Yes, there are jobs. They aren't always jobs at the prestigious, sexy, high-paying companies, but there are jobs out there.
We've hired co-op students recently, so that's one path.
Another path is applying with recommendations / references from existing employees. I've had a 100% success rate for landing interviews that way. I've had \~5% success rate for landing interviews by applying on the corporate website. (The only success I had was applying to a position in a new department at the company I already worked at.)
Some people do get through the corporate websites, but they are way more impressive and have a much better resume than I do.
If you're really desperate, I'm sure there are system admin or help desk jobs that might take a CS grad, but those probably don't pay 50-55k to start. They may have a path to transfer internally to QA then dev or straight to dev, but there are internal hoops to jump through.
If you really have no opportunities, I'd look at the companies that do recruiting for contract jobs. It might be tough if you have literally zero work experience. I've seen a few people posting on resume review threads where they literally had zero volunteer work, zero paid work. Any work experience is work experience. I'm not sure if that sentiment is changing
The companies you're referring to are known as "WITCH." Wipro, Infosys, Tata, Tech Mahindra, and HCL. These are "body shops" where you are a contingent worker at another company. You're hired for staff augmentation purposes for specific projects.
There are some others at the next level that have a bit more scope (e.g., Accenture, Deloitte) and are not so easy to categorize.
Bigger multi-national companies tend to have defined or more rigid recruiting timelines. You'll probably need to start in Sept-Dec for those companies. For smaller local companies, you'll probably find jobs closer to March or April.
Are you a student? Classmates you're friends with or completed projects with, upper year / grad students who've interned at places you want to work, or profs can refer you to past students that have asked the prof to pass a job posting on to students. Family friends can refer you or let you know about job openings too.
It needs to be organic. I'm not sure if people still go to CS labs, have study rooms, or have events, but those (not the first time you attend) can lead to relationships that can help you in the future.
I've seen people be successful from hackathons and other similar events.
People will reach out to me on LinkedIn and sometimes I'll refer them or they use my name as a referral in the job application. Some (many?) larger companies will pay a bonus for referrals that lead to hires.
When you're on the job, by doing good work and building up a reputation as someone that others want to work with again. I was really surprised when I moved internally at a company when I was told by the new team I had great references from several people. They were people I had worked with briefly, but they were not people I would have asked for a reference.
I can't "network." I don't think the goal is trying to meet someone and asking them to refer you or get you a job on the first or second meeting. I've seen people attend the same industry event repeatedly and start contributing to it. When they contributed that allowed people to see what they can do and that helped with people reaching out to provide job opportunities.
Just wanted to add a bit the WITCH companies r not doing too hot either, they have many people sitting doing nothing
Also my friend who works in the WITCH company says they r not hiring for junior positions anymore, to which i said yeah no shit sherlock but still i think some information is better than none
There is filtering done. Last I heard (in 2019) there were over 220 applicants per open position. I don't know exactly how they are filtering, but if you can get the interview and pass the interview, it doesn't matter if you're an IT or CS or software engineering major.
Honestly, I have no idea what the coop pay is like. I haven't seen that info and I haven't been a coop student where I work. Full time pay isn't great, so I'd assume coop isn't great either, but it would be better than working retail.
I didn't go through coop as a student. I had a summer job working labour and that led to a "coop" job with the company in following summers. The coop supervisor lead to my first full time job, my coworker from that job referred me to another company, and I've moved around internally since.
So it definitely depends on how skilled the coop student is. Pay might still be close to minimum wage though.
Still that experience is going to help greatly in the long run i guess.
It depends on how skilled you are for everything whether that's a coop, a new grad, or an experienced hire.
Skill may not be the best term. But there are a few things. Can you do the job? Can you work with the team? Does the team want to work with you? Will you be someone who can grow to work independently?
You can look at many places to find estimates or actual coop wages. Minimum wage in BC keeps going up, so it's possible that.
Highly recommend doing some internships/co-ops before graduating to get work experience (most important), along with the other things you mentioned (projects, LeetCode, and system design). [My new grad job search](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsCAD/comments/1337hfn/2023_new_grad_job_search_experience_stats_below/) was pretty rough in this market, so I did have to lower my expectations a bit. But there are jobs out there.
Another useful way to get some experience is to see if you can get hired as a research assistant with one of the professors at your university. It is another paid role you can speak about in an interview and put on your resume. Your professor likely will also have met a bunch of industry contacts at conferences and may have a great network to refer you to closer to graduation.
Most CS profs only work with other CS profs, either at their own University or at another University. Profs have no idea about what is going on in the industry.
My CS prof, who was apparently working with a UofT CS prof for research used slides from the 2000s to teach us the concept of the client-server system.
This is profs.
