I&#x27;ve just graduated, and I have a job. I interviewed at six companies, and had four offers. My coursework is good but not stellar, but I have lots of work experience, an in-demand skillset (full-stack web dev) and a solid history of projects with strong results. I went to an upper tier university (private non-profit with a strong reputation that companies recruit from).<p>The total time it took varied by company, but was generally one-two months. Most companies moved quite quickly, regardless of their ultimate decision. The longest lapse was between the initial contact and the first interview, usually. Of the companies I interviewed with, two were big Silicon Valley names, one was a small consulting org, one was a big insurance corporation, and the other two were fairly large private software companies (but not Valley companies). I went with one of the last two. Three of the companies I interviewed with actually contacted me first; interestingly, all of them made me offers.<p>I have a good single-page resume, and a personal site with more detail on it. More importantly, though, I&#x27;m good at the non-technical side of interviews, which helped me everywhere except the companies that do nothing but demand you regurgitate rote CS knowledge (read: Google). One trick I did was a short (&lt;5 minutes) live demo of a personal project while in interviews, sometimes with a (very brief) code walkthrough. Not everyone cared to see it, but usually if they did, it was well-received.<p>But me talking about me won&#x27;t help you. Let&#x27;s talk about you. You&#x27;re anonymous on here, your profile doesn&#x27;t link to any identifying info, so be real:<p>Are you a student or recent grad, or are you self taught? What&#x27;s your story?
If you&#x27;re a new grad, what was your GPA? If &lt;3.0, can you explain why? Any red flags on your transcript?
If not a new grad, what&#x27;s your past experience? What do you do to demonstrate your abilities? 
What does your resume look like? What do you mean by &quot;lower tier&quot; jobs?
Have you studied up on basic CS for those awful algorithms questions? Can you show some good past projects? 
Are you following up on these opportunities, or just waiting for someone to get with you? Are you being upfront and forward with your HR contacts? 
Why do you have to be in Vancouver? Would you move if the price was right?<p>What I&#x27;m getting at is you need to take a hard look at your networking&#x2F;interviewing practices and see where the gaps might be. If you put the answers here, I am sure people will help you. Do post your resume as well.