Road to Employment: A Junior Dev's Job Search Adventure (Ep. I)

#startup #webdev #javascript #nextjs

My first taste of Startup life

Back in May 2022 I finished my bootcamp at Ironhack and graduated as a MERN Stack Developer. This marked the start of what would be my career in Web Development!

Following the months after I finished my course, I just spend the next two months studying on my own, building different playgrounds to experiment with different coding challenges and late August, early September, a friend that had been through the bootcamp with me offered me a chance to work in a startup just for experience (i.e. not being paid) - which is great because I was still searching for a job and this would give me first hand experience in the field.

For the first month I was working with a mid-senior developer that was teaching me the methodologies that we would be working in (Agile) with daily Stand Ups.

Although we were aiming to go for a no-code platform for the MVP we quickly switched to using Next.js (which was something completely new, well, to an extent) - so I spent the week reading the documentation and followed this to get a general understanding.

Within a month I was officially hired and stopped searching for Jr. positions as this job was allowing me to grow in the field. A few weeks later I was able to have some mentoring from a Sr. Developer which was the most insightful thing I could've asked, he helped me:

Organise my code (clean code approach, i.e: removing unnecessary code, delete console.logs for security reasons, etc) keep in mind this was all new to me;
Backlogs and tickets using Gitlab - up to this point, I only knew how to work with Github;
Different branches for different tickets;
Different approach when dealing with issues.

Besides that, on a more managerial side, I had coaching regarding feedback and summarising each day:

Organise workflow for the works' day;
Give midday updates;
End of day summary through bullet points.

Of course there was more to it, but it really gave me a good insight in what is like working in a team, which I think will give me an advantage when settling into a new team.

The Search

My time with the Startup ended after around 4 months which I was grateful everyday and now I am on a hunt for job that will continue to help me grow in the field.

This Blog

I am wanting to share with you my journey into finding my first (post startup) job and all the things I've learnt on the way. I will mostly share what I am currently doing, learning and developing. Also share my interview experiences.