[thelist] Re: Career Q's

Whoah! Negative answer alert :-)

Having been in the position of recruiting people for a thriving Internet 
company, one of the KEY things I looked for was enthusiasm. I hired several 
people straight out of college because they had spent a lot of their own 
time developing sites, either well thought out and designed personal sites, 
or charity sites or sites for projects they were involved in.

When interviewing, one of my favourite questions was "What sites have you 
worked on outside of (your job/college/university)." While it certainly 
wasn't an immediate turn-off if people hadn't worked on something, it 
didn't win them any favours either - and now and then I found people who 
had such a lust to work in the industry, that stopping them from producing 
sites in their spare time would have been impossible :-)

Of course, not everyone looks for the same things, a large established 
company like where I work now, is looking for measurable things. They took 
their time making up their mind about me, because although I have 5 years 
project management experience, it was kind of unmeasurable for them because 
it's mostly for smaller clients at a company in another country. (Lots of 
intranets and things they couldn't look at!).

The goal is to turn whatever your situation is into an advantage. If you 
haven't had a professional gig, you need to spend as much time as you ca in 
producing stuff pro-bono, going to courses, working on your personal site 
etc. Believe me, you'll need every single second of experience when you get 
that dream gig :-) Be persistent, set your sights at the right level and 
above all else, ooze enthusiasm and sooner or later someone out there will 
see your potential.

Good luck

.steve





>Umm, yeah, but how do you get experience if no one will hire you to get
>experience?  Night classes?
>
>
>Scott Johnson