Help! How to Get Hired in Software in 5 Easy Steps

Everywhere you look, you hear the job market for software developers is booming and it's not expected to slow down any time soon. There are stories of huge signing bonuses, on-site spas, pet care, and free meals. And LinkedIn is advertising developer positions with average salaries upward of $150,000.

But somehow it all seems to have missed you. You're a software developer! Maybe you learned your craft in college, or maybe you just picked it up in your free time. Now, when everyone else is receiving cash deposits from a dump truck, you're left wondering what you can do to land your dream job.

Here are some real-life steps you can take right now to get your career on the fast track and take advantage of today's hot tech market.

#1 - Start or Join a Project

You already learned to code, or you're in the process of learning right now. As you'll see in my article about hiring developers, I encourage business owners to hire developers who are passionate about what they do. My dirty little secret? I would write software for the rest of my life, even if no one ever paid me another dime. If you're truly passionate about writing software, then you feel the same way, so why aren't you actually writing software?

Too many people think they need to have some big, complex project -- or, someone else assigning them tasks. Trust me, when you start working for someone and they're assigning you tasks all day you'll wish you had weeks of freedom to do whatever you want. Take advantage of that now! 

#2 - Initiating a Creative Project

Have you had a business idea that you have thought of for years, and never got started on it? Give it a try! Think about existing products that you'd like to make "suck less" and just go for it. This is the best stage in the world to be in, you can't fail! Challenge Google's dominance in the search engine market. It's not necessarily about how well it works, it's more about what you learn in the process.

Interested in the Internet of Things? Take a dive into the Beaglebone Black for $55. This is a computer that fits inside an Altoids case. If you can't think of something interesting to do with that, just go be a chef! (Ok, or you can go to the Capes page, which will give you enough add-ons that you can create your own chef!)

The path couldn't be easier for those wanting to do app development. Walk to your local grocery store and you're likely to hear 3 new app ideas. Go create them. You aren't worried about success or failure, you're looking for a way to give yourself a focused purpose that lets you explore some aspect of computer science for its learning experience. If it works so well that you're making thousands per day in the app store, then you've solved your own job problem and can start hiring others!

There are a thousand terrible web apps waiting to be improved. Write a time tracker, or create a catalog for your favorite collectibles. There are a lot of existing APIs with tons of data that you can use. Take a look at ProgrammableWeb to see some of the APIs available and come up with ideas of what you can do with all that data.

#3 - When You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em!

Sometimes it's difficult to come up with a new project, but you just need to dig in and do something. There are plenty of open-source projects that are looking for developers. This is an easy one for me because if I had free time I would pick up about a dozen of these projects myself. Content Management Systems like Drupal or WordPress have lots of Open-source modules that are in desperate need of your coding skills.

Enjoy doing 3D work, how about jumping in to help a great resource called Blender. They even have a page to help new developers get started. Looking for more engineering-type problems to solve, go find a Linux kernel driver that is getting a lot of complaints online or a device you own yourself that's having issues.

#4 - Line Up the Resources

Web Developers - Setup an Amazon EC2 cloud instance under the free tier. Or find a cheap hosting solution. You don't care about bandwidth right now, you just need SSH access and a couple of gigabytes to start your project.