Stop WASTING your time doing 500+ LeetCode problems. THIS is how to get hired FAST!

if you want to become a software engineer all you have to do is grind 1,000 leak code problems right wrong you hear this all the time from Tech gurus leak code is great but it won't differentiate you from the best Engineers but I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret the only way that you're going to get a job as a software engineer is if you put yourself in the shoes of others it's really that simple we spend so much time focusing on how amazing our own skills are but we feel to recognize what's actually valuable to an employer I'm going to break this process down into five simple steps that you can use to actually become a good software engineer and then land a job in this economy I know right okay so first thing is know your stuff now that might sound simple but just wait we've all seen the memes where people are applying for entry-level positions and the employer is asking for five plus years of experience it's funny sad but also what if you did have five plus years of experience let me explain in school we're taught the basics of a language and maybe some data structures and algorithms throw an OS and data structures class in there and you've got yourself a degree but this is the bare minimum that you'll need to know in an Enterprise environment you'll be a lot more valuable if you have an understanding of what an employer really wants right now companies are looking for experienced Engineers to pick up the slack so that they can still make a profit so how can you make yourself valuable as an entry-level engineer well you can learn some skills that an engineer with 5 plus years of experience already has let's go ahead and look at some job requirements for a senior level engineer you can see that they require you to have EXP experience with public cloud services such as AWS Alibaba gcp Azure development and even operational experience with large scale highly available distributed systems and even experience with Docker and container management framework such as kubernetes as well as cicd pipelines okay that was a lot if you look at an entry-level role you can see how different the requirements are they're looking for a degree or minimal experience but if you want to scroll down to the nice to haves see how similar these are to the senior engineering role well that's because in a Market you want to treat the nice to haves like requirements you want to stand out from all the other entry-level software Engineers by telling employers that you have the skills and more than what they're looking for in fact I recently spoke with a manager at Microsoft to get his input on what makes someone hirable we are looking for growth mindset we are looking for demonstrations of Microsoft values customer obsessed heavy collaboration with other people and we will ask you whether you realize it or not but we're asking you to sort of hey uh tell me about a time when you had a project that was that went off track and and what happened so how do you do this exactly experience yeah that's it you have to gain experience somehow one way to do that is through internships and yes even unpaid internships as unfair as those are where is my coffee oh shoot here you go are you serious this is not coffee this is tea oh God okay I don't get paid enough for this this is probably the easiest way to show that you're capable in an Enterprise environment but honestly it still doesn't showcase that you have senior level skills as an entry-level software engineer you need to gain those skills in other ways and impress the employers that you're looking to work for again think about it from their shoes they want an entry-level engineer that already knows about the cloud how to use container Management systems and can hit the ground running they care about their bottom line just categorize your learning by topic and give yourself a couple months to do a few crash courses take a course on AWS or Azure take a course on Docker get a certificate in Ai and try to find information about system design and distributed systems scalability is a big one especially for larger companies I've added links in the descriptions to resources that you can use to achieve this next you need to build real projects that Implement what you learned find someone in your life that you can solve a problem for then meet with them regularly to iterate and modify requirements as needed keep track of this information in J or notion then build the thing create a simple API that's hosted on the cloud take the time to actually spin up a Docker container and run the app using Docker it really goes a long way if you learn these things on your own but once you learn those new skills how do you demonstrate those skills to an employer you need to create a portfolio here's an example of a portfolio that I recently created on hostinger to Showcase my experience at Target and Microsoft but the basic idea is to again put yourself in the shoes of the employer what are they looking for they're looking for experience or projects that show that you have those nice to have hostinger is great for that because they focus on helping you create a website from start to finish it was so easy to set up my portfolio and there was no coding required you can use their custom website builder which has designer made templates an easy drag and drop editor as well as an AI toolkit to help you create logos or format your sentences okay so I'm just typing in my name set up this portfolio it asks for a description as well so just describe your website based on what you think it'll be about in this case it'll be a portfolio and actually it'll design your template according to the description that you have and here it is here portfolio now my portfolio has been set up this is just the template but it's based on the description that I gave wer which is super cool so we're going to go ahead and take a look at the site this is just a generated description and some pictures and I'm going to keep scrolling yep you can see that there's pictures all throughout the website which is super cool and so it gives you a really good base to start off with it even gives you an about me page and a contact me page which you're going to need for your portfolio if you want employers to reach out to you okay this is the final result you guys it looks so freaking good okay I'm not going to Che my own horn but this was