The Hallmarks of Successful Graduate Software Engineers
By: Lindsay Jopson
Tags: Software Engineering, Startup, Software Development, Life Lessons, Programming

The Application

Cover letter

I am sure you have heard this over and over again, “Make sure you have a cover letter”, but let me expand on it. First, when it comes to applying for a position, there is a lot of what I would regard as spammers. These are clearly people that are going for quantity over quality. A typical giveaway to these individuals are:

No cover letter

A cover letter addressed to another company

A generic cover letter full of “stats and facts.” For instance, “I had a sales increase of 300%,” when the job isn’t sales!

What to look for in a cover letter

You introduce yourself as a human being, right from the get-go. “My name is X and I am passionate about Y”. I have now connected your name with a personality. It really doesn’t matter what Y is either. But now I know that you care about something. If there is some connection from your passion to the company you’re applying for you’re getting a head start before I’ve even looked at your CV.

The cover letter should show why they want to work for the company, based on what they’re interested in and what the company has to offer. From there, touching on personal interest areas (even outside of technicals), side projects, and university paper experiences — “I did a Data Science 101 paper at university and fell in love with it”.

Basically, your cover letter shouldn’t sell your skillset as a commodity, rather it should showcase your personality and show you as a human being.

The resume

The resume can be interesting. One thing to understand as an applicant is there is a large likelihood your resume will look like everyone else’s if you only add your education.

The problem with universities is they ultimately make cookie-cutter copies of their alumni. Sure there may be variation in grades, in specific papers or majors, but the reality is, they’re much the same.

What to look for in a resume

An introduction. This should be different from that of the cover letter. It’s more generic and mainly gives the generic facts about yourself in short sentences:

“Throughout my time at university, I have had a growing desire to work in the field of Computer Science, my time at university has taught me the importance of time management and the necessity to discuss and consider solutions before running into them head on.”

Appropriate skills

Don’t list papers ranked by grade. If the company you are applying for is heavily into data science, put a couple of relevant papers or projects associated with that down, but don’t go too heavy.

Projects, Projects, Projects

This is the big one. This might be the single most significant thing I look for and potentially the biggest trademark of succesful software graduates. If you want to instantly put yourself above other candidates, do quality projects. Open a free account on GitHub and get active. If you can show multiple projects under a single “active” GitHub account, this will allow the business to explore areas in what you have done, which you may not even realise are significant.

What’s a “quality” project?

A quality project is one which is obviously not a tutorial. The number of React Todo lists I’ve seen makes the mind boggle. While this may show a willingness to learn a language and do tutorials, the reality is that all this shows is that you followed instructions.

Extending tutorials is good. Going off-road and doing something with that skill to try something new and interesting is gold.

The best quality project I came across was a graduate software engineer applicant who was passionate about the Te Reo Māori (the indigenous language of Aotearoa, New Zealand). They had used the Google Maps API to rename all of New Zealand’s street names to their Te Reo Māori equivalents. In reality, this wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking work, but from that project alone I got more information about the candidate than any other material they provided.

Let me explain.

Firstly, I’m from New Zealand. Te Reo is one of our three officially recognised languages, although isn’t translated onto Google Maps. The fact that someone took the time to do something like that, and use a newly learnt skill to further the ability to do so and raise awareness of this fact was truly special. It spoke to the type of person they were more than any other project I’ve seen.