[thelist] Re: Career Q's

-----Original Message-----
> Umm, yeah, but how do you get experience if no one will hire you to
> get experience?  Night classes?


You know, the best way to get experience at web design is to give away your
services!  There are a zillion and five people, companies and what have you
out there that would be willing to let a less experienced person build them
a web presence.
----------------------------

+1.

When I'm looking to hire a developer without major experience, its important
that they have taken the *initiative* to learn the technology on their own.
Even if you *did* have experience somewhere, the technology changes so fast
that what you learned yesterday will be obsolete tomorrow anyways. Find a
church or club in your area that you can practice on for free in your spare
time. Once you've got that down, a relative's business site, perhaps, or a
local charity. Once you have three or four sites, write an online resume of
sorts with links to each, explaining the technology used and the hows and
whys of how you built it will help out a lot.

Next step is to find an entry level position - perhaps as a subcontractor
for someone wanting to outsource the simple stuff (like me!). That'll get
you experience and a company name behind you. From there, the rest is up to
you.

If you're already employed, oftentimes supervisors often award simple
projects to people that have a willingness to try it if no one else is
available. I got into web development by blindly volunteering to build a
webpage for a student group at the local University. Went out, bought
FrontPage (*shudder*) and slowly learned the ins and outs of how it works.

In other words, experience is important, but initiative is more important.

Good luck,

- Eric

Eric Engelmann
Technology Architect
Geonetric Technologies, LLC
eric@geonetric.com / http://www.geonetric.com / 319.221.1667