How did you land your first developer job?

Question

I've been applying for months but not even getting interviews. What actually worked for you?

I have a decent portfolio (3 full-stack projects), a tailored resume, and I've done maybe 200 applications on job boards. Starting to think the approach itself is wrong. If you're working as a developer today — what actually moved the needle for you? Referrals? Open source? Cold DMs?

Arjun Dev · Accepted Answer

Referrals beat job boards 10 to 1. My first job came from a meetup contact, not an application. Concrete plan that worked for me and two friends:

1. Pick 20 companies you actually want, not 200 random ones.
2. Find one engineer at each on LinkedIn or X and ask a specific question about their work (not for a job).
3. Ship one project that solves a real problem for a real user — even a tiny one — and write up the decisions.
4. Mention that write-up in every conversation.

Interviews started appearing within a month of doing this consistently.

Priya Singh · Answer

Honestly? Contributing to open source. I fixed documentation and small bugs in a library my target companies used. Three months later one of the maintainers referred me internally. It's slower than spraying applications but the conversion rate is completely different.

Rohan Verma · Answer

200 applications with no interviews usually means the resume isn't passing the first screen. Get 3 people who actually hire to roast it. Mine had my projects buried at the bottom — moving them above experience doubled my response rate.

How did you land your first developer job?

3 Answers