
Develop Yourself
To change careers and land your first job as a Software Engineer, you need more than just great software development skills - you need to develop yourself.
Welcome to the podcast that helps you develop your skills, your habits, your network and more, all in hopes of becoming a thriving Software Engineer.
Develop Yourself
#279 - Recruiter Exposes the Truth About Junior Developer Jobs
Just give up?
Everyone says no one’s hiring junior developers anymore — but is that actually true?
In this episode, I sit down with recruiter David Roberts to uncover what’s really happening in the job market, why most applicants are getting filtered out, and what you can do differently to land your first role.
We break down the biggest myths about entry-level tech jobs, how recruiters actually think, and the skills that make you stand out in 2025.
Don't learn to code, learn to build complex software and get hired: https://parsity.io
Already know how to code? Get help landing your first role: https://crushing.digital/
(Not so) Shameless Plugs
👉 Build Your First Website in 30 minutes 👈
✉️ Got a question you want answered on the pod? Drop it here
🧑💻 Join Parsity - Become a full stack AI developer in 6-9 months.
Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network, and more. I'm Brian, your host. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this episode. Now you know that I own an anti-boot camp with my buddy Zubin, an ex-Google software engineer. If you're interested in not just learning how to code, and you know it's going to take more than three months, and you're serious about making a transition into a career in software and you want to work with people that have done it before and are currently working in senior plus levels, join me in Zubin at parsity.io slash inner dash circle. You can learn all about our philosophy, how we approach learning how to code and switching careers in a much different way, and how we have so much gosh dang success. If you're interested in being one of the few people that works with us this year, go and apply at parsity.io slash inner dash circle. And now back to the episode. Today on the Develop Yourself podcast, I have David Roberts, CTO, former recruiter, current CEO of Crushing Digital where he helps junior developers and just developers in general find a job in the tech market, which I'm sure you're very busy. And like most people, we hear a million different things about the tech market right now. And um, you know, I own a program called Parsity where we teach people how to code and then get into the tech industry. And we're seeing, you know, things are different. But I really want to dig into like what you're seeing because I feel like we're probably seeing very different things, and I know you've seen the mistakes that juniors have made in the market that they're probably continuing to make. It just kind of outlines some of the myths, the realities, and what people can do to stand out and actually have the best shot at getting hired 2025 and going into 2026.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, definitely. Well, firstly, thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, thank you. It's good to see you again. Yeah, you too.
SPEAKER_02:So um yeah, a very different market.
SPEAKER_03:Um and what does that mean to you exactly? Because like when I say different market, I mean like it felt like it was there's like this um there's myth or whatever that was easy like a few years ago. And and I and I don't know if it was easier or easier, but when when you hear people say that, like when I just said it's different, like what is that what do you what do you think of when you think of the difference between now and I see it on two different levels really?
SPEAKER_02:So in the old old days, you know, I'm I'm I'm knocking on a bit here, right? Uh so in my day, if you knew what this was, you got a job, was the joke I always said, right? Okay, yeah, yeah. And and I've if I um uh if I think back to the the first day I started job searching back then, um I think I put it hotmail had a job board as attached to it, and I I put out like uh um I put my resume on there, and by the end of the day I had like four interviews, and I was not a great developer, right? I I got by. Okay. Um, but that's so that's my interpretation. But rather strangely, only an hour ago, um I was on with uh a developer who I hired six years ago during my recruitment cycle, but they're now coming out of uh employment and they're starting to regurgitate those words back to me. Like, hang on, what happened to the market? I used to just apply in these places. I the words he said was I would create uh I would pay for a LinkedIn premium account for the month, get my job, and I'm gone. That doesn't happen anymore. So then now applying it to what's happening with me, um, you know, I I say on the course, when I was hiring, if I put out a job on a big job board, I would get between 1,000 and 3,000 applicants to every job. And most people don't really believe the numbers, but it's true. Uh so then somebody came through um and hired a developer who was on my course and they used me as a reference for their first job. And so during that reference call, they were asking, you know, who are you? What do you do? And I was explaining and uh they kind of said you know, um, can you find more developers for us? So uh I I said, Yeah, I can help you find more developers. It's not something I do to make money, I just it helps the developers coming through my course, right? So uh they said, Well, we don't need you right now because we've just paste a job uh out there on LinkedIn. And this is a small company in London, and um they got 3,700 applicants to that job. So they came back after two weeks to me and said, We give up, like it's there's too many people to process, the quality's been very low, it's hard to find the good people. And so that's the market. When when we say has the market changed, 3,700. Now I'm normally saying to people, if there are a thousand, are you the best? And most people are honest enough to say probably not, you know. Uh yeah, yeah, you know, and if you do think you're the best, therapy, you know, it's it's so um that that's where I I see the market has changed, but people are still getting jobs. The market is still moving, but if you're applying in those places where you're competing with 3,700 people, the odds are there, right? It's it's it's unlikely you're going to stand out.
