Techies And Opportunities
Techies And Opportunities - Exploring Sources
Out of job? Concerned about gap in your experience? Employed, but on bench? Concerned about promotion and pay hike? About to graduate? Need experience even before first job? New to freelancing? Need portfolio? You are at the right place to find opportunities.
There are many situations where a techie needs visibility(be it to get a job or to showcase talent or to get a pay hike etc...), to stay ahead in the game. But, what if there are no circumstances to provide. Well, the world is big enough to provide opportunities, its just that many times techies do not know how to find them. In this article, I share such opportunities.
Contribute to open source projects
This is a great way to earn experience and learn new technology. Join and contribute to open source projects. There are plethora of projects to choose from. The more you participate in them, the more you get visibility(as your profile pops as top contributor) and stand-out from other freshers(if you are a fresher) and, you stand a high chance of getting a job. And, if you are a seasoned techie, the more visibility you earn, the more valuable you become as an asset to the organization and higher are your chances for promotion and pay hike. Also, this is a very good way to fill gap between jobs without faking experience. Even a freelancer's profile is enhanced as a contributor to open source projects
Develop apps/components/plug-ins
This is different from contributing to open source projects. For instance, you may develop a mobile app for your college or locality or building. Or, develop a gaming app. Or, you may develop plug-ins for browsers and IDE tools. The idea may be used to showcase your talent, through experience, to get a job as a fresher or to fill the employment gap or to create portfolio as a freelancer. If you are a seasoned techie, you may develop reusable enterprise components for your organization or open-source community. There are many opportunities to develop apps/components/plug-ins, just see an opportunity to automate a manual process or to make existing systems better.
Engage in Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow(SO) a very powerful, yet underestimated, community to make the world know a techies talent. It's a perfect platform from a novice to a master, to learn and share knowledge. Apart from reputation, a profile is valued based on the number and type of: questions the user asks, answers provided, comments made and number and type of badges the user had earned. So, to earn reputation, engage in the community to answer questions, provide valuable comments and ask questions. Remember, number and types of badges, also, say a lot about a profile. A SO profile is a great way to get visibility and stand-out from others to attract your resume and to enhance your value in tech-circle.
Publish articles
This is by far the oldest way to let the world know about your capabilities and a classic way to get visibility. Irrespective of your experience and technological background, you may pick a topic and publish articles. Even as a student, this not only acts as a good reference to future interviewer but, also makes a good impression on the professors. If you are employed but, are not working on a project, try to publish articles to gain visibility. This reflects that you are not idling companies time and contributing in useful way. As a freelancer, this is another way to showcase your subject knowledge. For an unemployed techie, this shows that you are still in touch with technology while the job hunt is on.
Make videos
Making and sharing videos is the most favored way to get visibility. Select a topic to make how-to-do mini(5 mins) videos. Or, short videos(20-30 mins) which concentrate on a concept. Or, long videos(hour) to cover in-depth details on a selected language/technology/platform feature. You could also release industry-happenings-this-week kind of videos too. This is a great way to showcase talent especially for freshers and freelance professionals. And, seasoned professionals can increase their visibility by making videos on advanced/cutting edge technologies. Same as with publishing articles for an unemployed techie, this shows that you are still in touch with technology or learnt something new.
Conduct voluntary sessions
This is a another good way to get visibility. Provide free services by conducting voluntary sessions. As a student, conduct knowledge sharing sessions in your college, as an employee(on the bench) conduct sessions in your company. As a seasoned employee, you may share knowledge on your project architecture and implementation. As a freelancer(trainer) and unemployed techie, you may leverage meeting platforms like meetup.com to present sessions to showcase your talent and in turn gain visibility. You may also attract audience from online platforms. After the sessions, you may request the audience to endorse you on online platforms which can be used in your resume and portfolios.
Pro bono
This is a very helpful way to get visibility for a fresher, a freelancer and unemployed techie. Approach, small, non-profit organizations and lend your expertise for free. May be you can help them develop a web/mobile app or enhance an existing system. Or, you could bid for small projects in the open market(online) for low cost. Or, keep an eye on Facebook / WhatsApp groups and LinkedIn feeds wherein individuals and startups post requirement for development. You may contact them and offer your services for free. The intention is to gain experience, increase portfolio and fill gap for a fresher, freelancer and unemployed respectively. This is a win-win proposition for both.
Get certified
Last but not least, go for certifications. Especially, for freshers, this is a very good, stand-out, point. If you are unemployed, you could invest time to get certified which helps you to enhance your profile strength. If you are on the bench, getting a certificate in meantime will help you at the yearly-review time as it shows that you had not idled time but, invested wisely. All the above points weigh much compared to certification but, nonetheless, getting certified does help as companies prefer certified professionals.
LABELS: Blog-Employment, Blog-IT, Blog-Jobs, Software Developers, Blog-Techies
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