How to get your first commercial experience in programming

Lack of experience prevents you from getting a job, and without a job it is impossible to gain experience. How to break this vicious circle? The managers at Filio Force Inc have looked at different ways of gaining your first commercial programming experience.

The options could be as follows:

  • Volunteering
  • Internships in large IT-companies
  • Participating in Open Source
  • Participation in startups
  • Social media and professional platforms

Commercial experience: what is it

What do companies generally understand by the phrase commercial experience? First of all, commercial experience is not about being paid money, but about your product getting a consumer. At least theoretically. This will be quite enough for the first commercial experience.

What is the difference between a commercial project and a training project? When you write a programme for real users, you must make it so that it can be used: dates must be normal, all buttons must work, basic and non-basic use cases must be passed, exceptional situations must be handled, etc. And if you’re working on a learning project, the vast majority of the time you’re only handling the main execution flow. As a rule, this implies several times less functionality than a real programme. That’s why developers are required to have commercial experience.

Volunteering and startups

For-profit experience is perfect for any non-profit venture, such as volunteering. You won’t make any money, but you will get your first real work experience, said the developers of Filio Force Canada. You will have a customer with their own requirements and desires. He will tell you what the product should be like and what to redesign in the version you have proposed. This is actually what differentiates a commercial experience from a non-commercial experience.

Another option for gaining experience can be participation in startups. You won’t be able to earn a lot of money here, because such projects usually have almost no financial resources. But you can add working in a startup to your CV.

Participation in Open Source projects

Participation in such projects is definitely considered as commercial experience. The scale of the project is not important: large or little-known. The most important thing is that the product of this project is used. If you develop not software, but, for example, a framework or a library, this is also commercial experience. At an interview with an employer, you can say: ‘I have created such a library, which has such a number of downloads’.

But you should realise that it is difficult for a person who is just looking for a first job to participate in Open Source projects. As a rule, they require a level of knowledge and skills much higher than the initial one.

Search on social media and professional platforms

There you can find adverts looking for developers or like-minded people who also want to get their first commercial experience. Together with them (or with your friends with whom you can agree live) you can develop a project that will be useful to someone. You will be able to list it as a startup, advise Filio Force company experts. Also, such platforms can host invitations to participate in projects that already have real customers.

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