SPEAKER_03:That's that's a really big one. That's a strange thing I noticed as a manager when I was trying to hire, and we got flooded with applications. In fact, I did something that maybe I'm not so proud of. I said, let's remove the word junior from the um from the posting. Because I was assuming that that word actually was getting in it and it worked. I said, let's remove the word junior. We got significantly less people. It was still a junior job. We we definitely weren't hiring senior or even mid-level people, it was a very entry-level job. But just having that word got just flooded with so many. It was junk too. I mean, I did a lot of interviews and I was kind of shocked at the quality of candidates that were just not there. Like simple things like, hey, um, you know, write like a four like a for loop, honestly. And they were struggling with these incredibly basic things. I'm thinking this is also the interesting thing with the market. I think that sometimes the um our competition is not maybe as high as we think as far as like the actual quality of people. But yeah, I don't know what what what are people doing? Because I think uh the problem is we have LinkedIn, which is like a social media platform that kind of pretends to be a job platform, and you have people on it that don't really know how to navigate LinkedIn, and I'm not even sure I know how to navigate LinkedIn anymore either. If you're listening to this show, I'm making a few assumptions about you. One, you're probably a little bit above average intelligence, maybe even a little bit above average looking as well. I don't know. And two, that you're probably trying to either break into tech or maybe you already work as a professional coder. At Parsity over the last few years, we've helped hundreds of people break into tech with a proven strategy and really amazing results. The secret to our program isn't so secret. Really small cohorts, one-on-one attention, working with people who are actually in the industry to learn what you need to do to get in the industry. We've helped everybody from ex-boot camp grads to people who have never written a line of code to people who did the Odin project and are wondering what to do next. That's the power of being small and having customized curriculum tailored to your needs and understand where you're coming from. We'll only work with a small amount of people every year. And at the same time, we keep a very competitive price that's lower than basically every other coding bootcamp program out there. In my opinion, it's not only the best deal, but it's a superior program to anything that you've seen because we approach career change and learning to code in such a different way. If you're interested in joining, the only way to know if you're a good fit is to apply at parsity.io. And if you're on the fence, check out our testimonials. Or if you just want to learn JavaScript and maybe don't want to go the full software engineering path, check out dev30.xyz. You can connect with me on LinkedIn to make sure I'm not some crazy person and see that I actually can back up what I'm saying, or you can just enjoy the rest of this episode. All good, either way. And now let's get back to the episode. But what are you telling people that are like, okay, hey, I just graduated boot camp or hey, I'm out of work. Um, and the traditional advice is cool, let's let's update your LinkedIn, let's update your resume and start applying for jobs on LinkedIn. Did does this work anymore for people?
unknown:Does this work anymore for people?
SPEAKER_02:No. So it it doesn't work because the numbers are too high. Now, if if you so for your company, for my company, if if we advertise a job and we're open to hiring a junior, right? We're we're advocates of juniors, you know, why not? And we put out this job and we get a thousand applicants. Now you and I are probably looking at each other thinking, I'm not interviewing a thousand people. Like how do we get rid of these people? So I I'm thinking, well, okay, of the thousand, we we didn't ask for experience, but how many of them actually have experience? So maybe 500 of the thousand have a year. Maybe two hundred have two years. Well, that gets rid of eight hundred people. Now we're down to two hundred. Of those two hundred, who's got a degree? And now that gets and we keep applying these filters. Now, this was a junior level job at the start, but because everyone put themselves in the same bracket, the the bar gets moved up. So because of the way we apply, we do it to ourselves. So, what I'm saying to people is we need to fix all your profiles LinkedIn, resume, GitHub, etc., so that if somebody does take a look at you even for just a few seconds, they see your value, but then we need to take you away from that place where all that competition is and get you applying more directly. We need to teach you to be your own recruiter because recruiters don't wait for jobs to be advertised, recruiters go and leverage a job. And and so that's where level one is the changing of the profiles, level two is getting them to see the market differently and and um job search differently, and then three is networking, and that's when it really starts to come good for the next jobs, and your your network will start to pay dividends so that you won't then have to start applying later on. You'll you'll build this network and it will work for you in the end.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's a lot of what we do at Parsity now around job searching in general is is not really using LinkedIn beyond trying to make connections to people in your network and kind of do like a almost like a breadth-first search of your personal network. Because oftentimes you don't know who you're connected to that's gonna help you slide in through a back door somewhere, or might know of an opportunity that's not even listed. We've had quite a few people get jobs that weren't even listed on LinkedIn. You know, they've gone through their old employers or or their old schools or people that they never would have thought that actually have an inside to something. That's that's one way we've seen things work. And I noticed this. Um a lot of junior developers, people I meet on LinkedIn, they always say, Here's my resume. Tell me, tell me what's wrong with my resume. And I'm thinking, does that even matter anymore? I'll I'll be honest. I feel like I haven't really used my resume. It's more of a formality. Uh but that's me. I'm I'm kind of senior plus level, and I really don't know if your resume matters anymore. What is your take on resumes in general right now?
