How do I get a job without experience?

Erik Andersen
3 min readJul 8, 2022
Photo by Adetola Afolabi on Unsplash

For better or worse, recruiters index on years of experience more than anything else when they read your resume

Do you have several exciting side projects?
Do you contribute to open-source?
Do you volunteer as a mentor?

While these are objectively good activities, none of it matters as much as that timeline on your LinkedIn profile

So how do you get experience if no one will give you experience?

Easy — Give yourself experience! For < $100 dollars you can hire yourself

  1. Choose a business name & register with your state (< $20)
  2. Buy a cheap domain (<$20/year)
  3. Create a simple website for your business (< $20/month)
  4. Update LinkedIn and set this company as your current employer

Why waste time working on side-projects that don’t count in a recruiters mind, when you can build those same projects under the name of a legitimate company and get work experience that you can put on a resume?

Does this really work?

Absolutely! This is how I got started and this is how many others do too

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Erik Andersen
Erik Andersen

Written by Erik Andersen

Senior Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience. Also an independent coach, teacher, and public speaker. My opinions are my own

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