How to find work or projects?

[Mustachio]

Well to start, Im a bit older than the typical undergrad student. Im 27 and Im in my senior year now studying Computer Science. I feel like I have a pretty solid foundation to build on, but no specific experience or anything of the sort.

Considering I am a bit older (and also unemployed) I have been looking for work with no success, it seems because most of the positions available require some sort of specific experience, of which, I have almost none since my experience is much more general and basically limited to school work.

So how do you guys go about finding either work, or just picking up projects to work on? Honestly, I want to stretch my legs and actually do some programming outside of school, but finding a project that interests me is difficult. So I figured I would ask and see what the rest of you like to do.

 

[DragonD]

I never got around to answering this...

I went thru a divorce in my mid 20's, and fought for and won custody of my two sons (age 1 and 3 at the time).

In my late 20's, I decided I'd had enough of dead end, minimum wage jobs, and decided to get an education.

I was 32 when I graduated from the University of Houston with a BS in computer science. That was eleven years ago. I have since also gotten my masters in Software Engineering.

Things were different back then. Microsoft had only recently came out with it's MFC. Almost all "businesses" development was done on a Unix machine.

Prior to graduating, I had spent almost 4 years working on a very large open source project, done in Ansi C, on a linux machine. It was all volunteer work.

But having that on my resume is what got me in the door... Most people coming out of college don't have 4 years of practical experience (even if it was part time..)

My advice? Find one of the larger companies where you live. They usually hire a fair amount of entry level people. (lets face it, entry level people are cheap. People with 10+ years of experience are expensive).

Also try some of the recruiter places.