unknown:What is your take on resumes in general right now?
SPEAKER_02:Um I think resumes, LinkedIn, these things matter if depending on the medium in which you are applying. And if you're applying on, you know, the big job boards, you know, LinkedIn profile probably wins out most of the time. Um resumes I I find can be almost the most powerful thing in the way I want people to apply. If I teach them how to to be their own recruiter, but I I think I see resumes differently to most people. Um you know uh pe people show me uh everyone talks about the Harvard resume. I've never seen a more boring document in my life, right? Um so for me, uh a resume is is like a fast food flyer, it's got to make me hungry and make me call the number, make me make complete the transaction, right? And that's what I see your resume as is I don't it it's it's there to communicate value quickly so that people get into uh uh an interview uh situation so that you actually get your chance to sell. And how you actually make someone hungry from your resume is different based off the level of your experience and what sort of role you're trying to get. Because at the start it's all about tech, you know, how are you applying yourself and proactivity, but then once you get into those senior roles, you know, I'm not just giving you a job, I'm entrusting my business, I'm entrusting my product and my client base and my reputation into you. And so I'm not gonna give you an interview unless I trust that you could be that person to look after what's most valuable to me.
SPEAKER_03:Now, what are what are some of the mistakes? Like, what are some like glaring things people should just not be doing on resumes? And what are some things people absolutely should be doing on their resume nowadays?
SPEAKER_02:Are you cut out on the second part of that? What was the second part of that bit then?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, what should what should people be doing with the resumes? Like what should they not be doing for sure, and what and what are some things people should be doing when it comes to resumes, especially junior developers.
unknown:Especially junior developers.
SPEAKER_02:Especially juniors. So um first things first is your uh resume should be showing direction, as in what job do you want? So I always think about if we take the fields from LinkedIn and apply it to your resume, so on LinkedIn you'd get headline and about section, and they look forward to the job you want. So if you're junior trying to break into tech, there's no point in writing you a headline that you're a truck driver because you're trying to be found as a software developer. So you're gonna have to give it direction to where you want to go, what tech do you want to use, and be very focused. And then we've got to showcase in the rest of it how you are making this happen. So it becomes about your proactivity. So the the main thing I would say is I don't want to have to read your bullet points straight off the bat, I want to be able to blur my eyes, scan down, and just get a feel for you in 10 seconds. I I say 10 seconds, but someone was saying on social media the other day, people don't look at your resume longer than six seconds. So I I don't think it's far off that. The mistakes, I think, is that people think people read it. Um you know, I I I look uh I I often say that story of have you ever been in a in an interview when it feels like somebody is reading your resume for the first time? Yes, and most people say yes, and I say, Well, the reason for that yeah, they go the reason for that is because it is the first time they're reading it. Someone like me, maybe you um has looked at it for that six seconds and gone, ooh, this looks good off a quick scan. Invite them to an interview. What knowing I'm gonna read it later, then we don't read it, and I get you to walk me through it in the interview because I just didn't read it. But the important point of that conversation is I did make a decision about whether you were worthy of more time based off the scan, and that's why that scan read, that six-second read, that feeling I get has to be immediate and it has to be powerful in order for me to commit my time to sitting there and listening to you. Because if I don't think you're worthy of my time, why would I spend half an hour listening to how you like to solve problems and then giving you constructive feedback and pretending I like you? It doesn't happen. So it's got to be powerful in its communication.
