Most students search for jobs the same way: open a major job portal, search "developer," apply to the first page of results. That is not wrong, but it is the most crowded and least targeted place to look, and it is far from the only one.
| Where | Why it works |
|---|---|
| Local agencies and studios | Smaller, often hire directly without a formal process, and juniors are genuinely useful to them |
| Small business owners who need a website | No competing applicant pool at all — you are proposing, not applying |
| LinkedIn, searched directly rather than browsed | Search specific terms ("junior frontend," your city) rather than scrolling a generic feed |
| Company career pages directly | Many roles never reach the major portals at all |
| Your own network — teachers, classmates, previous employers | The highest-conversion source there is, covered in the next lesson |
| Freelance platforms | Genuinely open to beginners in a way full-time hiring often is not |
| Local WhatsApp and Telegram groups for developers | Small and informal, but roles get shared here before they're posted publicly |
A posting on a major portal can receive hundreds of applications within a day. A junior candidate with a thin work history is competing in the same pool as everyone else who had the same idea, and the sorting is often automated and unforgiving of a CV that doesn't hit the right keywords.
That doesn't mean skip portals — many real roles are genuinely posted there. It means don't rely on them as the only source, because the odds per application are worse there than almost anywhere else on this list.
The smaller and more direct the channel, the less competition and the more a real portfolio and a genuine conversation matter relative to keyword matching. A small agency owner who looks at your GitHub personally is a very different filter than an automated system scanning five hundred CVs.
Rather than one giant application session, a steady weekly rhythm works better and is easier to sustain: a fixed number of thoughtful applications, a few direct messages to companies or people, one piece of networking (a comment, a message, attending something), and updating the portfolio with anything new. Consistency here matters more than any single burst of effort.