Junior PHP dev: first job search after bootcamp
Finished a 6-month PHP bootcamp (Laravel, basic Vue, MySQL). Built two projects during training. Applied to 20 jobs in the last month and got 2 interviews, no offers yet.
Looking for honest advice on what junior PHP devs are expected to know that I might be missing.
Git workflow is the one thing bootcamps often underemphasize. Do you know interactive rebase, resolving merge conflicts, how to write a useful commit message, feature branch workflow? Juniors who cannot navigate a PR review are a drag on teams.
Show your code. A GitHub profile with two real projects beats a resume every time. Make sure the README explains what the project does and how to run it. Most bootcamp projects have no documentation.
Can you explain the request lifecycle in Laravel? What happens between a browser request hitting the server and data returning to the browser? Juniors who can articulate this at a high level stand out.
SQL is undervalued in bootcamps. If you can write a non-trivial JOIN query with a GROUP BY and explain the execution plan, you are ahead of many candidates.
Two interviews in 20 applications is about average for juniors right now. Do not read too much into the ratio. The offers come from persistence, not from each individual application.
ohh ok, so its mostly about the workflow and not just the code itself. Thanks everyone, really helpful. Will spend this weekend on the git stuff first.
One more: learn to use the terminal comfortably. Not just running commands but understanding what they do. Juniors who are afraid of the command line need hand-holding on deployment tasks.
```php blocks are runnable.