I am considering restarting my career in software development, I don't have any experience in the industry, and only a degree in Computer Science to currently show employers. I have no immediate urgency to get a job, so I have plenty of time to create something interesting. At the moment I have a solid knowledge of C++ and D3D8/9/GDI/GDI+/Win32. I may begin learning C# as I have found many Employers looking for Applicants with experience with it. As for the program, I felt as though some kind of pong/tetris clone with a twist, be it Mathematical, AI or graphical, would get the most interest. I'd like to be able to impress the Employer, and have something to talk about, while showing I'm not another one of those graduates who can barely scratch together "Hello, World" in Java. What have you done to get noticed? Or do you have any ideas that will help me standard out as an Candidate?

Are you aiming specifically at the game industry? If not, something closer to the target industry might be more helpful. These days, authoring a web application of some appreciable complexity is extremely valuable because it demonstrates facility with several areas of concern: databases, network infrastructure, web-based user interfaces. Also, such applications are typically multi-language, which is a win.

As Oluseyi pointed out, you mentioned software development, but that is a pretty broad field. What specific sort of position would you like to shoot for?

Contribute to open source. Find some project that's well known and in line with your interests and contribute features and fix bugs. It will show potential employers a lot of things; that you can contribute to a larger project, work with others and their code, that you can work your way from a bug report to a fix, etc.

If nothing else, open source is a good way to work around that catch-22 of not being able to gain experience because no one will hire you without experience.

Quote: Original post by outRider
Contribute to open source. Find some project that's well known and in line with your interests and contribute features and fix bugs. It will show potential employers a lot of things; that you can contribute to a larger project, work with others and their code, that you can work your way from a bug report to a fix, etc.

That's actually a good idea. That or find a crappy underpaid programming job.

Networking within the company or the industry is an extremely effective way to find a job.

The vast majority of jobs are 'found' by talking with people you know and asking about work.

If you have a particular company you want to work for, get to know the people and let them know you are interested in a job. Make sure they know your skills.



For our studio, the first thing we do is send an email out to the studio stating that we are looking for a new hire, and a reminder that we offer a bonus to anybody who first recommends a good hire.

For me personally, I am very cautious about demo portfolios from programmers. It is hard to know how much is from that person and how much was from the 'Net. I'd rather see you in person and ask hard questions about if you can do the job.