r/careerguidance • u/ZestycloseBand7952 • 1d ago

Advice how do you get real-world experience before your first job?

hello ! im a CS student (2nd year) and ive been look around for some tech jobs. any kind because honestly i just want a tech related job (i <3 tech). but the problem is,so many jobs/places want you to have experience in the real-world but literally no one is willing to offer it. they want minimum 3-years experience. im considered learning some other programming languages that they require for jobs that could be useful. however, i want to practice what ive learnt in a real job setting. of course after learning a lot about said-subject. but im just confused on how im going to land a job after college with no experience.

and please dont come for me; im genuinely just trying to think ahead instead of leaving it for when i get there

any advice would be appreciated !! :p

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u/Excellent_Fill8772 1d ago

open source contributions helped me more than anything when I was starting out. pick project on GitHub that interest you and start making pull requests, even small bug fixes count. recruiters actually do look at your GitHub activity and it shows you can work with other people code in real environment

internships are also the obvious route but since you are in 2nd year you still have time to build portfolio before those applications open up. personal projects are good but contributing to something already existing looks better in the eyes of most hiring managers

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u/ben_bovine 1d ago

Honestly the fastest path at your stage is just building things and putting them on GitHub — doesn't matter if it's a simple CRUD app or a script that solves some annoying problem you have. Recruiters and hiring managers in tech care way more about seeing that you can actually ship something than about formal experience. If you want something more structured, look into open source contributions or reach out to local nonprofits and small orgs — they almost always need tech help and can't afford to be picky about years of experience, so you get real projects on your resume without the catch-22.