The perfect topics are the ones which you couldn’t find answers to on the internet.  You search and search and then solve it yourself.  Once you do, write it up!

Once you start getting your baseline traffic you’ll get a real buzz!

If you accept that statement then I would seriously consider going straight back into university until you think otherwise.

There are jobs out there you just have to look harder. Business owners are very busy and they don’t have time to look for new employees. They could be desperately requiring some more workers but just can’t find the time to commit to the ordeal of hiring someone.

Advertising a job is a difficult thing. Especially for small businesses (I would recommend getting a job at a small/startup business, you will learn so much more). The cost to advertise is huge, it sucks time and effort from other activities which are required to keep the business going. It has a huge change of failure, either nobody good enough applies for the job or the best person for the job is useless. Nobody wants to hire a C, we all want A’s!

How do you become an A?
This is not a reflection of your grades. Grades are cool and gave you the motivation to learn but that won’t get your very far in life. A study found that emotional intelligence was a bigger indicator to success than SAT’s (American Study). Emotional intelligence is not reflected in your exam or assignments. It’s who you are as a person and how you deal with the world.

High emotional intelligence is self motivation, it is self-focus. It is perseverance and endurance. It is communication and the ability to read people.

If you choose a profession that lines up with your passion then you are pretty much set. Get passionate about what you do. With or without a job, get out there are start using your skills. Find a business in your industry and volunteer your work. WORK FOR FREE. The country needs it and it will beat any interview you can get.

If you are in the IT world then start making something! Build a web app. Don’t do web apps? Then BUILD A WEB APP. Unfortunately (as I found out) the world wants more web apps. Software is going to the cloud and at the moment that means HTML, CSS, Javascript. Get an idea, signup to github and start cutting code. No ideas then come talk to me over coffee. I have a few I can share, I also have a couple of half cut projects that need some attention.

What do you get out of it? When you create or help create an application you tell the market your capable of doing so. Your not just a student anymore, you are a practitioner. You know your stuff and you use it.

If you are passionate about what you do and you show people you are passionate (by working in front of them for free) you will get a job. Simple as that.

The process of matching students with companies is as follows

How does Company <=> Student Matching work?

The matching system we use for the allocation of students is based on the “Stable Marriage” algorithm. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem).

This is how it works….

If Company X picks Bob as their 1st pick and Bob picks Company X as his 1st pick then that is the best match possible.  Bob and company X are taken out of the pool of available matches.

Now what happens if a company doesn’t get their top pick.

If Company Y choose Bob and but Bob choose Company X then the algorithm will fail, and algorithm will and try match Company Y with their 2nd pick and it will continue until it can find a possible match. eg. Jim picked Company Y as his 1st pick and Company Y choose Jim as their 2nd pick then thats a match (Given Company Y’s first pick was already allocated) , and both are taken out of the pool.

The ranking of BOTH companies and students is taken into account by the algorithm. The algorithm will allocate the “best” matches for both students and companies.

Why is it called stable marriage?
Well the concept is this.  If you have 10 males, 10 females, and they rank each other.  The matches which result from the process should give “stable marriages” in that, there should be no male, who wants to be with a female other than his wife, who would want to be with him, more than her current husband.  In which case, his desire for another woman is left only at that.  The other woman prefers her husband over the would be stray.  Interesting concept eh…  Obviously doesn’t take into account for general dislike for the current spouse and leaving… Nor for people outside the control population… but you know, it’s a concept.

Back on topic, I was late to the interviews.  I apologise for the inconvenience of my blunder.  Totally snowed under and hadn’t set a reminder for that morning.  My fault entirely!  So I was late, which added students to the bottom of our list, keeping them longer.  I am sorry.  THEN the fire alarm went off sending us outside for 20 minutes.  Well done to Raja and Ruth for keeping it all under wraps.

We have submitted our ranking and will be waiting on the algorithm to give us the good news!!

It is a stressful time for all.  This year there is about 80 students in the system gunning for a job.  Last year I was one of those students but now I am at the other side, trying to select a student for our projects for [business:Made From New Zealand].

I wish all the students the best of luck.  If your not in the process of getting a job this year under Summer of Code, don’t fret there are still a couple things you can do to get a job, very simple.  Promise.

Something I wasn’t aware of, well not entirely, when I was a student was what it is like to hire someone.  We currently need another developer for [business:Made From New Zealand] and I have no idea where to look for one.  I don’t want to go through an agency, I don’t want to post ads.. I just want a developer.  Earlier this year we had more need for a new developer (as I was the entire dev team) and I hired a very good mate of mine from Uni.  That was a lucky fluke.  My point is, it is WHO YOU KNOW! People who know people hire those people…

If you want a job then jump on the internet and start surfing.  Big or small, hit up companies and try to meet them personally.  Don’t do the boring, here is my CV, if you like it get back to me.. No no no.  Email then and setup a meeting over a cup of coffee.  Get in their face!  Meet them, talk to them.  Work for free.  I promise you’ll get a job if you try.  You have to stand out.  To do that, you must meet them.

Say it with me.  Setup a meeting.  Work for free.  Get into that office and do something.  You will meet people.  People will remember you, people will hire you.

It is near impossible to get a job currently thanks to USA and its economy (yes I blame the states).  Nobody wants to risk hiring a newbie because money is tight and hiring people is risky! (not easy to fire as it is to hire).  So, gain trust.  Get in there, work for free.  Do the boring stuff.  Work your way up to paid work.  The worst that will happen is you will make contacts in your industry of work, you’ll gain work experience and you might gain some confidence for your next interview.

Go out there, get some work.