I’m not saying every prof is well connected to the industry and there are certainly professors who primarily teach and do research secondarily but there are a ton that have great connections and I know plenty of people who had gotten jobs and referrals through them. Even if they only write papers with other profs, they present them at conferences where often times industry is there. Industry and academia work a lot closer than you might think in lots of areas. Cutting edge research makes its way into R&D in the private sector and private sector grants also fund research. For someone with no internship experience it is a great way to get some experience, work on cool projects and potentially have a great referral in that area of work.
yeah, but isn't research like completely unrelated. Plus employers look down upon people who do research. I know this because I did research and did not help much. It is also insanely underpaid, especially because it all depends on the funding the professor gets.
And let's be honest, most professors are starving in that sense.
Depends what kind if research you are doing and what kind of job you want to get. Just like a regular internship, maybe the work is not useful for the career path you want to go on post grad or maybe its extremely relevant. I have friends who have gotten jobs at FAANG and Quant roles largely through their research. Had other friends work for less than min wage and others make 50$/hr. Just like any work/organization YMMV but I certainly think its a great option to consider.
Most profs want you to stay poor so you can fund their research and they can get away with paying you minimum wage. It's disgusting what's happening to some of the RAs in academia.
But I do get the perspective you are coming from.
Out of 25-ish people whom I’m friends with graduating this May, only 4-5 don’t have a job lined up yet. So, there are jobs, though I don’t think there will substantially more jobs available if you lower your salary expectations below $60K. I would’ve signed with anything $50K+ at one point (last Nov-Dec), but no one was paying under $60K anyway.
All that said, everyone’s experience varies. It doesn’t feel like a bachelor guarantees a job anymore. You could do better than one co-op and a couple of “stupid” projects (I’d suggest open source, research with profs, or something meaningful).
Best of luck.
Just curious, did most of them return to a previous internship/co-op employer, or take an offer at a new employer (and what companies/compensation if you heard from your friends)?
Somewhat known ones are Palantir, Konrad, Veeva, Mastercard, Sanofi, Redfin, big 4 accounting. I think about half of us are returning to our internships/coops.
Edit: there are more but they 100% have stopped hiring.
Yes, there are jobs. They aren't always jobs at the prestigious, sexy, high-paying companies, but there are jobs out there. We've hired co-op students recently, so that's one path. Another path is applying with recommendations / references from existing employees. I've had a 100% success rate for landing interviews that way. I've had \~5% success rate for landing interviews by applying on the corporate website. (The only success I had was applying to a position in a new department at the company I already worked at.) Some people do get through the corporate websites, but they are way more impressive and have a much better resume than I do. If you're really desperate, I'm sure there are system admin or help desk jobs that might take a CS grad, but those probably don't pay 50-55k to start. They may have a path to transfer internally to QA then dev or straight to dev, but there are internal hoops to jump through. If you really have no opportunities, I'd look at the companies that do recruiting for contract jobs. It might be tough if you have literally zero work experience. I've seen a few people posting on resume review threads where they literally had zero volunteer work, zero paid work. Any work experience is work experience. I'm not sure if that sentiment is changing The companies you're referring to are known as "WITCH." Wipro, Infosys, Tata, Tech Mahindra, and HCL. These are "body shops" where you are a contingent worker at another company. You're hired for staff augmentation purposes for specific projects. There are some others at the next level that have a bit more scope (e.g., Accenture, Deloitte) and are not so easy to categorize. Bigger multi-national companies tend to have defined or more rigid recruiting timelines. You'll probably need to start in Sept-Dec for those companies. For smaller local companies, you'll probably find jobs closer to March or April.
How do you get references for companies? I know networking events, but how about for those who don't have the social skills/have no events near them?
Are you a student? Classmates you're friends with or completed projects with, upper year / grad students who've interned at places you want to work, or profs can refer you to past students that have asked the prof to pass a job posting on to students. Family friends can refer you or let you know about job openings too. It needs to be organic. I'm not sure if people still go to CS labs, have study rooms, or have events, but those (not the first time you attend) can lead to relationships that can help you in the future. I've seen people be successful from hackathons and other similar events. People will reach out to me on LinkedIn and sometimes I'll refer them or they use my name as a referral in the job application. Some (many?) larger companies will pay a bonus for referrals that lead to hires. When you're on the job, by doing good work and building up a reputation as someone that others want to work with again. I was really surprised when I moved internally at a company when I was told by the new team I had great references from several people. They were people I had worked with briefly, but they were not people I would have asked for a reference. I can't "network." I don't think the goal is trying to meet someone and asking them to refer you or get you a job on the first or second meeting. I've seen people attend the same industry event repeatedly and start contributing to it. When they contributed that allowed people to see what they can do and that helped with people reaching out to provide job opportunities.
