to Know

CVs are the first step in any job process. Your CV showcases your skills and is a reflection of what you say about yourself. Industry employers noted the importance of a clearly structured and well-presented CV that’s free from grammatical errors.
Your CV should be in the past tense; ideally, make it under two pages in length. Use simple, concise language, and adopt active verbs like “implemented”, “measured” and “managed”; this language will empower your CV. Have you some impressive results or statistics? Be sure to detail these; if you can quantify your skills with a figure this will impress potential employers.  
When you’re applying for tech roles remember that the job interview is not essentially about you and your CV, it’s about the company and a problem that they’re trying to solve. Can you solve this problem? If your CV matches the specific job description this will dramatically increase your chances of landing an interview.  

Dos and Don’ts in An Interview

The first step to being successful in an interview is preparing beforehand. Do lots of research into the company and the people that will be interviewing you. Do they have a LinkedIn profile? All you need is their name and you can look them up before you go and meet them. Try and establish a common connection or a personal hobby; these details will offset you from the competition.  
If you’re nervous about your interview performance then reach out to a classmate or a mentor to practice a mock interview. Preparing some practical interview questions beforehand will give you the confidence you need to do well. Our experts emphasised that an interview is not just a job opportunity; the interviewer will be mindful of how you’ll fit into the company. Your personality and your ability to be social and friendly is important. Every interview that you do is a learning experience.
Every social interaction has the potential to impact on your professional career – be sure to always put your best foot forward! 
Have you ideas for the blog? We’d love to hear from you so don’t hesitate to contact us.