“First Impressions Matter” — The process of finding work post bootcamp
Like many people who start a coding bootcamp, the purpose for me was the first step in a new career path. With that said, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. At points, I didn’t know if I was capable of completing the course. My mindset was, even if I am unable to finish the course successfully, it doesn’t mean that the journey had to stop there. I would just need to continue my learning after the course. So I was open to whatever I could get out of the course. Whether that be an internship, paid work or just a solid base of knowledge.
Midway through the course, Academy Xi assigned each student with a mentor. For me this was invaluable. My mentor, Svetlana Marina, has very different professional experience to me in terms of her path into software engineering, but for that reason she has a wealth of industry knowledge, and at every point, she had good advice for me. She didn’t help me with my code, but gave advice on how I can better manage my time, structure my CV and cover letters, feedback on my applications and was also happy to share some her contacts with me. I think I got lucky with Svet, as some of my fellow students lots contact with their mentor, I am really happy Svet and I have stayed in touch. I also believe there is an element of ‘you get out what you put in’. I was proactive with Svet, I was gracious for her time and I gave her feedback on how she was doing, letting her know what I was getting out of our sessions.
Upon completion from the Software Engineering course at Academy Xi, the school was able to offer a place for me and few others to join an internship with a start-up called ParentalEQ. I was focused on Front-end development, building a few pages and adjusting themes on the Material Kit Pro app. It was a learning curve, largely due to writing in Typescript for the first time, and also juggling my own GitHub, job applications along with the internship. But it was great experience working in a team and Luke, from ParentalEQ, was very generous with his knowledge.
All through the internship, about 6 weeks in total, I was sending off job applications. Nothing crazy. Perhaps just 3 or 5 applications per week. One thing I decided to do, was add a video to my applications. I didn’t do it for every application, but those roles that I really liked the sound of, I would create a 3–4 minute introductory video. Each one specific for the role. The feedback was great! Companies were really happy with the effort I’d gone to, and felt they’d already had a chance to get to know me, even before a phone screen.
Once I had made it to late rounds of some developer roles, my expectations began to change. It started to become a more ‘real’ prospect that I was going to be able land a role exceeding my initial expectations.
After being pipped at the post in those developer roles, I applied for a Quality Engineer role with Safety Culture. As this kind of role is more User Experience focused, it sounded like one to which I could bring some of my prior experience in Customer Experience, but also leverage some new skills that I’d been practicing through the course and internship.
After a couple of meet & greets and a take home test with Safety Culture, they offered me a role. What a moment! I realise this was the point of the course, but I was overjoyed with the offer and accepted as soon as humanly possible. At the time of writing this, I still haven’t started with Safety Culture but really looking forward to it.
