   Recent graduate looking for a career
  Hey guys, I was hoping to get some tips on where to look for a software development or just a general programming job.  My school has not been very helpful, and I'm pretty much on my own to find anything.  I don't care so much if it is specifically game design, or just some random software company, I just really want to work directly with code.  I am also willing to relocate to nearly anywhere in the United States.So far I have been applying for jobs that interest me on careerbuilder.com , but haven't had much luck.  Does anyone have any tips or good places to find possible career opportunities?Thanks.Also, I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science.   
  If you want to stay local, just open your phone book.  Many companies have programmers on staff, even if they aren't a technology company.  Visit web sites to those companies, look up how to apply, then contact them.For a nationwide search, figure out the companies you want to work for, visit their web sites, and figure out how they want you to apply.Perhaps more importantly, talk to everybody you know and tell them you are looking for a job.Then ask those people to talk to their friends to help you look for a job.   ;  It's going to be a tough process for you if you are fresh out of college with the assumption of zero professional experience if you are applying via careerbuilder, monster.com etc. But that absolutely doesn't mean you can't achieve a great career as a developer you merely have to choose your path appropriately. In my point of view the single best and sadly often overlooked resource is the college technical career fair. Almost all good universities will have one and if they don't they are doing their students a major disservice. Even when already graduated you may be able to go to those career fairs for up to a certain time beyond graduation.Often you'll find large corporations who have reps there and they know that most of the students coming up to them with resumes have little or no professional experience but they are interested in academic merit and possibly any prior internship experience or projects which you've doing significant development for. Going the traditional route of newspaper/jobsite puts you in competition with professional developers which will make things very hard. Also, finding an ad looking for a fresh college grad is going to be hard to come by and when it does there will be plenty of competition from other fresh grads for these relatively few postings.Good luck with your career search.   ;  My own advise would be to try for a big company. Did that myself, and the experience is, well... invaluable, really. :)   ;  Tons of jobs on craigslist. I tell people about all the jobs I see posted on craigslist and by default they say, "It's probably a fake job."  Nope they aren't.   ;  I got my job through www.kellyit.com. Well my current job, my first job i just sent them a demo video. Which is what i suggest, some kind of demo.You told us very little about yourself such as what your strengths are. If your cover letters look anything like that post you're screwed.You need to figure out what exactly you want to do, then you need to make a presentation that will prove to them that you're the man for the job. Then you need to find the job that fits all that. A recruiter is probably a good bet for that. Or www.gamedevmap.com is a pretty comprehensive list of game companys.Good luck, btw, what kind of job are you looking before, besides one that deals with code.. ?Do you want to program games, robots, inventory/sales, web?   ;  Thanks for the replies everyone!I am being sure to customize my cover letters I send out to try to express my strengths in terms of what their company does. I'm going to try looking over those sites you posted bzroom, and even take a look at craigslist.  It seems to be a lot more difficult to find a job then I had imagined.  I'm really wishing my school would of made us do some kind of internship to at least get our foot in the door somewhere.  ;Quote:Original post by PemadenI am being sure to customize my cover letters I send out to try to express my strengths in terms of what their company does. Excellent start, now go further. Customize your CV/resume for the job. Especially in this economy, recruiters will get tonnes of applications. If they can't easily match the requirements to your CV, they'll bin it.Also get a linkedin account (facebook for business basically), and network yourself to the hilt.Best of luck with your job-hunting.