There is a lot of talk about how to get your first job in IT, or in programming. The reality is that today it is not so easy. With the popularization of short courses and bootcamps, the market is a bit saturated with people looking for entry level jobs.
Junior and Trainees positions are the most difficult to get. Just as not to get discouraged, that is the most important thing, if you really like this you don't have to give up on anything. I'm telling you, I come from another field, it's difficult to get your first job in any field. You graduated as a lawyer, and if you didn't work during your studies, do you know how difficult it is to find a job without a tip or contact to recommend you? Do you know how many recently graduated architects search for months or years for their first job? Therefore, it is logical that if you took a 6-month course, it is not so easy to get a job, imagine what it costs for people who studied for 6 years!
But there are things we can do to improve our chances of getting our first programming job. Networking, going to events, applying through various channels not just LinkedIn, sending cheeky emails to companies, having a good CV, and finally having a great portfolio.
But what is a portfolio without the applications we made live? I have had to interview, and while it is true that many interviewers do not look at the github that we put on the CV, many others do. But 10 times better than a link to our github is our own portfolio hosted on our domain (juanperez.com.ar) and within it links to our different applications.
If we only do front end, it is easy to host or upload our projects, there are many free providers, netlify, vercel, github pages among others. But if we are full stack? If we have several node apps, or APIs that we want to make available? The best option is a VPS for $5 per month and host all our apps there. By purchasing a domain we can have several subdomains pointing to our app, and this is much more valuable when selling ourselves. Even in technical talks type interviews, if we are asked if we have experience with APIs, we can answer yes, and show our own APIs deployed live and how they work.
Another benefit of having our own VPS is that it works for all types of applications such as WordPress. This site is a VPS where I have other sites that I have made freelance for clients, and by paying a little per month I can show my applications and even sell WordPress hosting among other things.
Hold on, because in 45 minutes I'll show you how to upload your MERN applications to your own VPS with your own domain and walk away:
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> Original article in Spanish: Cómo desplegar (deploy, deployar, subir, hostear) tus aplicaciones de manera económica y por qué.