Dear reader.

My question is how long might it take to get some kind of answer from a company and do I have made something wrong in my application?

Recently I finished college with a Bachelor of Science degree and I thought to apply for several junior positions here in Germany not only as a C++ Programmer but also as a graphics programmer and other similar positions.

Two weeks ago, I sent my applications out but still got no answer from any company. In my opinion, I fit perfectly for the positions I applied for. Along with a nice email, I sent in a resume which contained a link to my portfolio website where I gathered some information about some my projects I did so far.

I put a reasonable amount of pictures of those projects onto the site along with some explanation of it which could be read or not. These projects of course are absolutely topic related, for example, the ray tracing on the Playstation 3 project, the fluid solver on the iPod project or my demo engine where I show (also by video) how I have implemented OpenGL 4 tessellation and how it works by simple example of the PN-Triangles technique. Another video shows real-time GPU histogram processing for HDR-rendering.

I put some time in this website in order to have it very structured so everyone can easily go through it and see whats going on. And I checked everything about correct syntax and semantic in the resume and the website. I think everything is very plausible and well sound and structured.

Further more, I do approximately 8 years of C++ programming and nearly 5 years of OpenGL so I think I am perfectly suited for some vacancy as a "junior" C++ or graphics programmer. I started programming 4 years before I started my studies of computer science.

Now I have received no single answer from no company so far. I feel a little bit useless. I mean, they have this vacancy online still, but they dont give any guess about what(I feel more like ftw) is going on.

So this is a bit of the story. Sure, it is hard to give some guess what is going on, but please give it a try and what you think about it? I am very depressed right now!

Thanks and thanks for reading

Some depressed guy

Hi szecs.

Thank you for your quick reply. I checked your links, and the tank simulator looks great. 130 applications, this is insane and even controversal because your reference look good to me.

This points me to another concern I have. During my studies, and even to the last semester, I noticed, that none of my fellow students had any idea what(again wtf) even a shader is or how to program a GPU nor what a scene graph is.

This is first due to the fact that we dont learn this kind of knowledge at the college and also due to the fact that most of my fellow students were very lazy, just playing multiplayer, world of warcraft kind of games even during the course sessions. I for example, did alot in my spare time to acquire that kind of knowlege what none of my fellow students have! I even did some Master courses at the college and participated as a tutor in those courses several times as a Bachelor student!
But all this seems to count nothing! Although EVERY company claims that it is looking for good C++ programmers! A very big contradiction in my opinion! Isn't my 8 years C++ programming experience not good enough for a "junior" level programmer?

Dear yaustar
> Where were you applying to? (eg outside your home country?)
I just applied in my home country in several cities exect my current city where I studied, because I want to leave this place.

> Did you call to follow up on your application?
Yes. For one application I did so. Last week on thursday. But I haven't recieved any answer yet! Very impolite in my opinion!

Konnichiwa Tom Sloper san.

Thank you for your comment. All I can tell you is that I did exactly what is on your website specifically on http://sloperama.com/advice/lesson27.htm.

I vary every application to fit it to the company I apply at. I dont "spam out" one big template of application cover letter email or resume. I vary.

But how should I really know what went wrong if I don't get any answer? Sure, such a company is no training program, but in my opinion, an applicant, interessted in their company is worth at least two lines clarity!

Dear szecs.

> The tons of unmotivated graduates will flood the labour market with you and make your situation harder, but there's no point complaining about it. Such is life <

Yes you are right. This was a rather subjective that objective comment about the situation.

And yes, it is about 8 applications.

> Does that help?

This would clarify things. Why are you so pro employer? What's bad about to have some clear answer. You know, I have to make plans too. And the answer you gave is much better than nothing!