Hi there!
This series is a lot less "5 Facts You Need To Know About Boot Camps!" and a lot more "Now this is a story all about how my life and career got flipped, turned upside down". My intention is to share out where I was in life a year ago, where I am today, and the experiences that helped me during that time to go from working in customer service to working full-time as a web developer. I hope it's useful for anyone who is considering a career in coding, considering a career change, considering a boot camp, or any of the above.
Part 1 will focus on the boot camp; how and why I ended up there, and my experience with it. Part 2 will focus on taking my newly acquired skills to a job market in a new country, and Part 3 will look back on what it felt like to start a brand new job in a challenging new industry.
Part 2: Getting The Job
Shifting Gears
Toward the end of my 5 months of boot camp my focus shifted heavily. I didn't want to finish the 5 months and then get started on looking for work, I wanted to finish the 5 months and have that search already well underway.
Unlike coding, this was a department I had a lot of practice with. I've had many jobs over my life, from bussing tables and pouring espresso to teaching classes of people how to troubleshoot WiFi signals. Interviewing well is one of my strengths, largely due to how much practice I've had.
While I had my getting-hired experience going for me, I did have a major drawback: I was planning on moving to England, so for my first entry-level developer job I'd be applying from a different country with no local address or telephone number. I expected this to be very challenging, and I'd end up being right about that.
Before getting my applications out though, I needed to get my ducks in a row. Instead of spending my days working on my projects and developing my skills, I shifted toward reworking my CV. I quickly built up a portfolio website. I fleshed out my GitHub as much as possible. I updated my LinkedIn. I reworked my CV again - Only after all of this was finished was I ready to start sending out applications. I want to talk more about this prep work though - You can send out applications until you hit your monthly data cap, but if the applications you're sending aren't strong and well-thought-out then you may as well be sending them to space.
Please take a moment to remember that I'm not a professional recruiter or hiring manager, and I can only speak to what I feel has worked well for me in applying for and landing a job.
Curriculum Vitae
It's very difficult to build a strong-looking CV when you're new to an industry. How are you going to get hired when you have less than a year of coding experience, no professional experience in the industry and your portfolio is a scant offering of mostly-finished tutorial projects? The short answer is that most of the time, you won't get hired. Most of the time, the job will go to someone with more expertise and experience. That also means that some of the time, a tiny bit of the time, you will get hired. Some of the time, the job will go to someone who might have less expertise and experience but can bring to the team some strengths and qualities that no one else put forward.
It's important to understand that you have an uphill battle to fight. This isn't meant to be discouraging, but merely realistic. Going into this with realistic expectations will only help you not get frustrated and discouraged later - Or at least, not AS frustrated and discouraged.
The layout and format of your CV should certainly be clear, concise and look appealing. Style and format is fairly subjective but the best thing you can do to feel confident about your format is to find CV templates online that you like and rework them to make them your own. If you're going to be a developer you may as well get used to copy-pasting things you find on the internet, right? Personally I used www.canva.com to build my CV from a template, but there are many other similar resources you may prefer.
You'll likely have a challenge with listing your experience, since you'll have very little. While you may not have professional coding experience with a tech company between X and Y dates, at this point you do have experience with coding. List that. What projects have you completed? What languages were they in? What did the project do? Why did you build it? What's the link so I can see it for myself? This part is critical, as getting hired as a developer is often a lot less about what company you've worked for or where you went to school, but about what you have built.
This is your chance to highlight your best work. It doesn't have to be ground-breaking code or beautiful, modern web pages in order to be worthy of a spot on your CV. However, what you highlight should demonstrate your understanding of the fundamentals. It should give your potential employer some idea of what you've learned. If it's a project based on a tutorial, how did you make it your own? Show that you understand the code you're writing and not just typing what the tutorial says to type, or cloning repositories.
If you've got a small handful of projects highlighted on your CVthat you enjoyed building, projects that you understand and can speak well to, then you've got your experience section sorted. If you only have one project or none at all that fit that criteria, I believe your time would be better spent developing more projects than it would be on applying for jobs. At the same time, don't just knock out a few small tutorial projects because you want filler for your CV. Remember, what you list here should be projects that you enjoyed, that challenged you, that developed your skills and that you're proud of.
As for the rest of the CV, I believe listing any past relevant experience is worthwhile. As I mentioned, I've had many jobs and I included my work as a technical trainer on my CV. I included that because I believe that the skills I learned in that role such as patience, mentoring, effective communication, and troubleshooting were valuable qualities in a developer that might set me apart.
Finally, I made sure to include my technical stack; the languages and systems I had worked with. I'd also recommend that on your CV and throughout any application you don't use terms such as "aspiring developer", "I'm new but I'm eager", "hoping to break into coding", etc. I believe it's important to confidently present yourself as a developer - After all, if you've learned how to code, you understand the fundamentals of a few languages and you've built projects you can present, then you're already a developer. Start acting like it.
GitHub, LinkedIn & The Portfolio Website, In That Order
You might have a CV at this point but there's still work to be done.
It would be very rare today for any developer to apply for a job without having an up to date GitHub. If you're not familiar with Git or GitHub then I suggest you put the brakes on applications to go learn the basics. I would highly recommend anyone applying for a developer role have an up to date GitHub - This will act as a portfolio for your best work. GitHub has too many features to speak about here but you can highlight projects here, likely the same as you highlighted on your CV. Git also offers hosting features to allow you to share out links to your work, depending on what that work is.
Working with Git and repositories is very common in many developer jobs, so make sure you're familiar with it.
I'm not a fan of LinkedIn at all, but I also believe it's important to include on your application, if for no other reason that you won't fall behind your competition that does have a sharp-looking LinkedIn page. It also becomes much more useful when it comes to looking for available roles. If you don't already have a LinkedIn profile, then I'd recommend getting started on one. List your experience, your projects, your training and education, you- "Wait, don't I already have all of this on my CV?" Well, yes. Part of applying for jobs in this day and age means duplicating information on your CV to a vast array of online databases. Argue all you like, but you may as well get used to it!
Finally, the portfolio website. I list this last because how important this is can vary - If you're going into web development then I believe it's very important to have a website dedicated to, you guessed it, showcasing your experience, your projects, and your training and education. At least with a portfolio website you can build it any way you like, and really make it your own. A portfolio website is one of the best areas to write a bit more about yourself - What your hobbies are, what do you do in your spare time, etc. If you're going into web development and don't already have a portfolio website, consider making it your next project - One that you can even include on your CV and GitHub.
If you're not going into web development, a portfolio website may be less important but still be a great way to set yourself apart from your peers. There are plenty of online resources that can help you, and why not add some additional skills to your stack?
At this point you should have a good looking CV, an updated GitHub, a LinkedIn profile and possibly a portfolio website. Make sure that each one generally links to the others - Your GitHub, LinkedIn and portfolio website should all link to each other, and your CV should link to all three.
Quality AND Quantity
Once I had all the aforementioned profiles and tools ready to go, I began applying earnestly. If you've done all the leg work up until this point, applying is actually fairly easy by comparison. You may find that you can start to bang out 10, maybe 20 applications in a single day. This feels good and feels like you've accomplished a lot, but it can also be dangerous. Once you get the hang of applying, you start to become accustomed to sending out the same application over and over. While it is a bit of a numbers game, you also want to make sure you're sending out quality applications as well.
One additional tool you can get into your arsenal at this point is a cover letter. This is often a few short paragraphs introducing who you are and why you'd like to be considered for the role. Keep it short and sweet, but also make sure that you're tailoring each cover letter to the specific company you're applying to; don't send a generic cover letter that can fit for any role. "Hi, I'd like to apply for the X role available with Y company. Here are some of the job requirements you listed that I'd be a good fit for. Etc."
This introduction that shows you've read and understood the job posting and you've put forward some skills that directly apply will really help set you apart from the rest of the people who are tossing in generic applications with little to no cover letter at all. Regularly ensuring these small extra details are covered will cumulatively help you stand out from the crowd.
Since it came up just then - Requirements. Most any job posting will list the requirements for the role. These requirements are infamously heavy: Years of experience, expertise with a wide variety of popular languages, expertise with a wide variety of unpopular languages - The list goes on. I cannot say enough that if the role is for a React Developer and you have React on your CV, apply. Do not be put off by intimidating job requirements. Those requirements are a wish-list, and the vast majority of applicants will not meet every requirement, so you don't need to either. The only way you can truly guarantee that you don't get the job is to not apply for it.
All that being said, while you do need to be meticulous and diligent in sending out quality applications, you still do need to send out a lot of them. When it comes to quality versus quantity, getting hired for your first developer job requires both. I believe that you can't afford to be too picky at this stage - While the goal of getting a job in development is realistic, getting the perfect job that works with the exact tech stack you want with the exact culture you want with the exact salary you want is less realistic when you're starting out. I'd even go so far as to apply for roles that you may not really want - The opportunity to go through the interview process can be extremely valuable practice for when you interview for "the big one", plus the information you get during the interview process may change your mind about the role.
Practically speaking, websites to seek out jobs online are a dime a dozen. A few that I have used and can recommend are the big ones you're likely already familiar with:
- Glassdoor
- Indeed
- Craigslist (seems to be more popular in North America than Europe)
Your specific country will most likely have many others as well. Find them and use them. Be prepared to create a large number of accounts across many job sites and get a lot of junk mail, but it's part of the process - Or at least, it was part of my process.
