How to get software engineering experience before your first job
Entry-level postings ask for one or two years of experience, and you can't get a job to earn it. The way out is to do the parts of the job you can do on your own, and to keep proof that you did them. This guide covers the options, what each one shows an employer, and how to write it up.
What "experience" means to the person hiring you
A hiring manager reading a junior résumé wants to know whether you can be handed a ticket on day one. That means working in code someone else wrote, making a small change without breaking anything nearby, opening a pull request, and responding well when a reviewer asks for changes.
Most tutorials and personal projects skip all of that. You write everything from scratch, nobody reviews it, and there's no ticket to satisfy. So the goal is to find practice that includes an existing codebase and a reviewer.
Contribute to an open source project
This is the closest thing to a real job you can do for free. Your pull request goes into code other people depend on, and a maintainer reviews it.
Pick a project you already use, so you understand what it does. Read its CONTRIBUTING file, then look for issues labelled "good first issue" or "help wanted". Comment on the issue before you start so nobody else duplicates the work, and keep your first pull request small.
The downside is timing. Maintainers are volunteers, so a review can take weeks, and popular beginner issues get claimed within hours. Expect a few attempts before one lands.
Build something for a real user
A small tool for a local business, a club or a family member gives you requirements you didn't write and a person who tells you when it's wrong. That's real product work, and it makes a good interview story.
What it lacks is code review. If you go this route, ask a working developer to review one pull request, even once. One round of real feedback teaches you more than another month of solo coding.
Internships, apprenticeships and freelance work
These count as experience on any résumé, so apply even if the odds look long. Apprenticeship programs at larger companies often accept bootcamp graduates and career switchers. Small paid freelance jobs count too, as long as you can describe what you built and for whom.
Practice the job itself in a simulator
A software engineering job simulator gives you the workflow of a job on demand. In Kadra, you join a team whose teammates are AI and work a sprint of tickets in a codebase you didn't write. You fix each bug on a real GitHub repo and open a pull request. An AI reviewer comments on the diff, and a hidden test suite decides whether the fix passes.
It's practice, and you should describe it as practice. What it gives you is repetition: several tickets a week, each with a ticket, a pull request and a review you can point to.
How to put it on your résumé
Describe the work the way a ticket would: what was broken, what you changed and how you checked it. Specific bugs beat lists of technologies. Put open source and freelance work under Experience. Put simulator and course work under Projects or Training, so nobody reads it as a job you held.
Here's how the LEDG-215 ticket from Kadra's Python payments service could read as a bullet:
- Fixed a double-charge bug in a FastAPI payments service: a retried transfer request moved money twice. Made a repeated transfer_id return the recorded result, verified with pytest.
Questions people ask
Does open source count as work experience?
Yes, if you can point to merged pull requests. List the project, what you changed and a link to the PR. Interviewers often open the link, so pick contributions you can explain line by line.
Should I list a job simulator on my résumé?
List it under Projects or Training, not as employment. Name the tickets you fixed and link the pull requests. The value is in the specific work, so describe that rather than the platform.
How many projects do I need before applying?
There's no number that guarantees an interview. Two or three pieces of work you can explain in depth, with at least one that someone else reviewed, will carry an interview further than a long list of tutorial apps.
Is Kadra free?
Yes, Kadra is free during beta with no credit card. After beta, Pro is planned at $199 a year, and students get 50% off.
Try it on a real ticket
Pick a stack, fix a bug in a working codebase and get your pull request reviewed. Free during beta.