To get my foot in the door (early 2000's) - I had to bring in "stuff" that I have done for universtity, and personal projects.
After a few unsuccessful interviews, I was going to revisit what would be best for demonstration.
However, another interview came along and decided to try one last time with my existing software and hobby demos.
One demo was a C++ engine/game I wrote in my spare time. It was first person and dynamic lights (it was a thing back then). I was showing the editor side, which had 4 windows... front, side, top, and 3d.
It was fortunate because they had a C++ project, and nobody really wanted to touch it. So I gained bonus points to getting for being open to it.
The other demos I was showing was me mucking around with Javascript. One silly game was a helicopter trying to hit balloons. It had music and sfx.
Surprisingly, of what I presented, he was really interested in the html+js demos, as they are doing a lot of web applications and want to push one of their existing products with more functionality.. animation, drag+drop, images, automation, etc.
Its funny. I felt like I had nothing to really show that would land me a job. On this ocassion, I managed to show things that just happens to link with real projects (in one way or another) they are doing. They pretty much offered me a 2 day trial (on a thurs and fri) to see how I would get on. The good news I passed without issue. They gave me a web project, heavy in javascript -- and to 1) avoid full post back (refresh) and 2) to support drag+drop.
I knew a little PHP at the time (more into C\C++) but they were using VB.NET - so managed to learn a lot in those 2 days, and meet their expectations.
I was officially a Junior Developer on Monday... and they decided to remove "junior" from my job title a few months later.
After a few unsuccessful interviews, I was going to revisit what would be best for demonstration.
However, another interview came along and decided to try one last time with my existing software and hobby demos.
One demo was a C++ engine/game I wrote in my spare time. It was first person and dynamic lights (it was a thing back then). I was showing the editor side, which had 4 windows... front, side, top, and 3d.
The other demos I was showing was me mucking around with Javascript. One silly game was a helicopter trying to hit balloons. It had music and sfx.Surprisingly, of what I presented, he was really interested in the html+js demos, as they are doing a lot of web applications and want to push one of their existing products with more functionality.. animation, drag+drop, images, automation, etc.
Its funny. I felt like I had nothing to really show that would land me a job. On this ocassion, I managed to show things that just happens to link with real projects (in one way or another) they are doing. They pretty much offered me a 2 day trial (on a thurs and fri) to see how I would get on. The good news I passed without issue. They gave me a web project, heavy in javascript -- and to 1) avoid full post back (refresh) and 2) to support drag+drop.
I knew a little PHP at the time (more into C\C++) but they were using VB.NET - so managed to learn a lot in those 2 days, and meet their expectations.
I was officially a Junior Developer on Monday... and they decided to remove "junior" from my job title a few months later.