
Besides school, what should I be focusing on right now? (CIS Student, 2nd year) - EvanZ
I&#x27;m currently going for an AS in Computer Information Systems at my local community college and plan on transferring to either RPI or RIT (my community college has excellent articulation agreements) in 2015 to continue on for my BS. I&#x27;m currently looking into what is necessary for an internship over the summer of 2015 and am working on a few personal projects (two sites and a mobile game) as well as learning and getting solid grades in class.<p>What should be my focus? I&#x27;m looking for a general outline by those who have been in a similar position to mine (I imagine there are at least a few here on HN.) My main concern is getting to graduation and realizing that I&#x27;ve neglected a critical aspect that was necessary for all job seekers.<p>Thanks in advance!
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faet
Internships and portfolio.

Setup a website that goes over projects you've done in school or personal
projects. I got my last job because my portfolio website looked good and I had
some past projects that 'showed' stuff on my resume. Most other people just
had "I know c#". I had a project I could show off/describe.

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UnoriginalGuy
Perfect answer.

A free GitHub site with some Open Source projects is also a nice inexpensive
option for a portfolio.

But these days portfolios for programmers seems like a "must have." I'm
surprised more colleges aren't helping students put them together.

~~~
EvanZ
Thanks for the info, is there any particular tutorial/guide that you would
recommend for me to really get a solid grip on Git and Version Control?

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dalke
Networking is important. I know many people whose first jobs were because of
schoolmates. How to network is different for different schools; it can mean
club involvement (eg, the local ACM or Linux chapter), or it can mean working
on a local university research project which hires a lot of students.

~~~
EvanZ
This was very helpful, thanks! There are not any research projects going on at
my college that I know of, but there are one or two viable clubs at the CC and
I'll take the initiative and look into joining them.

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lifeisstillgood
This might get a bit long - I am trying to get a lot of this sorted out myself
but some thoughts

1\. University, certainly the good ones, have two goals - to grow the next
generation of Professsors whose research will give multiple orders of
magnitude payback to society, and to grow more rounded, more stable highly
trained "future leaders". It's still a fairly reasonable approach, and I would
strongly advise you to stick with the opportunity to grow and experience more
as a young human than you will get almost any other time.

So, do work hard, but also sleep around, take time to travel cheaply in the
long holidays, meet interesting people not because they might be useful in
your future career, but because they are interesting. Sleep with some of them
!

2\. Portfolios and networking - it's a bit blah! I would recommend that you do
two things - experiment with different languages, build interpreters or
compilers (start with a simple text markdown, build you own DSL) and just as
importantly contribute to some open source projects - get your hands dirty
with documentation, test frameworks, source code screw ups and bug triages.

If you want to impress me with your just out of college CV then proving you
can work well with other professional developers, can put a decent commit
together and not piss off my senior leads is useful, and demonstrating that
you can look square at the trade offs with functional and OO, what makes life
hard when building an interpreter and knowing how to go from AST _back to
source code_

Well that will get you the interview at least

Below is a long email / blog-post-to-be that was in response to a similar
question from a Greek graduate (and temporary taxi driver)

(Ok that's too long for HN submit form ... It will get rewritten and posted
somewhere - but really - work hard, work with other people, work on gettin
breadth of experience and why clever people have not yet settled on one
language - and don't forget to meet interesting people and sleep with them
(now my favourite phrase of the day)

~~~
EvanZ
Thanks for taking your time to right out such a helpful and thorough comment.
As far as point one goes, I'm definitely doing a few of those things and plan
on travelling a bit too.

Number two is helpful, as I hadn't really thought about building any compilers
or interpreters. Could you PM me the blog post if possible? I'm not sure if HN
has this capability. If not, then I'll have my email in my profile. Thanks a
ton!

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Might take a day or two - want to publish it which means a rebuild of a laptop

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JSeymourATL
> My main concern is getting to graduation and realizing that I've neglected a
> critical aspect that was necessary for all job seekers.

Search Indeed.com for demanding 'entry-level' positions requiring CIS
backgrounds. Note the typical requirements/experience/qualifications that
employers are looking for. Use that as your personal education & training road
map.

Here's an example> [https://university-
crowehorwath.icims.com/jobs/8577/consulta...](https://university-
crowehorwath.icims.com/jobs/8577/consultant---university-entry-level---
consulting-information-security/job)

~~~
EvanZ
Thanks for the link!