SPEAKER_03:Man, that that is funny because I you've you described the situation I've been in, and I was kind of always thinking, why the hell am I here? But that that really like enlightens, it illuminates that experience that I'm sure all of us had. Now on to so outside of resumes, here's the things I always see dream developers maybe over-index on, but I'm sure you're seeing patterns, and I just want to know your perspective as well. Portfolio projects. I I'm a big portfolio project guy, uh, not because I think it's like the key to employment or the path to employment, which I know it can be, but mostly because it's it's an important tool to use to like just update and enhance your skills as a developer. I just see portfolio projects or just projects as an important thing to do, to have something you're doing on the side. But a lot of people I see think that that project is going to be like the thing that's going to get them hired. And I can already I I think I might know your take on this already, but yeah, what do you see as the role of projects uh when it comes to getting hired? Are they important? Should people not do them? You know, what's a good path they should take on that?
SPEAKER_02:For juniors in particular, you have to do projects. But yeah, that that line that you said, like what's what's the one project? You know, if I everyone asks me that, what's the one project I can build? What's the what's the one template I can use for my resume? What's the one it it always reminds me of what's the one chat up line I can use to get girls, right? It's just that there's no there's no it doesn't work that way. Life's not like that, right? So you I always say there's a difference here between becoming a better developer and getting a job. So to rewind on it a little bit, if if lots of senior developers disagree with my um teachings, I guess, on how to get a job, and they say, no, no, who cares about React or Angular or Vue or whatever, you know, I think they should just learn JavaScript inside and out. Now, as a developer, it's far better to be a better JavaScript developer than it is to be, you know, there's too many React developers that don't know JavaScript well enough, if you ask me. That's wild. Yeah. Now, so it's better as a developer to be a better JavaScript developer, but you're not going to get a job.
SPEAKER_03:No one's hiring for that layer anymore, really. No one's, yeah, you're not getting I used to get quizzed on that stuff, and now I just really haven't really had that experience for a while.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. So I I'm telling people, no, and lots of seniors will go, just put JavaScript, just put this, you know, TypeScript. And I'm like, you could uh remember the layers here, a recruiter searching. They don't know that it's all just JavaScript and they don't understand all these things. So you've got to you've got to write for the layers, but you've got to write for the audience. And that audience is lots of different people. There's a recruiter, and then there's a uh a technical person and a more technical person and a CTO, and you've got to write for for all of those people. And if you don't, you're gonna get filtered out at the top layer. Now, then people get a job and they go, What do I do now? Because they're worried they've actually got the job, and I now go and learn JavaScript. Yeah, there you go. Right? Just all in. Um, so the you need both, but then when it comes to your original question about the portfolio website, well, people just want to put up thumbnails, you know, of the projects they've done. Look, here's my weather app, here's my Netflix clone, here's my this. Is well I'm teasing, but yeah, here's all that those things.
SPEAKER_03:Pretty representative. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I I don't need your weather app. I've I've got a weather app on my phone. I I don't I don't need this. But what are they examples of? They're examples of you can make a front end in React. There are examples of you can you can use an API, consume an API, you can do authentication, you can do it's the tech. So if you're sell what the reason for your portfolio is to have that example on your uh on your website which says, here's an example of me using React and Redux and TypeScript and Jest and React testing library and and it's the tech, and that's the same for your GitHub, it's the same for everything else. It's like these are examples of you being able to use the things that you're selling back on your resume or back on LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, I always say the banner image, the headline, the about section, these are your claims. You're saying I can do this, I'll I'll prove it to you, just keep reading, right? But then everything else has to back up the claims, otherwise it's empty claims. But then when whenever I arrive at another person's portfolio website, it's like I'm David Roberts, and then the text deletes itself, and I'm a developer, and the text deletes itself. Hang on, where's the evidence of you living and breathing React and TypeScript stuff?
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah, this we've we've all seen this portfolio. This is it's probably it's kind of funny because now we've seen a million examples of like the weather app, the typing text in the portfolio and all these things. Um, how important is it to like make it like super unique? Or is that even important? Is it more important to just show evidence that hey, hey, hey, this is this is a template, whatever. But here's some actual examples of you doing the thing.
SPEAKER_02:I think it depends on what you're trying to do with it. If if you want to be known as this, you know, developer or front-end developer who makes snappy cool things, then I'd say you're gonna have to start getting a little bit creative. But most people, it's just uh a uh, you know, uh a template presentation of here's some works that I've done. Yeah, one thing I do say is if you're putting yourself out there as you know a front-end developer and you make a portfolio that sucks, I think it's going to work against you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So I think you'd be far better to not have one. I don't think a portfolio is uh required. I think you can get away without it, but if you make one, you've got to make it look good. And you've and you've got to get rid of like the the classic, you know, gotchas, like typos and things. You've got to make sure that because the people are entrusting their brand essentially to to you on some level, and it's like so it can work against you, and that's sometimes hard to tell developers like I'd get rid of that, like don't do that.
SPEAKER_03:Putting it in mobile view and things just break apart immediately. I'm like, oh rough, man. Uh I'm sure you've seen patterns like I have over the years from working with people, and and you've probably noticed that there's like certain people like this person made it, and maybe you've been surprised by certain people that make it or don't make it. Are there patterns you've noticed in the last like 12 months uh among the people that you've worked with that that have are indicators that they're going to quote unquote make it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. What are those?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know if we talked about this last time we spoke. Maybe we did. I don't know. You you can tell me. Um back in December last year. Um so uh I take people on in cohorts and we work with them for a certain amount of time. So the course starts the first Monday of every month. So it was my November cohort, and then I'm teaching them the the we do LinkedIn, GitHub resumes, etc. All the profile stuff in the first month, because then we're into networking and job search and all that stuff. So we're in December and we're starting, should be starting, like the the job search stuff, and everyone's a little bit lackluster, everyone's you know, down in tools. It's it's holiday time, right?
SPEAKER_03:You know, for sure.
SPEAKER_02:And so I'm saying, look, now's the time, people, and this is early December, and there was a huge pushback from that cohort saying it's it's holidays, right? No one gets hired in December. What's the point? It's like everyone thinks the same thing about August. And I could see three people on my course, and I named them. I said, These three people will not be here long, they'll they'll get jobs and they'll be gone. And then we got to like mid-January, yeah, and I said, Oh, one of those people is gone, and they were the last, by the way. Jeez, and everyone's in shock. Uh-huh. And one of those people got seven interviews in December. So when everyone else was doing nothing, they got seven interviews and got three job offers and they were gone. Now, I named them. So I saw something. Yeah, right. And these people will openly tell you they weren't the best developers in the group. It was sheer tenacity, proactivity. And I think if you can bottle that up and and present it in the right way, people will invest in that. So on the course, I'm often saying let's pretend you're a dance teacher and you're going to pick one of the kids, one of the students for extra help, extra tuition. Um and nine of the children are over here picking their noses, misbehaving, doing you know usual stuff. And then one child is desperately trying to pirouette over here in the corner. They're getting it badly wrong, but they're trying. Who do you pick? Right.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_02:You're always gonna go for that proactivity. Yeah. Now, how can we make you seem proactive in everything you present, from your LinkedIn profile to your resume to GitHub? Everything needs to scream, I'm doing this. Now, if I meet another developer and go, hey, okay, you want to be a React developer, or you want to get the tech lead role, or you want to do this, how are you making it happen? And everyone goes, I don't know, pay me, I'll, I'll, I'll work hard. And I yeah, that's not gonna quite cut it. Not when you're competing with 3,700 people. Yeah, right. Yeah, so we've got to present that, and that's why I call it like a fast food flyer. We've got to present not just skills, but proactivity.
SPEAKER_03:I I love that. And for what it's worth, I've been hired. It's it I think around half the jobs I've had. If you look at my LinkedIn history, they've been around December when I got hired. I remember the first job I got hired for, I started on my birthday. It was like amazing. I felt like it was a gift or something from the universe. I'm like, what a what a great way to start. I got my the job I wanted on my birthday, and I was starting was like such, I'll never forget that day. It was amazing. And I got hired a few more times in December. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So my theory on this, and it's the same with August, is normally the development team and tech leadership and everything, everyone like that, is they're they're working. We're in sprints, we're we've we've got deadlines, we've got deliveries and all that kind of stuff. We don't tend to do all these things for August and for December because we can't guarantee who's going to be around and what's happening and it's holiday season. So everything kind of slows down. But now you're thinking about what does the next year look like? What does the next quarter look like? What does Yeah, do I need more? What have we got you know more contracts being signed? Are we you know have we got a team that can handle that work? They're thinking big picture, and they think those that big picture in the summer as well. They think that in the in the August season. So when everybody else slows down, you speed up.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I like that a lot. And I've never it's funny, I'm I'm pretty naive, or I was uh much more naive. I didn't even know about you know cycles of hiring or anything like that. I'm like, well, I'm just applying because like that's just what it is. I'm just gonna be applying if it's if it's Christmas Day. I mean somebody might be open. I don't know. You know what I mean? Um so this leads me to now um tech skills that you're seeing as a pattern. Because I I I think I personally believe that people um overfocus on like some magical unlock of tech skills. And I I meet people a lot, they they keep they're on this hamster wheel. They're like, I need to now learn, you know, Java. Because I one job said Java, oh, I need to learn Python now because I've seen that this is the hot new language. And I'm like, it you're you might not be wrong, but you're almost certainly not right, right? Because you if you keep doing this, you're you're just gonna be a Swiss Army knife developer. But then I also know that you can't just learn anything, right? Like you can't just learn C sharp and you're like on maybe the West Coast in the Bay Area and expect that you're gonna be flooded with job interviews if you don't know React, and you're saying, well, no, C sharp and Python, that probably won't work out. But is there anything that you see is like a massive technology trend, especially when it comes to AI, maybe that you're seeing that, oh, this is maybe a skill people should really be investing in now that may help them get hired? Or or not?
SPEAKER_02:I mean honestly, no, I don't. Um but you know, when someone comes to me and says, Oh, I I see it's all about this technology or that technology right now, I can usually make a pretty good prediction about where they're applying for jobs. You know, uh in this market as well, who's got the money and the resources to filter 3,700 applicants? You need a company that's got a HR department, yeah. They've got to have um enough people to handle those people, give them feedback, processing it it's it's a headache. Now, a company that's got a HR department that big is big corporate world, and they're gonna use C sharp, they're gonna use Java, they're gonna use banks and places like that. So you're applying on that means big job boards, and that's what you see. You see these trends. Uh I still see the waves that I used to see in recruitment. Like you won't hear about Ruby for a long time. And then all of a sudden it's Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Yeah. You don't heard about React Native for a long time. Then I had a flood of that coming through. And it it you cut it comes in waves. The one thing I will say is everyone's so nervous at that junior level to go, what should I learn? And I think it doesn't really matter. I still think there's value in, you know, uh I think still think there's value in Java and strongly typed languages and good fundamentals. But honestly, it doesn't really matter. And what I'm seeing across certainly at that junior level is they don't hire for your skills, they hire for your productivity, which is what you were talking about before. So it doesn't matter what it is, go all in on it. Because they won't care that, oh, you went all in on the wrong thing. They just go, oh, I love that. Let's apply that to something else. So I've had React developers getting.NET roles. I've had, you know, every different combination you can imagine has happened. And so I don't I don't put that much weight on it. I put weight on show me you doing it, show me you living and breathing it.
SPEAKER_03:Uh yeah, that was that's been that was my personal experience. That's the experience we see at people at Parsity. We we teach kind of your traditional, or we did at least teach your traditional like JavaScript, TypeScript, Next.js, React, Stack, Mern Stack, the thing that everybody likes to make fun of, that's hired a ton of people. And many people have gone on to roles with Python. One guy went into like Web3, people have gone into data analyst roles. It's like there's no one size fits all. There's certainly most people have gone into more traditional full stack roles, but a lot of people have gone to things we've never taught them directly. I went into a C sharp.net role after learning JavaScript and writing, and I thought I wanted to be just a front-end developer, just doing I was I wanted to be like an email developer. I was like anything to get my foot in the door, just HTML and CSS, like, oh, I love making pretty sites in JavaScript. Is it that's okay. Um and then I ended up in a job that didn't require any of those things. Um but that but that was kind of the cool thing. I mean, they and you're right, they hired me for like my my aptitude, I can only assume, yeah, to do well. And it ended up kind of being a good bet. They got me for a very cheap price. I stayed there for a couple years, and I I'm sure they made their return on investment back. I hope they did.
SPEAKER_02:Um They're still waiting on the back.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right. Yeah, maybe I have to go back and really work that off for them. Um prediction time. Prediction time before I let you go here. What do you what do you think the job market will look like in the next 12 months?
SPEAKER_02:Uh so I was doom and gloom a few months.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, okay. Fair enough.
SPEAKER_02:And I I think I've come because I was really optimistic, and then I got into the doom and gloom, and I think I've come pretty full circle now. I've come back. Um I think we're going to see um I think we're gonna see a lot more jobs coming back. I think we're going to see much smaller development teams and a lot more startups. So, you know, I've had a billion ideas in my life, you know, for for things I wanted to build. Yeah. But the time taken to build them, and then, you know, I was a back-end developer in the early days, and you go, Well, I needed to hire a front-end developer to help me out, right? Or if you're a um an entrepreneur and you want to build this, you're gonna need a couple of full stat developers, or you're gonna need a front-end and a back end, you're gonna need a variety of skills. Now you start going, well, each person's gonna want their salary, you know, 80, 100k, what's it gonna be? And then you need a couple of them, and you go, that's a big investment, right? To to just get going. Whereas today, you can get going incredibly cheaply by comparison.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02:You still need a person.
SPEAKER_03:For sure.
SPEAKER_02:Um, but the you can do proof of concept. So I think we're gonna I I think this is an exciting time for the startup scene, in which case you can actually get products out the door much faster, iterate on them, test things out in the market. So I think it's gonna, you know, you are gonna need to know AI, but you're gonna also need to code because it's gonna be about using AI to test that the idea, test that, and then building it and actually going deeper. So I think I think tech jobs are gonna come back. I think it's gonna take time. And and the thing I'm saying is everyone's been saying to me now for at least two years, oh no, just wait, just wait for the economy to pick up. Like everyone has lots and lots of people are still getting jobs consistently. I wouldn't offer a money-back guarantee, but if they weren't consistently getting jobs, that's right, yeah. So uh it consistently happens, but all those people who were procrastinating, if you ask me, yeah, are still there procrastinating, still waiting for the market.
SPEAKER_03:Still waiting for the thing, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:So I think that the opportunities are there, and the opportunities for me, because I've always liked the startup scene, I like that having a direct impact, right? So I I think this is gonna be a really exciting time if you get moving.
SPEAKER_03:I I feel you I I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I know my vision, I feel like my my experience is so warped. I have like 11 years experience now, which I still feel like is not even that much, like because I feel like oh, there's people with 20, 30 years experience. I feel like I'm still learning a lot all the time. Um, but I'm in the startup world and I'm I'm getting, you know, I guess you could say I'm getting flooded with requests, a little humble brag here, but I'm getting flooded with lots of requests. And I see all the startups all using AI in the city, and they're they're desperate for talent right now, it feels like. And a lot of them are actually implementing more in-office work, which actually makes the pool of candidates smaller out here. So I'm I'm actually experiencing this, uh, the positive effect of this. And I do hear people in in and I've talked to people that are like, well, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for the market. I'm like, well, how's that gonna work out, do you think? Like, how would that possibly work out for you? If you wait till the market or the headlines tell you that the market is back, I think you've gonna be waited way too long. You're gonna miss the incredible opportunity that a lot of people are out on the sidelines waiting for.
SPEAKER_02:But that's the exactly the same way I look at you know, when people are applying um for jobs on job boards. If it's on the job board, it's too late. If you wait for the market to pick up, it's too late. It's too late. It's like the now is the time to learn how to leverage this because you don't want to be one of those people that's waking up and realizing you missed the boat. Yeah. And what I mean by that is like lots of senior developers I'm seeing are coming out of their jobs now and realizing the the market's changed and how they present themselves has changed, and they've got to go and learn that skill. This is about being proactive and getting stuff done now so that you're in the boat and going. But yeah, it's the same problem.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm I'm glad you you kind of have that same same take as well. By the way, um big plug for David. You're I I talk to a ton of people, and so and a lot of them aren't the right fit for parsity because we're we're mostly taking people that are like at the very beginning stages. And when they ask me, who should I who should I call or who should I talk to? I just I'm trying to get a job. Once I determine that they actually don't need like the technical foundation that they're in the job portion, say there's only one guy you should talk to, it's David. And I say, just go to David Roberts. Um, this you're you're one of those guys that I trust. You're ethical, and I've and I've and I've and I've you know I've sent people to you, and I've had nothing but good feedback from all the people that I've sent to you.
SPEAKER_02:So Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate it. And you can you can send me that box of donuts uh after we we end the show today, and that five dollars in that dot box of donuts, no, no sweat.
SPEAKER_02:That's gonna be a long delivery for me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it'll be yeah, it's okay. It's okay. I'm a patient guy. Um before I let you go, let me just get some quick hot takes. Just some quick fire hot takes for you. Open to work banners.
SPEAKER_02:No. No.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Um I don't think they I don't think they harm, but I don't think they help.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Yeah. I've I never use them. I don't I don't like them personally, but I was just curious what you think. Uh link LinkedIn easy apply. Waste of time or useful.
SPEAKER_02:A waste of time. Waste of time. Um it it's the 3700 number. It's it's it it's if you can stand out. Now, if we can change your profile, I think you will get more attention, but still the odds are stacked against you. So I don't say to people on my course not to do it, but I don't want that to be your only avenue because it's highly unlikely that's going to be the thing that leads to fruition.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, uh 100% on that one for sure. Um ATS optimized resumes. Is this a thing? Is or is this worth the effort? Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02:No. So I I've worked with many off-the-shelf ATS systems. I've we've built them for uh in places where I've worked, so I've sort of had a hand in in those things. I don't know if I've talked to you this, uh talked about this to you before, but you know, it always reminds me of the early days of Google and them saying they like people used to do the keyword stuff thing to get up the search engine rankings. And SE and then there was like Google used to say to you, look, stop uh playing games to try and game the system, stop doing this. And then they did releases that were like uh Penguin and Panda, I think it was. This is a long time ago, and all of a sudden people who were on page one just dropped to like page 20, and it it changed overnight. Now I think people doing all these things for an ATS, honestly, the main problem when you're trying to hire, when you use an ATS, is you get lots of people in, but what they put in their resume sucks.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So it's not about it's not about making it the right format and that sort of stuff, it's about getting the right value so that someone sees that sort of thing. So I don't like the ATS, and that that goes hand in hand with my other one, which I I don't I don't agree with, and I don't like the single page resume.
SPEAKER_03:Ooh, that see obviously multi-page resume. I have a multi-page resume now because I can't really stuff it all in one page, it doesn't it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but I think this the single page resume seems to when I looked into this a long time ago, it was it came from like two different reasons. One is like what if someone loses page two or three or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_03:Oh man, physical copies back in the days when you were.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, who's printing this? 2025, like it's ridiculous. Yeah, so then the you know the the idea was more about making sure every element, ever every line was was worthy, you know. So it's kind of like I I normally joke saying it's like get all your clothes out that you're going to take on holiday, and then you half it and half it again, unless you're my wife, is the joke that I say, right? But the idea was not to say it has to be one page, the idea was to make sure don't have junk junk, yeah, just make sure sweat every line. Is this progressing the story of me as this developer that I'm selling? And it's like I don't think anyone ever said you know, it has to be one page. I don't think I've ever seen anyone read a resume and go, oh, this person looks amazing. No, they weren't two pages.
SPEAKER_03:Two pages. I'm not going that far, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02:So the the other thing I did with some of the people that um we both know, um uh I I took their resumes but people who look very similar on paper. And then you s ask ChatGPT or whatever and say, who's best? Why? And then say, Well, actually, I prefer I prefer this quality and this and who why who does it pick? And then you're going back to both people going, Well, you know, if if you're all using AI in your daily work, do you really think the recruiters are not?
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02:In which case, they're gonna be asking them and it's going, Well, it's telling you that your project section sucks, and it's telling you your experience section sucks, and you need to work on those bits. But the interesting thing is the more information you gave it, the better it was at making the decision an informed decision about that. So I kind of think of it like I don't read the Amazon reviews anymore, you just read the AI summary of the reviews. That's right, yeah. It's like they're not gonna read your resume, they're gonna read the AI summary of the resume, in which case, who cares how long it is, just get as much it value so that it can make a better decision and give a better summary, and then you stand down.
SPEAKER_03:That's a that's a really smart one. I I gotta I gotta do this on myself. This is that's that's too good. That's a that's a great way to end, by the way. Um Thanks again for for showing up and and giving me all sorts of game in the and the in the listeners and people that are watching this. Where can people find you online? I'm gonna have links in the show notes as well for for the free course that you have now. But where else can people find you online?
SPEAKER_02:So I'm at Crushing Digital on like link uh on um Instagram and TikTok and um my YouTube. So the website's crushing.digital, and you can get all the links from there. Um I I put the whole course is available for free on my website, it's also available on YouTube, but most of the time I'm I'm doing um you know Instagram reels, that sort of thing, and I just try to help as many people as I can, put out better concept, some fun things during the day, just to keep people interested and start to see this jobs market a little bit differently.
SPEAKER_03:They are funny, and I know they ruffle people's feathers. I'm sure you get a lot of haters from your reels. Please check out David's reels. I find them hilarious. I also, it's like a lot of times like, oh, I wish I had the guts to say that.
SPEAKER_02:You know, uh I get a lot of abuse.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do.
SPEAKER_02:Thing is, I'm going against the grain, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, exactly. People rather get like the feel-good advice and stuff like that. And you kind of just lay it out the wake. I think a lot of us look at it. Uh thanks again, David. Really appreciate you being here today.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, thank you for having me on. It's it's great to see you again. It's been too long.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, for real. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks, which you too.
SPEAKER_03:That'll do it for today's episode of the Develop Yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsity.io. And if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show notes. See you next week.