Is joining a consultancy the only option for Indians on OPT who don't have a lot of work experience or amazing academics
#workvisa #sde #jobhunt
Hi guys,
As the title says I only have about 2 years of work experience as a software engineer. About 1.5 years as a associate software engg back in India and about 6 months as a software engg in the US.
I graduate in May 2020 from a okay university with average grades. I applied a lot and barely got any interviews for 6,7 months after graduation. Finally got a offer from a small company with lots of negative reviews on Glassdoor but took it anyway, hoping to get some experience and move to a better company in 6 months.
Turns out the company I joined was worse than what I expected. Constant overwork, toxic work environment. I barely got any time to LeetCode, and therefore hadn't been actively applying. After getting my STEM Extension approved I quit my job and I'm now actively looking for a new role, but from what I've observed I'm only getting contacted by consultancies. Getting a lot of rejects from companies that I apply to for full time roles and direct messages to recruiters on LinkedIn are ignored.
What can I do to make my resume more attractive to recruiters. I'm working on a modern full stack mooc course building spa's with React, Express, GraphQL & Mongo, to improve my skills in those areas.
I'm loosing my unemployment days, I gave myself a 1 month target but it seems difficult to find a role in 1 month.
Edit:
I got additional 60 days of unemployment through my STEM extension upon the initial 90 days you get from the 1 year OPT. So in total 150 days of unemployment from which I have about 130 days left.
If anyone can give any resume feedback let me know and I can DM it to you,
Also if anyone can refer me to their company/team please DM me, I can share my resume and other details. Primarily my work experience has been as a SDE with a little bit of QA and DevOps. I'm mostly looking for SDE role but I'm open to SRE, DevOps and QA as well.
comments
1. Get anything quick to maintain status
2. Start applying like 10 jobs/day - Apply satisfactory(differentiated) and skill specific jobs - not limiting the programming language - You can learn on the job - problem solving and systems is what companies look for.
3. Push hard to brush up fundamentals and LC
4. Repeat 3 until I get satisfactory job.
PS :- I had 60 days and was able to make it happen not long ago .
I was rusty and lazy .
A family of 4 dependent on me, It was very difficult for a week to digest and 3 weeks into the situation started getting traction.
So I would suggest you to take up anything for now and keep preparing. I know it sucks but you gotta take it head on.