How to know you're ready to start applying

Why you can't trust the feeling

The feeling of readiness never arrives. The bar rises with you: the more you know, the more clearly you see what you don't.

People who wait for confidence postpone their first application by a year and arrive at the market with the same skills they had eight months earlier, only tired.

So check a list, not a feeling.

The readiness list

1. You can write a small program from scratch. Not from a template or a video. Given a problem, you open an empty file and do it. Slowly and with documentation open, but yourself.

2. You have at least one finished project behind a link. Working, documented, taken to the point of being usable.

3. You can use version control. Commit changes, work with branches, resolve conflicts.

4. You understand the basics of data. Write a simple query with a condition, sorting and a join.

5. You can explain your project out loud. What you built, why that way, what was hard, what you'd change. Two minutes of coherent speech.

6. You've read someone else's code. At least found your way around an unfamiliar project rather than only writing your own.

Six out of six — apply. Four or five — also apply, and top up the rest as you go.

What isn't on the list

Knowing every technology in the postings. Requirements are written with headroom. A sixty per cent match is a perfectly good reason to apply.

Certificates. Nobody asks.

Being ready for any question. Nobody is.

Self-confidence. See above.

Why applying sooner is better

Interviewing is a separate skill. It's learned only at interviews. The first two or three go badly for everyone, and it's better to get them out of the way early.

Feedback is free. A rejection with an explanation tells you what to work on more precisely than any course.

The search takes months. Start in May and you'll be working by autumn. Start when you're "ready" and it'll be next spring.

What to do alongside applying

Don't stop building. "I'll find a job first and continue afterwards" is dangerous: the search drags, and "what have you been doing these three months" has no answer.

The best option is running a project with other people. That's practice, an answer to the awkward question, and a reason not to sit waiting for emails — all at once.