Quote: Original post by szecs
Maybe it "doesn't guarantee" but it's unavoidable.
Engineering courses had coding too. But that's not enough for a coder job. Sorry.

You've nowt to be sorry about mate. You've just proven my point that it's tough out there. With a "relevant" degree and most certainly without. This is strange because there are a LOT of software jobs floating about.

I think there is definitely a barrier between software employers and prospective employees. Staff in Human Resources are woefully in-adequate and are simply not technical enough to differentiate a potentially good candidate from a bad one and simply look for key words in a typical CV.

I've had a LOT of interest from agencies but, due to lack of commercial experience, nothing has come from such interest yet. My feeling is that they simply do not appreciate skills, and for that matter, education. They can only appreciate experience.

Then of course, there is that small matter of out-sourcing a lot of software work to a much cheaper market to cut costs. I sure hope game development doesn’t go the same way any time soon!

Quote: Original post by Tom Sloper
codestorm,
If you have a degree or two, then now what you need is a portfolio -- proof that you are driven enough and have the desired skills.
And you should also read FAQs 24 & 27 ("View Forum FAQ," above).

Yeah I'm on it Tom! Hence why I mentioned my desire to build a website to showcase my skills.

But believe me I am thankful for this forum. I had no idea of its existence until the OP wrongly posted this thread in another forum. And I will be looking into all those FAQs to get as much insight as possible.

Cheers!

One thing that might be worth looking at is getting a placement or some kind of intern-ship.

I am currently on my 3rd year of university studying Computer systems and Networks. For my 3rd year I am required to take a placement for the year and I have managed to get into a game studio. Granted its extremely small game studio with only one game made so far but none the less a game studio. It is also unpaid but I am hoping it will get me out of the catch 22. [smile]

I hope that helps someone in there possible available options.

Thank you everyone. You sure gave me a lot to think about. Sorry for posting in the wrong forum and thanks for mentioning the FAQ!

You need to think about it from your prospective employers point of view, not from your point of view. Hiring any new employee is a kind of risk. You're taking some amount of chance that the new employee is capable of doing the job they're being employed for.

- A degree in a relevant field minimises the risk because they should be reasonably proficient in the area of that degree (which should be an area the employer cares about, because we just called it relevant).

- A degree in some other less relevant field at least tells an employer you're capable of getting a degree, but they still take a risk about your proficiency in their specific field.

- No degree means they're taking the biggest risk, they basically would need to rely on trusting you that you can do what you say you can.

[edit] I'm obviously addressing this from an entry level position point of view. Commercial experience beats everything else once you've worked in the industry for a couple of years.

Now ask yourself, why would an employer take more risk than they need to, by hiring someone who comes with a greater degree of risk, when frankly theres probably a large number of applicants who do have a relevant degree? You may believe you're the most capable person for the job, you may even be right, but how do they know that?


Personal work/portfolio would help, no doubt. Not only is it evidence of some ability, but it also shows something of your character (initiative, self-starter, sees a project through to fruition, prepared to put in extra effort to achieve goals, etc). However, even that is going to be weighed up against any experience/portfolio of those other guys with degrees you're going up against, and chances are at least some of them have been showing that same initiative.


So just bare in mind, its not what you know you can do, its how attractive you can make yourself seem in comparison to your competition, and whether you can make yourself worth the risk for an employer who is probably initially only judging by a resume and cover letter, before they'll even consider interviewing you.