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Thread: How do I become more attractive to prospective employers?

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    How do I become more attractive to prospective employers?

    Good day to every one reading this.


    I'm currently studying electrical engineering (N.Dip) and I am also a qualified electrician. I will be completing my course by the end of this year,
    so I have started looking for companies that employ students that needs to complete there P1 and P2 ( the 2 practical semesters after the 4 theoretical semesters ).
    The problem is I live in Bloemfontein and would like to stay here, but most of the companies are situated in Johannesburg or somewhere in Gauteng.

    I still have 6 months before I finish, so I guess the question is, what can I do to make myself more attractive to prospective employers? or
    How to reach more employers to better my chances of finding work in Bloemfontein?

    I've already started doing online programming courses in Python and I do have two and a half years working experience as an electrician.

    Would advanced programming languages like Python even help my chances, or should I rather look into PLC programming and ladder logic.


    Any help or advice is more than welcome.
    (BTW I hope this is the correct form?)

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    Well that is an unfortunate cut off point on the title.

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    You will have to cold call and/or cold email every company in your area and ask them nicely to let you visit them as you would like to work for them at some point in the future, if they have positions.

    A lot of people will say no, but that's how sales is (and you are basically trying to market/sell yourself). You must keep pushing through the no's until you find someone who says yes.

    Once you get a yes, go visit them, be polite, explain what you want to bring to the company, and when you're available, and leave contacts so they can get hold of you if opportunities arise.

    Whenever you go to a job opportunity, always emphasize why they should hire you, and never mention why you need/want this job. No one cares what you want, potential employers only care about you can do for them.

    Anyway, that was my random 2c.

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    Burger Lubbe (28-Jun-18), Dave A (29-Jun-18)

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    Thank you Dr Thomas.

    I appreciate the reply and the valuable advice, I'll start e-mailing and calling as much companies I can today!

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    Here's the thing most guys dont get. Python is on the rise its great , people love it its exciting and in trend. Now you have somebody who has been doing lets say php programming for a good few years , hes bored with his job he wants something new, he goes for python,,,, you cannot compete with that....he has years behind him in other languages and you are a new guy.

    What this does do is leave gaps in php market ( while not the go to language and does not pay nearly as well as python, it still is heavily used many small to medium businesses rely on it and do not have the resources or time to switch.
    It becomes super easy to get a job in php, now you may ask way waste my time learning php... because we all have to start from the bottom somewhere, unless you"know a guy" and in learning php, pythons going to be a piece of cake when you take it on.

    You can refer to all the statistics online about the growth and the usage of python, they are not a true reflection of whats going on real world it is mostly cooperation that are using this language and those stats are based on online queries of the language , because everybody wants to work at "google" odds wise it not likely to happen and that is why statistics are skewed, even if u you look at vacancies python has far fewer, so ontop of competing with experienced developers you also so it on a smaller market.

    Small to medium businesses are much less concerned about being at the technological forefront as much as say a big corporation.

    Honestly i would say learn both, one is basically a dummed down version of the other for millennial's, take a job you can get, and the apply for what you want.


    See my approach on interviews is this, dont tell them your skill set, tell them what you have done, how you have implemented your skills, real life examples are much stronger than a list of I knows.

    NEVER act like you know everything, nobody does.

    In developer roles they often ask a question to rate yourself and this is a tricky one, score yourself to high and they know you are overconfident perhaps inpulsive... score yourself to low and you are saying you dont know anything. Trick is to score yourself mid high, be confident but add you could never give yourself a full score because you are always learning and growing. <-- that shows confidence, but with a level head, ambition without recklessness, it shows that would respect those who have been in the industry long before you and learn from them, that you think ahead.

    Best of luck friend
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    Thank you for the advice.

    I will be sure to look into some other languages especially php. My plan is to obtain moderate skills in one language and
    then to move on to the next one to improve my chances of employment,
    until I get to a point where I am employed then I will focus on improving my skill in that language.

    Dose that make sense or should I rather just stick with one or two?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Burger Lubbe View Post
    Thank you for the advice.

    I will be sure to look into some other languages especially php. My plan is to obtain moderate skills in one language and
    then to move on to the next one to improve my chances of employment,
    until I get to a point where I am employed then I will focus on improving my skill in that language.

    Dose that make sense or should I rather just stick with one or two?
    When I originally started i ws also language focused what should i learn in order to make a career and money and while that is a a relatively good way to think it destroys what makes really good programmers.

    Its makes you think there are one or two languages that are the be all of a career and that my friend is not what a a great programmer is, sure he has his specialities , but he isnt a syntax monkey he understands language concepts, because syntax cant tell you what the better language is for the given project or function logic and understanding of core concepts can.... So he knows a little about everything is open to everything. In my honest opinion if you become successful at programming outside of css and html you will learn at least 3 to 4 languages and dabble in some others. ( depending on what you focus on of course. )

    ps dont let this intimidate you, once you learn one language and understand it the next one becomes easier, and the one after that you look at and can almost already understand. .

    In truth you cannot really compare two languages, unless you have a very specific project to hold as a benchmark. Most languages even old php still do x better than another languages while sucking at y, programming may be logic, but its not black and white like that.
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    Oky I see what you are saying and if I follow that formula it will also be easier to maybe work on projects of my own further down the line!
    As I learn more languages I will be sure to focus on there pros, cons and concepts and less on syntax.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Burger Lubbe View Post
    Oky I see what you are saying and if I follow that formula it will also be easier to maybe work on projects of my own further down the line!
    As I learn more languages I will be sure to focus on there pros, cons and concepts and less on syntax.
    Doing your own projects is probably one of the best ways to learn I have found. You will learn to think like a programmer solving problems and debugging your own code, how to make your coding more modular and scalable, .... it will probably be rubbish code ( i know from experience thi will be something you will learn to fix from good informational sources and you will be like ohhhhh thats a awesome idea and understand exactly why your method was not so good) the point is learning how to think like a programmer. Everything else, is in a book, on a website.
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