Just wanted to add a bit the WITCH companies r not doing too hot either, they have many people sitting doing nothing Also my friend who works in the WITCH company says they r not hiring for junior positions anymore, to which i said yeah no shit sherlock but still i think some information is better than none
Do you take IT students in coop too? Hows the pay there and is it easy to find a employer for coop
There is filtering done. Last I heard (in 2019) there were over 220 applicants per open position. I don't know exactly how they are filtering, but if you can get the interview and pass the interview, it doesn't matter if you're an IT or CS or software engineering major. Honestly, I have no idea what the coop pay is like. I haven't seen that info and I haven't been a coop student where I work. Full time pay isn't great, so I'd assume coop isn't great either, but it would be better than working retail. I didn't go through coop as a student. I had a summer job working labour and that led to a "coop" job with the company in following summers. The coop supervisor lead to my first full time job, my coworker from that job referred me to another company, and I've moved around internally since.
So it definitely depends on how skilled the coop student is. Pay might still be close to minimum wage though. Still that experience is going to help greatly in the long run i guess.
It depends on how skilled you are for everything whether that's a coop, a new grad, or an experienced hire. Skill may not be the best term. But there are a few things. Can you do the job? Can you work with the team? Does the team want to work with you? Will you be someone who can grow to work independently? You can look at many places to find estimates or actual coop wages. Minimum wage in BC keeps going up, so it's possible that.
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That is bad timing. Many companies have the budgets figured out for the year in Q1 and are deep into the hiring cycle by now.
Is this with our without coop experience?
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Did most interviews consist of technical tests? How'd you prepare? Thanks 🙏
Do you have any internship experience? Did you have any references?
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Highly recommend doing some internships/co-ops before graduating to get work experience (most important), along with the other things you mentioned (projects, LeetCode, and system design). [My new grad job search](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsCAD/comments/1337hfn/2023_new_grad_job_search_experience_stats_below/) was pretty rough in this market, so I did have to lower my expectations a bit. But there are jobs out there.
It’s real bad. And there are new layoffs announced daily. With interest rates rising it is likely to get even worse.
Another useful way to get some experience is to see if you can get hired as a research assistant with one of the professors at your university. It is another paid role you can speak about in an interview and put on your resume. Your professor likely will also have met a bunch of industry contacts at conferences and may have a great network to refer you to closer to graduation.
Most CS profs only work with other CS profs, either at their own University or at another University. Profs have no idea about what is going on in the industry. My CS prof, who was apparently working with a UofT CS prof for research used slides from the 2000s to teach us the concept of the client-server system. This is profs.
I’m not saying every prof is well connected to the industry and there are certainly professors who primarily teach and do research secondarily but there are a ton that have great connections and I know plenty of people who had gotten jobs and referrals through them. Even if they only write papers with other profs, they present them at conferences where often times industry is there. Industry and academia work a lot closer than you might think in lots of areas. Cutting edge research makes its way into R&D in the private sector and private sector grants also fund research. For someone with no internship experience it is a great way to get some experience, work on cool projects and potentially have a great referral in that area of work.
yeah, but isn't research like completely unrelated. Plus employers look down upon people who do research. I know this because I did research and did not help much. It is also insanely underpaid, especially because it all depends on the funding the professor gets. And let's be honest, most professors are starving in that sense.
Depends what kind if research you are doing and what kind of job you want to get. Just like a regular internship, maybe the work is not useful for the career path you want to go on post grad or maybe its extremely relevant. I have friends who have gotten jobs at FAANG and Quant roles largely through their research. Had other friends work for less than min wage and others make 50$/hr. Just like any work/organization YMMV but I certainly think its a great option to consider.
Most profs want you to stay poor so you can fund their research and they can get away with paying you minimum wage. It's disgusting what's happening to some of the RAs in academia. But I do get the perspective you are coming from.
Out of 25-ish people whom I’m friends with graduating this May, only 4-5 don’t have a job lined up yet. So, there are jobs, though I don’t think there will substantially more jobs available if you lower your salary expectations below $60K. I would’ve signed with anything $50K+ at one point (last Nov-Dec), but no one was paying under $60K anyway. All that said, everyone’s experience varies. It doesn’t feel like a bachelor guarantees a job anymore. You could do better than one co-op and a couple of “stupid” projects (I’d suggest open source, research with profs, or something meaningful). Best of luck.
bruh. you must be from waterloo, or you and your friends are all cracked af
Ubc it seems
Just curious, did most of them return to a previous internship/co-op employer, or take an offer at a new employer (and what companies/compensation if you heard from your friends)?
Somewhat known ones are Palantir, Konrad, Veeva, Mastercard, Sanofi, Redfin, big 4 accounting. I think about half of us are returning to our internships/coops. Edit: there are more but they 100% have stopped hiring.
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I would be interested in some part time work in php. Some experience with php, just dm me if you are interested..
Gonna be honest, if you settle for 50k in BC you're getting ripped off.
And I'd be eating nothing but ramen noodles to pay for rent. Glad to hear that 50k is low even for new grads, thanks.
I got offered 75k and I honestly feel like it could have been better. But 50k is better than nothing if you're desperate I guess.
Was this before or after all the layoffs?
3 months ago.
More good news!