willow244•29d agoProlific Poster

PSA: The "fake it till you make it" trick I used to land a tech support job actually worked

I was job hunting for 6 months with no callbacks for entry level IT roles. My resume was full of fast food and retail. So I built a tiny home server out of an old laptop, installed Linux on it, and listed it as "self hosted server administration" on my resume. The interviewer at a local MSP in Austin asked about it and I walked him through exactly what I did. Got the job at $18 an hour. Has anyone else tried listing personal projects as experience and had it backfire or work out?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake_dixon29d agoMost Upvoted

Funny how that same trick works for a lot of things in life too.

ben40229d ago

Happens all the time. People treat personal projects like they're just for show, but actually building something shows you can figure things out and get stuff done on your own. That's way more important than a cert or degree to most small shops. They want someone who can think through a problem, not just follow a script. Your story is proof that doing beats pretending most of the time.

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the_shane29d ago

Unless those personal projects end up as broken app icons on your desktop like mine.