completely HST Stinger it gave me such a great template to work with AI tools and even editing ability it even let me use that grid to kind of move things around something you can't really do on a Word document but I'm really happy with the result not only that but it's an all-in-one website building solution so they take care of the hosting domain and website building process you can even integrate with WordPress that being said hostinger is offering incredible savings right now they're hosting a huge pre-black Friday sale with an amazing 81% discount and once Black Friday week arrives the discounts will get even better up to 85% off grab plans starting at just $1.99 and unlock premium features at unbeatable prices you know what's lower than those prices the temperature in Minnesota because it is freezing outside the links to these deals are in the description below and don't forget to use my coupon code Pua at checkout happy shopping but that's not all networking and a little bit of marketing we hear this all the time but sometimes it's hard to understand just how important this really is take for example the selling the pen scene from Wolf of Wall Street that Scene goes something like this if you had to sell a pen to a customer how would you do it would you want to buy the pen if it bends no I'm good would you buy this pen if I told you it could draw a hand tattoo no I'm good it can even write on paper no okay fine at least write your name down on this thing but I don't have a pen but I do and that's how you sell a pen suckers that'll be $9.99 plus tax and shipping this is the power of great marketing you want to treat yourself like this pen create a need for yourself and if that means gaining skills that no one else has then do that first you need to put yourself out there people won't know about you or your skills unless you reach out to people and let it be known But Here comes the hard part you need to make yourself so attractive as an employee to employers that they'll end up wanting you even though they didn't know they wanted you catch my drift you're going to need to spend hours crafting messages to LinkedIn recruiters and even just getting your application out there which by the way if you want to check out how to craft the perfect message to LinkedIn recruiters so they'll actually message you back check out my template on our Discord server we have detailed information about how to get the attention of both recruiters and hiring managers but the biggest thing is to have a high quality presence and again that's where your portfolio comes into play you want to make sure that the skills you've learned as an entry-level engineer are so far beyond any other entry-level engineer that they'd be stupid to say no to you you4 beat it decision been filled now you might ask what about the interview process of course you're definitely going to need to prep for the interview process once you get an interview you'll need to brush up on data structures and algorithms as well as basic programming Concepts I actually have a link to a great resource for DSA in the description below as for learning a language if you haven't already I'd highly recommend checking my cotlin for 's course it's a great course that includes animations practice problems quizzes and more okay so now that you've got the basic technical skills out of the way what's the best way to interview prep hands down the best way to interview prep is to do it in a collaborative way you're going to spend a ton of time just brushing up on coding Concepts but all of that's going to go out the door when your nerves take a hold of you in the interview iterate through yeah I got this that's easy iterate through an array iterate through an array iterate through an array the celestial Battle of gravitational Dynamics Newton's law of universal gravitation emerges as a Celestial Maestro orchestrating the interl expression quantifies the rate at which an object traverses space so so if this was the earth and and this was the moon and they were equidistant from each other and if gravity divided 4 * 3 to the 5th and and the limit does not exist the limit doesn't exist the limit doesn't exist and you don't want this to happen in a real interview so you want to train yourself to be ready in that sort of situation set a timer for yourself find a friend even if they don't code they can sit there to just add pressure so you get used to that in a real interview environment and then try solving a problem in less time than you're usually given so instead of 45 minutes try to solve the problem in 25 minutes and do it on a Google doc yes a Google doc nowadays employers are a bit nicer sometimes they'll let you use an in browser IDE heck some will even let you use the internet but similar to training yourself for a big race you want to make the practice part of the interview harder than the actual interview so that the real interview feels like a breeze and don't forget to spend the majority of the time asking clarifying questions and deciding on what data structures and algorithms to use that should take up the majority of the interview the coding part should only take about 10 minutes many people make the mistake of not communicating because they're so nervous and then they quickly jump to that coding part but what did we say at the beginning of the video put yourself in the shoes of your employer what are they looking for in an interview they're looking for a team member that they want to work with they're looking for someone that asks questions admits fault someone who collaborates and goes through the design process before implementation and someone who stays calm in a high pressured environment the coding part should really only take a short amount of time the questions ideation and pseudo code take up most of the interview and if that's not happening for you then you're doing something wrong all that being said getting a job is hard part of it also comes down to luck AKA location you want to have the right skills at the right time and showcase those skills that people just can't say no to keep people on their toes kind of like me ending the video in the middle of a sentence

Channel: Pooja Dutt

Views: 151,580

Keywords: software engineering, leetcode, data structures and algorithms, java, how to code, how to become a software engineer, learn to code, learn java, kotlin, python, big tech

Id: pKv5MAm2Wuw

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023