Back at university the jobs world seemed like a very different place.

As somebody with no work experience, when looking for my first programming job:

I felt anxious about the Idea of getting a job.

I struggled to communicate a convincing message in interviews.

I lived in a world where finding a job was an ‘If’.

5 years later. The world is very different. I feel confident in the workplace, I have an awesome gameplan for interviews. If I decided to make a career move I would feel confident that I would find a good Job in a reasonable timeframe.

This is of course down to 1000 different small learnings and actions. But there is one realisation that towers above all others. If your looking to enhance your employability this is the perfect place to start.

The realisation is this:

The overwhelming majority of people applying to the same job as you will have an almost identical CV.

When you hear that for the first time it might seem a little demotivating. why would you wan’t to know that you don’t stand out.

But hopefully you’ll realise there is something completely empowering about this too. By doing just a few things you can get head and shoulders above the crowd.

The effect of realising this and doing doing something about this In my case was that gloomy predictions of moving back in with my parents we’re never realised and I proudly joined the world of work at a major company instead.

So what can I do to get ahead?

Great question, and the good news is that that there’s a huge range of opportunities you can actualize that can fit around your schedule. If you can do even one of these things it will give you a big advantage. But if you have time, doing two or three would be Ideal.

I’ve broken these things down into two set’s, ‘Technical’ and ‘Soft’ — Although many of these things are both.

I’ve decided to make them separate lists anyway because it would be Ideal to have a mix of both. This would show you to be both able to do the job and able to work in their company.

Demonstrating technical skills.

Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

One obvious anxiety a hiring manager will have about your (or anybody else’s) application is. “Does this person have the skills to do well at my company”. Towards the start of your career this is the most important of the two categories as you don’t have the experience to back up your claims of having a particular skill.

Here’s some things you can do:

Contribute to an open source project — (Check GitHub for a list of these).

Enter a Hackathon. Even if you don’t win it will show passion for software engineering.

At university? Ask local companies to participate in your dissertation.

Build some software, If you’re a app developer publish an app on the app store, a game developer — build a game. Make the code open source so hiring managers can check it out.

Demonstrating Soft Skills.

After a few years experience hiring managers will become less anxious about your technical ability and more concerned about your ability to lead/train/communicate.

So here’s a few things to show that you can do this:

Found/lead or take some responsibility of a group. e.g. a Meetup or a university society.

Write a blog.

Teach programming to others at an event like Codebar or CodeClub

Run a workshop.

Give a talk at a Meetup of Conference.

So there you go, In the space of 5 minutes or so You’ve learnt how to go from a boring CV to one that stands out from the crowd. You’ve learn’t that the best way to do this is to do things that give you a competitive advantage. Finally I’ve shown you some specific things that you can do. But my Ideas are not exhaustive what things are you doing to get ahead of your peers?