How to prepare for Junior Software Developer Jobs in Ghana as a fresh graduate [interview+ video]

As a fresh graduate with little or no work experience in Ghana, it is quite hard to find yourself junior software developer jobs in Ghana. It, therefore, becomes important if you find yourself a coach who will guide and prepare you for junior software developer roles. That is all that this interview seeks to achieve.

Today, we have with us Morgan Okai-Darko, who is the lead software developer at Nalo Solutions to give us some quick tips that will help us position ourselves as junior software developers for the Ghanaian Software Market. I promise it will solve all answer all your questions you have on the software development industry in Ghana.

We will be looking at the average salary of a junior software developer and also the requirements to call yourself as a software developer in Ghana. If you are ready lets begin.

Question [hello viewers so we have with us today Mr. Morgan Darko. kindly share a little bit about yourself with us.]

Answer: So I am a lead software engineer with Nalo solutions limited where we build value-added services for the Ghanaian market. I have been in the software development environment for well over five years now in both junior and senior roles and I’ve worked with a number of companies in that time. 

So I have gathered a little bit of knowledge concerning what the companies look out for when we talk about bringing on either a junior or a senior software developer the things that we look out for what we expect, and what we hope to be demonstrated and that is what we are hoping that today’s discussion will draw more light on.

Question [yeah thank you so our first question for today’s session, can you share with us who a junior software engineer is?]

Answer: Now in general we count seniority in software development in terms of how much oversight a person needs in order to accomplish their work. okay. So there are those who you can explain the task to okay and you expect that having explained the task they will go and come back with something that is very well done, such a person you would consider them to be a senior software developer okay. 

However, there are others that you would explain the task to, and then you would want to follow up with them from time to time to ensure that they are following what we call best practices, okay, and not only that but they are actually getting the work done in the first place okay and getting the work done following the best practices and that is someone you would consider to be a junior software developer. They can write software they can create software however they need more oversight in doing that work yeah

Question [how does someone attain the level of a junior software engineer?]

Answer: So when it comes to a junior engineer and not only that much of what constitutes software development, especially in ghana has to do with taking data and moving it from one location to another you would think that there are some very wild things being done in the software engineering department however the bulk of the work is moving data from one source to either storage or to another place where it is going to be displayed. 

Now there are more specialized stuff okay there are some very specialized stuff that generally involves processing data. However, the bulk of the work is moving data from one place to another. Now to attain the level of the junior software developer the expectation is that you are able to acquire data and you are able to move it from one place to another and you are also able to format the data in a way that it can be presented either to a viewer or to another person who is going to make use of that data and it is not something that is very demanding to attain the level of a junior software developer. 

In fact, people who began learning software development three months ago between three months and six months you should have reached a level that is considered competent for a junior software developer. In fact, it’s a mistake that many people make when they think that they need to have been writing code for a year or two years before they even qualify for a junior position that is actually wrong, okay only a few months of code writing is enough to attain the level of the junior software developer.

Question [What are the companies looking out for in junior software engineers, what are some of the qualities or skills they look out for?]

Answer: Okay so first and foremost, every company has what we call a stack. A stack simply refers to the programming languages as well as the software tools that that company uses when they are writing their software okay. Whenever there is an opening for a software developer in a company what they are looking for is anyone first of all who has demonstrated ability in their stack so if the company uses let’s say python to write their code they are looking for someone who has demonstrated ability in writing python code. 

But aside that demonstrated ability in the company stack there’s another thing that we generally also look out for sometimes the person applying to the role may not specifically have used your stack however they may have used another stack but done something that is similar to what the company does. 

So maybe it was not python you use you use PHP but the work you accomplished is similar to the work that has been done at that company so basically what we are looking for in a junior software developer is that one they should have either demonstrated the ability in the stack or they should have some theoretical knowledge which we know that we can build on in order for the person to be assimilated into our company.

Question [the stack here refers to the programming language?]

Answer: yes so aside the programming language let’s take a programming language like PHP okay. PHP by itself be expressed in numerous ways one of the ways that they can be expressed in fact the numerous ways it is being used. 

We generally call them frameworks okay so we have one framework called Laravel there’s another framework called Drupal and then there are other frameworks like WordPress and so on. So we generally want someone who either has experience with the framework or has done something that is similar to our framework which we use so that we know they can move data much easier.

Question [so how can a fresh graduate or self-taught programmer position themselves well for a job in ghana software development space?]

Answer: Okay so when it comes to Ghana specifically you first of all need to understand that although there are numerous programming languages in existence and numerous frameworks that are out there, they are only a subset of that framework and programming languages which are in the highest demand in the Ghanaian market. 

Um generally if you want to develop applications for the web then you can’t escape javascript in the Ghanaian market you need to have learned Javascript. You need to be competent in using javascript and even with Javascript we have numerous javascript frameworks some of them have been around for more than 10 years and some of them have been around five years some are very very young of the frameworks that are in highest demand.

Presently we have react.js as one of the highest in-demand languages, then there is Vue.js which is also in high demand and finally, there’s Angular.js. These three frameworks if you are competent in any one of them then there is definitely a software developer vacancy somewhere that has your name on it.

Question [i hope our audience are learning something from this session. We’ll move on to the next what are some mistakes that you have noticed many entry-level social engineers make ?]

Answer: So when it comes to people who are studying programming in order to join the market there are certain mindsets that we often carry. In fact, I have personally carried such mindsets myself and um they are categorically false i’d like to list just three of them. 

The first one is assuming that you need several years of training before you qualify for a junior role. The truth of the matter is that, its your competence that matters. There have been numerous places where I’ve been myself either being interviewed or being the interviewer and your degree counts for nothing in that situation we only want to know whether you are competent in moving our data around. So that’s the first mistake we make. We like to think that you need several years of training or a degree but that is not true.

The second mistake that we also make is assuming that if there is a vacancy posted and we list the number of abilities, we expect that people who are applying need to have all the skills. If the role is specifically for a junior developer we already know at the back of our minds that the person will need training. So if you are missing one two or three of the items listed go ahead and apply it may be your lucky day.

The third assumption is that the senior software developers actually know more than you. Well in the sense of they having been around they have encountered certain difficulties and overcome them in that case they know more than you. 

However, when it comes to the technicality of the language, the framework, what we often see happening is that those who are senior and have been there for several years actually know things from several years back. Frameworks and patterns from several years back while you who began learning a few years ago are learning the latest and you are bringing the best from the market into the environment. 

So yes you will learn how to work with people, how to meet the industry standard but you will actually be coming in with something that is very very valuable that the seniors themselves would want to benefit from.

Question [Wow thank you so we’ll look at our last question and uh it’s what is the advice you put out there for any aspiring software engineer ?]

Answer: The first thing i’d like to say is that the market for software developers is huge, and if you’re a software developer there is a company looking for you. There is a job with your name on it and the roles whether junior, whether senior, whether principal software engineer, they are there in numerous quantities so begin applying. 

Several aspiring engineers are stuck in what we call a tutorial hell and basically what tutorial hell is that they keep watching youtube videos learning from code academy, Udemy etc. They keep thinking that oh there’s something more that they need to learn before they are ready for the market but the truth of the matter is if you have been studying and you’ve been consistent for even three years sorry even three months if you go all the way to six months learning you are more than qualified for a lot of the roles that are out there.

So yes software development is one of the better paying job roles in the market and you should confidently apply to as many opportunities as you come across don’t wait for the perfect time because that perfect time never comes.

Thank you so much so viewers I hope you heard don’t wait for the perfect time the perfect time is now. Thank you for joining us morgan we hope to have more conversations with you guys thank you for joining bye.

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