You have the skills. You have the portfolio. You have a clear sense of what kind of job you want. None of that matters until someone agrees to interview you. Here is a 30-day plan to get from prepared to scheduled.
Days 1–3 — fix the CV
The CV is the first filter. Most fail at this stage. Open yours and check:
- Length: one page if you have under five years of experience, two pages absolute maximum
- Format: clean PDF, sans-serif body font, no design flourishes that make ATS readers fail
- Top of page: name, role you want ("Junior Frontend Engineer"), email, phone, location, GitHub, LinkedIn
- No photo. Nigerian convention is mixed; international companies prefer none. Skip it.
- Skills section: only what you can actually demonstrate. The five-line "skills" list with twelve technologies reads as "I have done a tutorial on each."
- Projects section: three projects, each with one sentence on what it does, two lines on tech, links to live + code
- Experience section: most recent first, three to five bullets per role, each one starting with a verb and including a number where possible
- Education: short. One or two lines per institution.
A real test: hand your CV to someone who has never seen it and give them 30 seconds. Ask them what they think the job you want is. If they cannot answer, the CV needs work.
Days 4–6 — fix LinkedIn
Most junior tech hires in Nigeria now happen via LinkedIn. A neglected profile loses you opportunities you do not even know you missed. Required:
- Headline that says what you do, not what you are studying — "Frontend Engineer (React, Next.js)" beats "Computer Science Student"
- Photo. Plain background, smiling, professional.
- About section that is short, specific, and reads as written by a human. Three short paragraphs at most.
- Featured section pinned with your top project, your portfolio, and any writing
- All real experience entered — internships, SIWES, freelance, paid projects
- Skills section curated to about 15 entries, not 50
Then ask three connections to endorse your top three skills. That is enough.
Days 7–10 — build the application pipeline
Make a sheet. Track every role you apply to. Columns: company, role, source, application date, status, follow-up date.
Application sources, ranked by hit rate for juniors in Nigeria:
- Direct LinkedIn outreach to a hiring engineer. Best hit rate when done well.
- Specific company career pages. Bypasses noisy aggregator listings.
- Tech-specific Slack and Discord communities — Nigerian product community channels usually have a #hiring channel.
- LinkedIn Jobs. Volume play. Apply to many. Customise the cover note.
- Aggregators (MyJobMag, Hot Nigerian Jobs). Lowest hit rate but adds volume.
- Referrals from your network — by far the highest hit rate. The catch is having the network in the first place.
Days 11–20 — apply
Volume target: 50 applications in 10 days. Five a day, every day, including weekends.
For each application:
- Customise the first line of the cover letter to mention something specific about the company
- Match the resume language to the job description — if they say "REST APIs," your CV should not say "web services"
- Follow up a week later via LinkedIn if no response
Most will not respond. That is normal. The pipeline works on conversion math: 50 applications, maybe 10 responses, maybe 3 first-round interviews, maybe 1 offer. Adjust the funnel through volume.
Days 21–25 — direct outreach
The applications-pipeline numbers are not enough on their own for most people. Augment with direct outreach.
Pick 20 engineers at companies you would like to work at. Send each a short, specific message. Template:
"Hi [name], I am a junior [role] based in [city]. I noticed [specific thing about their work — a recent project, a talk, a post]. I am job-searching and would love to hear what your team's hiring process looks like for juniors. Happy to send my CV if useful. Thanks."
Half will not reply. Some will reply with general advice. A few will offer an introduction or send your CV in. This is where the real opportunities come from.
Days 26–30 — interview prep
You should have interviews scheduled by now. Prep:
- For technical interviews: practice on Pramp or Interviewing.io. Schedule three mock interviews this week.
- For behavioural questions: prepare four stories using the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Each story should be reusable across multiple question types.
- Research each company before the interview. Find a recent product launch, a blog post, anything specific.
- Have three specific questions to ask the interviewer at the end. Generic "what do you like about working here" questions waste your opportunity to look engaged.
- Sleep enough. Caffeine the day of.
What to do when day 30 ends without an offer
Most people will not have an offer by day 30. They will have had a few interviews, a few rejections, and a refined sense of what their gap is. The cycle resets — fix the gap, increase the volume, keep applying.
The first job takes longest. Each subsequent role takes a fraction of the time. Get through this one.
What never works
- Mass-emailing the same generic message to 200 strangers
- Spamming LinkedIn connection requests with no message
- Lying on the CV. It surfaces during interviews and costs you the offer.
- Refusing to interview anywhere because "that company is not impressive enough." Your first job is for the experience, not the brand.
