This week marks 'National Coding Week', an annual event that aims to inspire people to engage with coding and develop their digital skills and knowledge.
At Hewett Recruitment, our Specialist IT Division are passionate about finding the industries hidden talent- starting with entry level and graduate roles!
Our Specialist IT Consultant gave us some insight into the coding job market, offering some advice for those beginning their coding career:
On average, what is required for an entry level coding job?
Good Object Oriented Programming knowledge, what language is usually not that important, a good understanding of the basics is far more useful.
A good degree 2:1 or above will give you a good chance of an interview
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you have done a games design course, do not solely talk about games design. Yes we understand you are passionate about games and potentially breaking the industry BUT for the majority of the 1000s of games design students, most will end up securing a development role outside of the games design industry, and this is absolutely fine. However, don’t throw away interviews and opportunities by suggesting your career aspirations are only to do games design, be a little realistic.
If you are doing web development or have completed a university degree, please compile a profile to evidence some of the work you have done, this will be an invaluable conversation piece at interview, should showcase your skills and also probably secure you an interview, especially if you have done 3d design, AR/VR or web development.
What’s the best way to gain experience in coding?
Besides university, the best thing to do is to attempt projects of your own, based on your own hobbies or interests. Interested in Gaming? Build a website to connect, organise and rank your friends. Interested in Photography and Drones? Why not build a UI to interact with the drone? Interested in building computers? There are 1000’s of projects for inspiration on forums/reddit to create Raspberry Pi connected devices like SmartMirrors, displaying weather and videos etc.
Through trial and error, you will begin to understand what works, what doesn’t and how you might do things differently next time.
Are there any resources you recommend?
Reddit has a vast amount of resources and can direct you to 1000s more resources. It’s a case of finding a forum or website dedicated to the tech you are interested. Interested in SQL? Join a SQL forum and start asking questions or answering them (this can also be done on stack or github).
