Home | About Chris Hope | Contact Chris Hope | Search:

5 PHP job and programming experience tips

Posted November 20th, 2008 in PHP

I've had a couple of people email me recently asking for tips about looking for PHP work in New Zealand and getting programming experience etc. This post looks at 5 ideas I had for them. Note some are specific to New Zealand but use local job websites and mailing lists instead of the ones suggested here if you're from another country.

First here is some of the text from these email enquiries.

"I am working towards my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Information Systems and want to get some programming experience to put on my CV. Are you able to suggest any projects or anything PHP, mySQL related that I could give my time to? Or any one else you know who could suggest something?"

"I am currently looking for PHP roles in the Auckland area and I was wondering if there were any tips you might be able to give me."

And here's some of the suggestions I had.

Job Websites

Keep a lookout for PHP jobs on Seek and TradeMe jobs (and other recruitment websites). Having been on the lookout for a new programmer for JK Kids recently I noticed there always seem to be plenty of PHP/Webmaster type jobs on those two job sites. You'll find both short term and long term contracts as well as permanent positions listed.

Join a PHP User Group

The New Zealand PHP User Group is a mailing list and there's a resonable number of emails going back and forward every day. This is a great place to learn about PHP and techniques and tips etc. I've currently been working with PHP for 9 years and continue to learn new stuff all the time and the NZ PHPUG is one of those sources.

There's some info about the NZ group at www.phpug.org.nz and the Google group itself is at groups.google.com/group/nzphpug

Often people post jobs that are available at their company or programmers looking for work on the NZ group. I assume it's OK to do this because it happens resonably often. I posted about the JK Kids position on this list and got at least a couple of responses from it.

Contribute to an open source project

I've personally never participated in anything other than the paid work I've done or on my own websites. However there are a number of open source projects out there which you may be able to contribute to.

For example you might want to contribute to one of the PHP frameworks (such as Zend, Cake, Symfony) or ecommerce/forum solutions and so on. I'm not sure what requirements these projects have for contributions and it probably varies from case to case.

At the very least, having a good look through the code and understanding how it works is going to help with understanding best practices and may give you ideas about how to program particular tasks better.

Create your own website/project

Another option is to find some sort of niche you are interested in and create a website around that, either creating everything from scratch yourself or utilising other tools (such as frameworks, forum software etc). As an example I'm into running and am currently in the process of creating a running calendar system and aim to build a community of runners around it.

Write a blog about programming

Writing about programming and giving programming tips is a great way to ensure you understand what you are doing, even if no one is actually reading your blog. I often find when I write about a particular PHP/Javascript/etc function on this blog that I learn more about the function than I knew previously because I really have to think about what it does and all the possible outcomes it can have. Naturally you need to write some code and test it to make sure it does what you think it does so it's all good.

The other upside about writing a blog about programming is that it can show potential employers you do actually know your stuff.

Conclusion

That's 5 tips covering some ideas about how to look for work and get some experience doing programming work. If you have other ideas please let me know and I can update this post and/or do a follow-up.

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus