DEV Community: Andre Pautin

Transferable skills: Finding the value in your past job experiences

Andre Pautin — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 04:39:41 +0000

From being prompted “Tell me about yourself” in an interview/phone screen, to listing your technical skills on your resume. How often, if at all, is your past non-tech related work history brought up? For me, most of the time it’s only brought up if I’m the one who brings it up.

These skills attained, especially for those who’ve made a career pivot from another industry into tech, or from a job you worked while learning to program, are highly transferable to your job as a developer.

For instance, I received my college degree in Kinesiology (movement science) and worked in the fitness industry for a few years. I also worked in the food and retail industries during my college years. From each of those jobs, I learned to communicate well with customers/clients and coworkers, as well as strategize in different ways.

In retail and working in a gym, sales are imperative to keep the business going up. I gained sales tactics, one of which is that before selling the product, it’s important to “sell yourself.” I take this into any calls I have with other devs or recruiters. Establish that trust and likeness with whoever you’re speaking with.

Another thing was planning. When talking to clients about personal training, it was important to fully understand their goals. Want to lose weight? How much weight? Get stronger? How much do you want to lift in a specific lift? Getting the most specific answers led to planning out the best programs for each individual, similar to understanding consumer needs and planning out your steps to put it into code. Or even solving a DSA problem and using pseudo code before writing any actual code.

I spoke with another dev today, who was a former educator turned software engineer. He currently works as an engineer for an organization that provides tutoring and coaching to first-generation college students. With his background in teaching and technical experience, he filled the employer’s checklist (and then some). Just another great example of how our past roles and skills can transfer over to jobs as developers!

Don’t shy away from mentioning anything about your past work experience, because there’s always something valuable that can be taken from one job to another.

I'm not hearing from any recruiters or jobs that I've applied to, what do I do?

Andre Pautin — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 04:35:40 +0000

The past year has been difficult for many recruiters, myself included. To those who have been affected by the tech layoffs, just know that you are not alone, and that the community is large with tons of support!

A quick background before I get into what's worked and what hasn't for me (this could be different for you depending on the circumstances).

I have a degree unrelated to the tech space, and attended Rithm School, a Full Stack Web Development program. After finishing at Rithm, I found it difficult to get far into interviews for my first job as a developer, let alone phone screens. The main reason I landed my first role was because I reached out to cohort mates that had posted a job opportunity at their company.

Now onto present day. After working at this small (<50 employees) startup for nearly a year, I was unfortunately laid off along with others across multiple teams. I took a few weeks off to compose myself, realizing that these things happen, and that I have to control what I can.

I started applying to any Software Engineer/Developer roles that I came across on LinkedIn. I received notifications that my application was viewed, and resume downloaded, but rarely any emails or phone calls from these companies.

I stepped it up, along with sprucing up my resume and tailoring it to each job, I reached out to both a recruiter and software engineer from the company if I could find their profiles. Even then, I'd say 9 times out of 10, I wasn't getting any replies.

I was losing a little bit of hope to be honest, but went back to the lessons we got in the last week of bootcamp. The biggest one, which also helped me land my first role - utilize your network (or expand that network).

I reached out to people from my cohort that I hadn't spoken to in a while, past coworkers who were laid off who had found new roles, and even newer grads from Rithm. It feels much more human to have a small conversation with someone by catching up, or even getting to know them for the first time.

This past week, I was able to set up 6 calls to catch up with some people I've talked to or worked with, as well as some people I haven't spoken to before other than through LinkedIn. I've also gotten my resume to a hiring manager from a past coworker who knows someone at a different company.

Even if these conversations don't go anywhere, being able to set up calls with these people gives me more hope than I did before I reached out to them. I landed that first role because I reached out to one person after being rejected by hundreds (yes, HUNDREDS) of people.

It only takes one, and I'm hoping that 1 of the 6 could bring me closer to my next opportunity, or even one later on down the line.

To summarize, don't be afraid to reach out to old friends, classmates, coworkers, or even strangers. However, send your messages with intent. A lot of folks are probably getting messages from a lot of others right now doing the same thing, but if you can form some meaningful relationships, you may have someone you can reach out to later down the line if you find yourself in a similar position again.

Add background color to Material UI Button components

Andre Pautin — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 04:13:54 +0000

One thing you may notice when using the Material UI library for styled React components is that they're easily customizable. After smoothly implementing designs into a project that I'm working on, I came across something that I thought would be an easy fix - changing the background color of an MUI button.

In CSS, you'd probably do something like:

.button {
  background-color: 'green'
}

I thought it'd be similar using MUI's styling prop, something like:

<Button variant='contained' sx={{bgColor: 'green'}}>Button</Button>

I saw no changes in this case. One solution that I came across for inline styling for the button's background color was accessing the MuiButton-root class on the component:

<Button
    variant="contained"
    sx={{
      "&.MuiButtonBase-root": {
         bgcolor: "green",
       },
      "&.MuiButtonBase-root:hover": {
         bgcolor: "#0C6D9E",
       },
      }}
>

Hope this helps you out!