If you are a company in Wellington and need some cheap labour (don’t worry Students, you are paid very well.  Government helps out here) over the summer on some R&D then get involved in Summer of Code. Check out some information here.

Why Summer of Code?

1. There is smart young talent in our Universities that are struggling to make a living.
2. There is plenty of R&D opportunities that New Zealand IT companies need exploit to get through this recession.
3. Job Agencies don’t care about you, there care about themselves.  Summer of Code is about you.
4. Summer of Code is about you.  You learning, gaining experience, getting contacts.
5. Summer of Code is win win.  You win, Businesses win, New Zealand wins.

Head over to Summer of Code and sign up!  Why are you still reading? Students Sign-up Here.

What do you get?

1. Free stuff.  Bags, hats, t-shirts.  Thats right, free stuff.
2. Free talks.  Smart people in the industry come to talk to you.
3. Free Seminars.  Smart people teaching you real solutions to real problems.  You gets hands on experience with real world technologies, not just the made up University ones!
4. Did I say FREE SEMINARS! Yes.  These are worth joining the program alone.  Of course the well paid job experience is good too.

Who runs this whole shebang?  [person: John Clegg] of [business:ProjectX Technology] runs [business:Summer of Code].  He is a great guy, get into the program and you’ll get to meet him.  He has helped me tremendously with my career and I know many many others.  He has been in the industry long enough to know what you need to do to get where you want to get.  No Job Agency is going to help you in the way Summer of Code will help.

Get in there, get signed up!  Get a job!

We are becoming our own Big Brother, always watching.

The biggest reason for creating a blog is simple, you get found.  If you are looking for a job in IT, I will put money on your name going into Google before that interview.  It has happened to me and everyone I know.  Especially if you are going in the summer of code programme.  What will they find?

Well in my case they don’t find much.  It seems my name is too common, or some semi-famous people have it.  Anyway, point is if they find bad stuff like a publicly viewable Facebook or Bebo page, it will be embarrassing.  You should control what they see and make a good pre-first impression.  Create a blog, write about anything you learn at Uni.  Use it as on online CV.  WordPress is a good tool to start with, it isn’t just a blogging tool.  Many quick websites have been created with it.  This blog is on wordpress, it is very simple to setup.

Where to put it? Well I run a VPS and host many sites on the one box.  It costs me about $60 a month and then the domains are around $30 a year.  You could get a website hosted for you with ftp access but they are limiting.  There are two points to this blog you are about to create, one an online presence, and two experience setting it all up.  The second of which I think will help you the most in your career.  Can’t afford $15 a week on a Virtual Server?  I don’t blame you, I raised this issue about it.  Get together with a bunch of your mates (pick at least one with a credit card) and sort yourselves out a automatic payment system.  Split the cost between yourselves, you will have plenty of bandwidth and space for all of you (probably up to 30 people if not more).  Your first website is going to be very little traffic, there is no much you can do about it.  You will slowly learn how to bring traffic and get Google’s love but there is a lot of computing power for $60 and it can easily go around the lot of you.

So, share the cost and double the enjoyment.  With more of you incharge of the server the quicker you will solve and fix problems on it.  There is a lot of optomisation tricks you can do once you have everything setup and running to increase your page loads and get more traffic to your site! (Faster your page loads the more love Google will bring, tip 1).

Got your bunch of friends? head over to rimuhosting.com (I don’t get paid for refering you, I just use em and I wouldn’t recomend the last VPS host I had openhost.co.nz, they didn’t keep the OS’s they offered upto date and as such lost me as a customer.)  Get a MiroVPS1 or 2, I’m on a 2 plan at the moment.  The 400mb of ram comes in handy when you want to host Rails apps.  You probably don’t need it and could stick to 160mb for now (though if you can afford it, go up to the 400mb).  I will create a post on my wetware blog about how to setup wordpress, get into all the gory details.

Well if you want to succeed, and you do, and you want to succeed quickly, you also want that, then you are going to have to do more than everyone else.  I suggest first on focusing on something outside of your University studies.  Get a taste and some experience in a technology that they aren’t teaching you at Uni.  Learn something that the industry isn’t saturated with.  One that I learnt from an early age is Flash and Actionscript.

My very first job in Wellington in the IT world was with Actionscript.  I had a friend at University (this could get messy with details so I’ll keep it simple, understand tho nothing ever is simple) who didn’t continue his studies and got a job early.  A colleague at his work required someone who could code in Actionscript.  My friend remembered I was able and passed on my number.  Within a couple days I had a job (one that I didn’t seek out, it sought me out) and was earning DECENT money as a contractor.

It was a bit scary at first but after my code went live and the feedback was nothing but positive I was stoked.  Not only was I paid a decent amount but I had a nice big juicy paragraph to put into my CV.  Work History!  References!

My next job was again in the IT industry and it was a little better.  I had work experience with Actionscript now, which meant I could push for a job in that field.  I found one on SJS and quickly got the position after the interview.  A bit of confidence, a bit of experience and a reference is all it takes.

This doesn’t hold true for all technologies though.  There are a lot of people who can write HTML or CSS (possibly php), a few Java.  Not many know Actionscript, in fact I still struggle to know anyone who can code in AScript.  The company I work for had a small project requiring a bit of actionscripting and we couldn’t find a contractor.  I had to step up to the plate and do it.  Which wasn’t ideal as I have way too much to do as it is.

My point is this.  Find something that nobody else knows, learn it.  Learn it well.  Crucially tell people you know it!  Everyone, your freinds, your family, they are all your sales team.  If they know you know Action..something, you will get a mention next time someone asks for a coder.