"It's important to gain the first experience, regardless of where and how it happens," — Talgar Marlis on starting a career in IT

Talgar Marlis, city — Luxembourg, software engineer, talgarmarlis.com

About Me

I am from Naryn. I studied at a Turkish lyceum, then enrolled in computer engineering in Ankara. There I received my education and managed to work a little, after which I received an offer from Amazon and moved to Luxembourg. My family and I have been living here for five years. I recently left Amazon and today I want to create something of my own. Nothing specific yet, but I plan to stay in this field.

I have one higher education degree — a bachelor's. I studied at Bilkent University in the Faculty of Computer Engineering and graduated in five years.

About My First IT Job

After graduating from university, I was immediately hired by Promis. They specialized in automating various industrial processes, with a focus on gas supply. For example, at a site — whether it was a building, a city, or a gas field — sensors were installed, which allowed monitoring gas flow, its composition, and various elements in real time. We developed software that interacted with these sensors, collected data, and displayed it on the screen so that one could track where and with what composition the gas was going.

I worked as a FullStack developer. We wrote code in Java, and for the frontend we used the Webix framework, although it was not particularly popular. At that time, I had just graduated from university; I was about 23 years old. I worked at this company for two years.

When you just finish university, you don't have much choice. I studied in Turkey, and to stay there to live or work, you needed to find a job within a month, at most three, and extend your residence permit, since I had a student visa. If I hadn't found a job within that time, I would have had to leave the country, and returning later would have been difficult. I wanted to stay; I was already used to life there.

This was my first job. I had a resume, but before that, I had applied through the university website, where students could look for vacancies before graduation. But no one responded to my resume. I didn't know how to apply correctly back then. One day, a friend from a neighboring university sent me a vacancy where they were looking for a programmer. I told him I would try to apply, but soon forgot about it. A couple of weeks later we met, and he asked how things were going with that vacancy.

To avoid an awkward situation, I said that I had applied. Returning home, I decided not to back down from what I had said and actually submitted the application. A week later, I was invited for an interview, and already the following Monday I started working. The CTO didn't know about formalities; while all the documents were being processed, which took two months, I was already receiving my salary.

I think my education helped me in finding a job. At the interview, they asked questions related to my experience, since I had built websites and studied several programming languages. When you finish university and have no experience, any company that is willing to hire you becomes a great option.

Difficulties

Six months ago, I tried to get a job in Luxembourg and realized that I am not a specialist in one area. I am more of a multi-functional engineer, while companies are mainly looking for narrow specialists. Even if I passed the interview, I am sure I could master a new technology in a month, but employers need someone with 15 years of experience who knows all the details. The second important aspect is networking. If you have many acquaintances who know and trust you, this significantly increases your chances of getting hired.

Even after working at Amazon, it was difficult for me to find a new job. Mostly there are small companies here that are looking for specialists with 10-15 years of work experience.

For example, there is a bank, and its system has been running for 20-30 years on an old programming language that was used at the time of creation. They need exactly such a specialist who understands this technology so that nothing breaks. At Amazon, we were software engineers, and our tasks were broad: we worked with different languages and technologies, quickly adapting to new projects.

Tips That Will Help You Find a Job in IT

Job hunting is a difficult task, even with experience. You need to constantly demonstrate your skills to get an offer. For example, at Amazon, a minimum of 500 people apply for one vacancy, even for an internship. This means that your chances are 1 in 500. To increase the probability of success, you need to apply to as many vacancies as possible — in fact, to 500 positions. In the conditions of capitalism, work becomes a business: companies are looking for worthy specialists to increase their profit, and you need to meet these expectations.

When you already have such practice in job hunting, you understand that after submitting a resume to 10 vacancies, you should not complain. You realize that out of these 10, only one resume may attract attention. At Amazon, for example, 500 people apply for one vacancy, and they will most likely consider only the first 10 or 20. From them, they may choose five candidates for an interview. You need to submit at least 10 applications per day, which on average amounts to 300 applications per month.

For example, a year after me, one girl who practically knew nothing was hired for a job. Either there was a shortage of engineers then, or the company did not have a well-known name. Therefore, when sending resumes to many companies, remember that at least one of them may need you. It is important to simply gain the first experience, regardless of where and how it happens.