Dear Mr. Tagbo,

Now that the spring has finally arrived, I am ready to search for programming jobs available for college students.  So far I have mastered the fundamental concepts of programming such as function && Subprocedures, Arrays, and Classes.  I feel competent enough to pursue a career in Programming as well as Mathematics.  Please send me an e-mail regarding the availability of programming jobs.

yours truly,

J.C.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Who are employers hiring? Employers want to hire computer programmers who can solve business problems. So, begin with the problems you are empowered to solve for prospective employers. For example, can you develop or maintain websites, develop or maintain databases, or perhaps write technical documentation.
2. How to approach a job search. Don’t look at job hiring from the perspective of the skills that you have to offer but from the perspective of the needs that employers have. So, don’t approach job hiring with an “I know sub-procedures, arrays, classes or object oriented programming” tone. Approach job hiring from the angle of employers need programmers who can do ….. That way you will quickly realize if your skills are aligned with the reality of the job market.
3. Can you solve real business programming problems? Employers do not hire programmers based on arrays, functions, sub-procedures and the like. A few of the reasons why employers hire programmers are:
   • To design, developer maintain websites in specific programming languages
   • To design, develop or maintain Windows or Desktop applications
   • To analyze corporate data stored in databases for business insight
   • To design, develop or maintain databases used in web and windows applications
4. Top places to search for a programmer job online: Start your programmer job search by looking on Dice.Com. It is fast and reliable. You can search for jobs within specific miles of your zip code or search for web applications in Java, C#, VB.NET, PHP, etc.

J.C., I suggest that you retool your approach to your job search and then look on places like Dice.com for computer programmer jobs.

On a final note, I really don’t get the “I am a student, give me a job” approach. Whether you are a college student, a high school student, a recent computer science graduate or a beginner programmer you should be able to solve real world programming problems and develop corporate web or windows applications. 

See, you may not have the experience and skills to develop an enterprise software application and that is understandable, but you should be able to design, develop and support a small or fairly simple web software application.

This post is part of a series of answers to questions sent in by readers. If you have a question about your programmer career, post it here or email it to me.

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