5 Smart Ways To Find Entry Level Software Developer Jobs
Job hunting for an entry level job is very difficult. Entry level software developer jobs are particularly difficult to find. If you don’t know where to look for jobs and how to separate yourself from other applicants, you can quickly become another statistic in the application pool.
I’m not a software developer, but I have a ton of experience applying for and landing jobs over the past few years. I’ve dropped out of college and built a successful freelance writing business.
No one teaches you this stuff coming straight out of college, so it’s a lot of trial and error. I started applying for hundreds of writer jobs when I got out of college and guess what happened?
- 0 interviews
- 0 job offers
- a lot of “we’ll reach out if an opportunity comes up”
It wasn’t until I used a bunch of strategies that I found some success with landing a role. I started reaching out to companies, scouring job boards and going to a ton of websites. Doing this for most of the day for months helped me land my first clients for my business.
As I searched for my writing jobs, I came across a lot of entry level software developer jobs. In this post, I will share with you the best places to find jobs and how you should approach it.
Note:
Your success in finding a role is very dependent on the relationships you can build. As someone who is very analytical, it took me a while to grasp that people less qualified than me were getting into the roles I wanted simply because they knew someone.
All of these methods/places to find jobs are to help you get an intro to a company or someone who will hire you. Make the extra efforts needed to build a good relationship and it’ll be 100 times easier to land a role.
I can’t emphasize how important networking is to landing and keeping a job.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
1. Cold email
Cold email is the primary reason I have a writing business today. Cold email is basically reaching out to a company or person and introducing yourself and your services.
Why is cold email the best method to get a job?
Because it turns the application process in your favor.
When you submit an application into a website, you’re literally a number on a screen. The employer can set whatever guidelines they need to eliminate applicants and you will likely be one of them.
If you send an email, you will end up talking to a real person and that increases your likelihood of getting a role dramatically. Let me run through a quick example of me searching for entry level software jobs.
I found a job posting, now I will search for the company’s name on Google.
I found their site and now I’m going to use an email finder tool called Seamless.ai to find a real contact within the company.
Seamless.ai helped me find over 5 contacts within the company:
Once I click find, their email will appear. I can start drafting an email to ask about their software developer role opening. Here’s what it would look like:
If you do this for 50-100 job posts, you will do extremely better than just simply applying for jobs on sites.
You can use cold email to reach out to companies that don’t have openings too. Many of the clients I’ve landed never had a job opening.
2. Twitter
Besides the memes and viral tweets, Twitter has turned into one of the best places professionally for software developers.
Question: where are all of the best developers and companies who hire developers communicating? Besides technical sites like GitHub, it’s primarily Twitter.
It took me a long time to fall into tech Twitter, but it’s been one of the best decisions. Every day on Twitter, I see someone hiring, launching a company, etc.
This is a huge opportunity for people that use Twitter for work. While the majority of people are on sites like Indeed.com hoping for an interview, you can directly connect with the CEO of the company you’d like to work for on Twitter.
In fact, I landed one of my biggest writing gigs from sending a CEO a Twitter DM.
Worst case scenario, you’ll have a new contact. Best case scenario, you’ll get a good job. A lot of Twitter jobs are also remote, if that’s of interest.
Let me show you how you can find software developer jobs on Twitter.
First search for the terms “hiring developer”. Once you do this, you can filter out the results by people.
Yes, I mean people as in Twitter profiles. Companies and managers that are serious about hiring developers will even put in their bio. Here’s an example:
As you can see, these decision makers are hiring and you can go to their profile and send them a message.
Another way to find jobs on Twitter is to do the same search, but only for posts. Here’s an example:
As you can see, a company will tell you instructions on how to apply for their role. What’s great about Twitter is that you can directly contact the company or the person who made the tweet.
You can reply to their tweet, send a message, follow them, etc.
Remember that this is a number’s game. You will likely have to send tens if not hundreds of Twitter DMs before getting any good replies.
3. Angel.co
Angel.co, also known as AngelList, is one of the few high-quality job sites on the internet. Angel.co along with WeWorkRemotely (listed below) are some of the best places to find great companies.
I know it can be very easy to overlook the quality of the company you work for when you are job searching, but this will have a huge impact on your quality of life at work.
The companies on Angel.co are well-funded and they pay very well in comparison to other job sites.
What makes Angel.co great is the transparency. On Angel.co, you can see things like:
- salaries
- equity in company (some companies offer equity)
- location
Angel.co is unique from other job boards because it primarily focuses on people who want startup jobs.
Although there are not as much jobs on Angel.co in comparison to Indeed and other sites, the quality of the jobs is much higher.
Here’s an example of a job post from Angel.co:
You can filter by date, salary, location and anything else you want. You can apply directly on the Angel.co link or on the company’s website.
Angel.co has the best developer jobs I’ve come across by far.
Angel.co has a dedicated page for software developer roles, you can check it out here.
4. WeWorkRemotely
Out of all the job boards on the internet, WeWorkRemotely is one of the best. WeWorkRemotely is great for several reasons:
- All the jobs are 100% remote. You can work from anywhere in the world.
- The companies who post on there are very high quality (no spammy companies)
- There are remote jobs posted multiple times per day
I’m not a fan of job boards at all, but if I were to apply using one it definitely would be WeWorkRemotely.
On most of the other job boards, you will see a ton of spammy offerings. The companies on WeWorkRemotely are legit, remote-friendly companies.
A good chunk of the companies there are completely remote companies. If you can land a job at one of these companies, it’d be fantastic.
I wouldn’t invest too much time into this unless you’re cold emailing them. Apply for your first few roles and your resume and CV will be saved on there. This will make it much easier to fill out other applicants.
Make this part of your routine. Check it out and apply for a new job whenever you visit the site. If you keep at it for several months, you might land a job and that can be life-changing.
You can check out some of the remote developer jobs here.
5. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is probably the most generic approach in the approaches I have listed in this blog. Most people know LinkedIn as like the Facebook for work.
Although LinkedIn is not nearly as fun as Twitter or other platforms, almost every business professional has a profile. This means your potential employers and potential co-workers are there.
To find a job on LinkedIn, you can do several things:
- Explore LinkedIn jobs
- Search within posts to see who’s hiring
- Build a big network and have recruiters reach out to you
As an entry level software developer, only the first two options above are viable. Building a network takes time and you likely won’t have any job offers within the first year.
LinkedIn jobs is pretty straightforward. It’s basically a job board within LinkedIn. The good thing about it is that it lists the recruiter/company that is hiring. This allows you to reach out and connect with them. Here’s an example: