This document provides advice for ICT graduates on securing jobs, emphasizing the importance of skills, attitude, and teamwork. Key recommendations include gaining experience through projects, enhancing communication skills, and actively building a portfolio on platforms like GitHub. It encourages students to research potential employers and tailor their applications to showcase relevant interests and experiences.

2. How to get a Job?
ICT Graduate School 2016
John Clegg - Summer of Tech
Victoria University - 4th August 2016

3. * How to get a Job?
* Career tips
Twitter: @summeroftech
Hashtag: #SOT2016
Today

4. How to turn the job hunt on its head
Get companies hunting you
We want to show you how to turn
the job hunt upside down

5. We asked our best students
to give us their tips

6. Dex and Dawn will be our guides

7. DISCLAIMER

8. Our advice has been captured from 10 years
of helping students get jobs.
> 500 placements with 75% on-hire rate
We know what works and we will tell you
how to get a job. If you don’t understand
then keep asking WHY until you get it .
95% most of the students who don’t get a
job don’t follow our basic advice.
Yeah Nah !?!

10. Who am I ?

12. We help you to ...

13. Get training on what companies want

14. Learn the “important” stuff in getting a job

15. Lots of companies have got jobs...

17. Our journey starts here!
JOB

18. Jobs are connected to people
JOB
People People
People People

19. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?

20. JOB
What do Companies
look for in a
Candidate?
Skills Personality
Traits

21. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?

22. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
How to find
a good
company?
X

23. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
How to find
a good
company?X
What you can do NOW!
( )+

24. JOB
What do
Companies
look for in
a Candidate?
Skills
Personality
Traits
How do I get
the right
skills?
How do I do
the right
things?
How to find
a good
company?X
What you can do NOW!
( )+
Summer of Tech is here to show you how!

26. What are companies looking for?

27. “I largely don’t care about someone’s
actual coding skill on day 1, because they
often won’t align with our patterns anyway,
but it’s all teachable.
What I want to see is a candidate’s ability
to interact with an existing codebase and
team….”
What companies are looking for

28. What companies are looking for
“…The single best way you can do this is
by choosing a project and contributing.
One way to get started (assuming github
here), is fork the an interesting repo, read
the contributor guidelines (which typically
also include an explanation of how to set
up for development), and then look for a
bug to fix, or new feature to add.”
- Brad Murray , DATACOM

29. “We like to see working demos of games
they have made. An app I can run on my
phone is great, from the app store is even
better.
Some people have unity games that are
very impressive, but Unity hides some of
the difficult parts so we prefer to see C++
game demos…”
What companies are looking for

30. “The stuff that sticks out the most is when
they have a larger game demo they have
worked on in a team. It helps us get a
sense for how well they work with others.
Things like the Imagine Cup or Global
Game Jam are great.”
Joe O’Sullivan - PikPok
What companies are looking for

31. What are companies looking for?

32. 0) You

33. 1) The right attitude

34. 2) Team fit
2 Team Player
aka Cultural fit

35. 3) Communication skills
3 Communication skills
aka Can I talk to you
and do you listen?

36. 4) Your skills
-

37. 5) Your track record

38. 6) What do you want to learn?

40. 0) You

41. Your school career is about making you
the same

42. What makes you unique?

43. What are you good at?

44. 1) The right attitude

45. Enthusiastic

46. Curious

47. Humility

48. Willing to learn

49. “There is no such thing as an
'I am willing to learn' certificate.
If you really are willing to learn,
demonstrate it instead.”

50. Professional

51. Be on time

52. Be honest &
honour promises

53. Be careful what
you say online

54. Your attitude is important

55. Presentable

56. “Make the right impression, dress
neatly, make sure you've
groomed and look presentable.
People will remember you if you
make an impression.”

57. 2) Team fit
2 Team Player
aka Cultural fit

58. aka Cultural Fit
2 Team Player
aka Cultural fit

59. Understand how to work in a team

60. Agile / Scrum

61. Code Management

62. Google researched - What makes a “perfect team”
“We had lots of data, but there was
nothing showing that a mix of specific
personality types or skills or backgrounds
made any difference.”
The ‘‘who’’ part of the equation didn’t
seem to matter.’

63. Two factors that mattered most to the teams
1) ‘Equality in distribution of conversational
turn-taking.’’
- Teams where everyone spoke the same
amount. (ie. no one dominated)
2) ‘‘Average social sensitivity’’
- Understanding people's cues
What did matter most for teams was ...

64. 3) Communication skills
3 Communication skills
aka Can I talk to you
and do you listen?

65. “Be prepared to go out of your
comfort zone (promoting yourself,
networking, interviewing),
you'll improve a lot and pick up
transferrable skills
(eyy buzzwords) by doing so”

66. Building software products is a team sport
3 Communication skills
aka Can I talk to you
and do you listen?

67. Can I talk to you about a problem?
3 Communication skills
aka Can I talk to you
and do you listen?

68. Written comms

69. Commit messages

70. Take feedback

71. Explain an idea

72. Presentation Skills

73. 4) Your skills
-

74. Research Skills

75. Critical Thinking

76. Test Driven Development

77. Build your own environment

78. What skills do companies want?

79. What skills they would like you to have?

80. 5) Your track record

81. “Build your CV while you are at
uni;
That might sound strange but
people often think that they will
start building their CV after uni.
The most challenging thing is to
get your first job.
So build your CV now.”

82. “How to build your CV? Attend as
many programming events,
hackathons, etc. as possible.
Build a complete website / mobile
app while you are studying.
Have a cool github profile.
Participate in open source
projects. ”

83. “Work on team projects.
The university does not prepare
you properly for that.
Learn how to use git in a team
(branching, merging, etc.)”

84. How to use Git properly

85. Use git as your daily backup

86. What they are looking for in your Github?
1) Interesting projects
2) Examples of your work
3) Contributions to projects

87. Annotate your code in an README.md
● The purpose of code
● What it does and doesn’t do
● Any special instructions
● Any anomalies
● If you had to make trade-offs, state
why

88. Nothing to see here - move along!

89. Hmm interesting spike...

90. Alright, what are they into

91. Start now !

92. 6) What do you want to learn?

93. What are you passionate about?
What are you passionate about

94. Learning comes from failure
“I have not failed. I've just
found 10,000 ways that won't
work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

95. Recipe for success...
Try -> Fail -> Learn ->
Experience
Rinse, Repeat

97. How to find a good Company

98. “Don't be shy about requesting
information from companies,
or asking if you can get a tour.
Actually being in the office was
a huge indicator for me if I
wanted to work there.”

99. Do your homework

100. “If you're aiming for a company
that uses C#, do a small
project in C# to show off on
your github so they know
you're actually interested and
will put in the effort.”
“Researching the company so
that the interviewer was
impressed with my knowledge
and interest in the company
and its products at the M & G
and the interview.”

101. Figure out what does the company do?

102. “Talk to employers and figure
out what kind of people the
companies are looking for.”
“Know what you want and go
for that. (research different
types of companies and get a
feel for startup/small
companies vs larger more
corporate ones) “

103. Glassdoor
Lots of companies have got jobs...

104. Glassdoor
Glassdoor

105. Student word of mouth
Glassdoor

106. Glassdoor
When thinking about a company...

107. Join a smart team

108. Think about the work
environment

109. Think about the tools
they use

110. Think about how they
get the job done

112. What can you do NOW?

113. Find areas of interest

114. Find a pet project

115. “Have at least one project you've done
outside of university to show to potential
employers - bonus points if it's on
Github! ”
“Find people who really want to
work on a project and team up with
them. Don't just talk to your friends
about working on a project
because all you'll end up doing is
drinking a lot and playing
scrabble.”

116. Github

117. LinkedIn

118. Get out of your comfort zone

119. Go to Meetups

121. Career Tips
● Make sure you have the right attitude
● Practicing working in teams
● Focus on improving your comms skills
● Try lots of things to find your passion
● Build your track record
○ Have a pet project
● Figure out what you want to learn
Summary

122. Questions