Call Screens, Interviews and Code Tests
After several days of sending out a large number of what I considered strong and thoughtful applications, I started to get some bites. This may be more specific to Europe, but most if not all of those bites were from recruiters. Recruitment agencies were never something I'd even heard of in Canada - Generally the only people contacting you about the job were a company's HR team or the employer themselves. This "middle-person" concept was new to me.
My experience was that many recruiters were less interesting in talking to me about the role I'd applied for and much more interested in getting my information and putting it into their system. Fine. While I felt like I was often jumping through hoops, I believe it's necessary to do so; that next hoop may well result in an actual interview, and that's not a chance you can afford to miss.
Regardless of who you're speaking to and regardless of how interested you are in the role, I'd like to highlight two pieces:
1) Try to avoid ever having a conversation with someone if you aren't certain who they are or what they want to talk to you about. This may sound obvious but in the mad array of job sites, applications and contacts you go through day after day, it gets very easy to lose track of things. Stay organised, keep a calendar, and always review the job listing and the company before taking a call about it.
2) Always put your best face forward. You may only have a passing interest in the role but you owe it to yourself to make the best impression you can. Show that you're interested and engaged by speaking to what you know about the role and the company. Talk about the experience you have with what's in their tech stack. You lack experience, so you need to make up for it every way you can - Genuine interest, being engaged and showing your ability to learn quickly will all help immensely. These are all more steps that will help set you apart.
I started to feel like the application process was more challenging than working with JavaScript - At least writing code made sense. Usually.
After many applications, many call screens and many rejection letters, I finished the 5 months of my boot camp with a small handful of promising in-person interviews in England. I already had plans to now dash from Barcelona to Vancouver to visit family and friends, so I rerouted my return flight from Vancouver to Manchester. It would be absolutely fine to book live interviews for the day after I make that whole trip.. right?
In hindsight I would not recommend this, but I can also say it's do-able.
I landed in Manchester after a long day of travelling and only wanted to rest up - My first interview was the very next morning. I won't be speaking much about how to interview well - There are many resources available on that topic and I did nothing differently interviewing to be a developer than I did anything else. If anything, refer back to "genuine interest, being engaged and showing your ability to learn quickly".
One unique aspect about the developer interview is that you may be asked to take a coding test. This is an exercise in which you're given some sort of coding problem by the interviewer and asked to write the code that either solves the problem, executes a certain function, returns a certain value, etc. I can confidently corroborate the many stories you'll hear about coding tests where you can be given a simple task, but in that environment your fingers will suddenly stop working and get magnificently sweaty.
All you can do to mitigate the panic is practice. Fortunately there are many resources to practice coding tests - The night before my first interview I practised several exercises on www.codewars.com and I couldn't have been more relieved that I did this. It was invaluable in helping me get over my nerves and not instantly forget everything I'd just learned. There are many resources outside of Code Wars to practice these tests; find what works for you.
I should also note that I believe, unless otherwise stated by the interviewer, that Googling something during a coding test is absolutely valid. More often than not the interviewer is looking less at the answer you provide and much more at how you go about getting your answers; how you handle situations where you don't know the answer. I can tell you now that looking at a problem for a while and saying "No, sorry I can't do it" will not get you far. Trying and not succeeding at something will always be better than not trying at all.
Several days of interviews later, I flew home to Barcelona and right away got back to my application process. I was hopeful that the last few days would yield positive results, but I also knew that if all the interviewers declined me I wanted to already have my search back on.
After I had received a few phone calls and emails, almost all of the companies I'd just interviewed for did decline me. But that didn't matter, because one didn't.
Celebrating
Ironically, the role that I'd been offered was to work with a JavaScript framework I hadn't learned at all during my time at the academy. However rather than asking the interviewer to simply trust that I can learn quickly, after I'd landed a face to face interview for this role I spent as much time as I could learning the basics of this new framework and built a small project. By the time I sat down for the interview and heard "Now I know you don't have experience with this framework.." I was able to gently interrupt and say that in the interest of this role I'd taken the time to learn this and that about the framework. Here's what I did, and here's what I enjoyed about the process.
I believe that step was an important part of why I received an offer. Genuine interest, being engaged and showing my ability to learn quickly.
Within minutes I'd run back to the boot camp where this all started and shared my good news. I had to start packing my bags, but first things first - Celebrating into the night with a great deal of Estrella.
I'd gotten the skills needed to do the job and now I had gotten the job. All that was left to do was to actually go and do the job. Part 3 will be the final entry in this series and I'll speak about my experience and challenges with stepping into a new role in an entirely new industry. I'll post that next week on April 29th.
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