Personal Development...

The job I choose was a Junior Developer based in Sheffield.

Why that job?
The reason the above job appealed to me was primarily because of the salary assigned to the entry level position. The benefits of which would mean that I would have the opportunity to further my website development skills in a guided environment whilst earning a comfortable salary.

Looking at the companies portfolio, it would appear that they have produced an array of work from basic sites to custom content managed systems which would provide me with excellent experience and enhance my confidence.

Skills Required
The advert is predictably asking for an assortment of programing skills, including standards compliant XHTML and CSS, ASP, .NET 2.0, XML and JavaScript. The composition of databases, their management and manipulation is an area that appeals to me; it would appear that this job has plenty of opportunities in that area. The working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop quite accurately describes my skill level.

Skills Gap
Though I feel confident working with standards compliant XHTML and CSS, I am as yet to touch upon some of the other languages. This could be an area of improvement during the self managed learning project later this year; however, it has been said that PHP would currently be a more valuable language to learn initially.

The extent of my experience with databases reaches as far as coding basic databases in Turbo Pascal and countless builds in Microsoft Access; regrettably, I have not had the opportunity to work using web based / server side databases so far.

Conclusion
I feel that there is still areas of knowledge that I need to improve upon, however, I would feel confident applying for the above job with the skills that I already posses; even though they differ slightly from those requested.

Word Count: 300