How to become more valuable for a job

[camel-man]

With more and more programmers arising and college students graduating in some computer field. I want to know what the best way to be valuable to a company so I will not have a hard time competing with many other programmers for the same job. Also I do not want to be a code monkey I heard that is a negative term for programmers.

 

[Choppy]

I would suggest looking at the situation more like this: what can you do to keep your personal market value high?

(1) Be a great programmer.

(2) Be able to demonstrate (1) on a consistent basis when you are working. And be able to demonstrate this to potential employers though a solid portfolio of work and through references that will speak highly of you.

(3) Keep your skills up to date.

(4) Look for opportunities and take the initiative. But do this wisely and respectfully. I've seen positions literally created for people who management wants kept around.

(5) Be the kind of person other people like to work with. At the end of the day it's people that make hiring decisions and when I've been in a hiring position some the more frequent questions that come up are: Do we want to work with this person? and Does this person fit in with the current group?