The website that opened the door to IT for me

It was time for something new. My old job application website had served its purpose. This first post marks the start of a new chapter on steffenjung.de.

I had learned how to build websites. I wanted to work in IT. So I needed a website for my job application. To me, that was the obvious next step.

What I had not planned was ending up in a newspaper because of it.

BASIC first, business studies later

My enthusiasm for computers went back much further. As a young teenager, I spent time with machines called the Commodore C64 and Schneider CPC. Programming in BASIC soon followed. I wanted to build things myself, too.

While I was at school, I wrote a program to keep track of my grades. At the push of a button, I could bring up my own interim report card. Enter the grades, let the computer do the maths and see where I stood — I thought that was pretty handy.

I also made a little spaceship shoot-’em-up. It had a slightly peculiar laser: while the enemies were at the top of the screen, it was short. The closer they came, the longer it got. Bugs were already part of the experience back then.

Despite that enthusiasm, I initially chose an apprenticeship in industrial business administration. I took my interest in technology with me. At work, I could put Excel spreadsheets to use and improve workflows. There was always something a computer could make easier.

Later, I completed a business administration qualification alongside my job. But my fascination with technology never left me. In 1999, I started a training programme in multimedia and web development. Now I wanted to make IT my profession, too.

The online job application

So I put my application online: my CV, certificates, a photo and a questionnaire. There was also an animated version that took visitors through my career so far.

Anyone who wanted to know whether I could do something useful with the internet could see for themselves. It made sense to me: I had learned something, and my application was a chance to show what I could do with it.

Today, that hardly sounds remarkable. Back then, a personal job application website was apparently still unusual enough to warrant an article in the Stuttgarter Zeitung. I was probably already quite a digital nerd. While others saw an unusual application idea, I was thinking: of course. That’s how you do it.

The article appeared on 16 August 2000. By then, the website had already served its original purpose: it had opened the door to IT for me.

The journalist took a closer look

Reading it again, some of the descriptions make me smile. The journalist found my CV very tidy. He was less sure about my flat.

He described my sofa, a dusty glass table and some rather weary houseplants. At least the plants had names. In the kitchen, he spotted a few bottles of mineral water and two washed glasses.

Quite a vivid snapshot of my life at the time. He had clearly looked more closely than was strictly necessary for an article about online job applications.

There was certainly plenty going on at work. I had just started, was working a lot and was excited about what I was learning. The article captures that moment when my interest in the internet became a new career.

After the Stuttgarter Zeitung, STERN magazine took an interest in me as well. Its article was later picked up by Deutschland Magazin, and I even ended up on the cover.

I had simply built a website to find a job. I had not expected that kind of attention.

My own website could wait

After that, the site stayed online. For decades.

I had other priorities. At work, there was always something to develop, put into practice or organise. I also wrote and blogged from time to time — mostly on my company website, and usually in a business context.

My personal website rarely made it to the top of the list. It had served its purpose and remained online as a reminder of that beginning.

Now the urge has returned. I want to share more of my personal thoughts: about technology and AI, education and running a business. About events, encounters and how people get talking to one another. And about things that occupy my mind beyond work.

This should be a place for experiences, observations and questions I do not yet have a ready answer to. For things I try out, and things I might change my mind about along the way.

That is what this new website is for. My work is still part of it. But there is more room for the thoughts that arise through it and around it.

A lot has happened between the BASIC grades program and this new site. The pleasure of trying out what technology can do and making something of my own has stayed with me.