My Job Hunting Story after a Coding Bootcamp

Alison Zhang
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read

After signing the offer letter with my dream company, I could finally take a deep breath and think about sharing my experience.

Finding jobs has always been hard for everybody, not to say if you come from a different background. I did Environmental Engineering for my Bachelor and Masters before pursuing my PhD in Chemical Engineering. After being lost for a year during my PhD, I withdrew the program. Afterwards, I moved to a different country and helped former alumni by working in their Venture Capital platform. Soon after that, I joined a JavaScript Full Stack coding bootcamp… These experiences seem a bit scattered, but it’s exactly my love for solving engineering problems and seeking for meaning brought me closer to coding, step by step.

In this post, I want to talk about things after I graduated from bootcamp, because that’s the beginning of me and my friends hopping onto different journeys with the same goal of landing a job. That’s when I realized I was the only one responsible to make a change to my life.

  1. Identify my weaknesses and work on them

It’s well-known that bootcamp graduates are comparatively weak on toy problems, system design and front end tools such as CSS. When I graduate, I was weak on them all. After talking to some software engineers, I learned that toy problems and front end building are super important for interviewing Front End Engineers. So I put off learning system design and focused on those two instead (As it turns out, only a handful companies asked me basic system design questions).

a)The holy grail of toy problems: Leetcode

Like many of you, I’ve also heard platforms such as Leetcode, Hacker Rank, CodeFights, etc. are great places to practice toy problems. I played around on these platforms to get myself comfortable with their different interfaces. Then I noticed that their problem sets overlap with each other hugely. To keep better track of how many problems I did each day and the problem difficulties, I chose to focus on only solving Leetcode problems. Things got a lot more manageable.

In addition, always check other people’s solutions. Your O(NlogN) approach makes you proud? There’s actually an O(N) approach! If you didn’t check around and learn the better way, what are you gonna do when you meet this problem during your on-site interview?

b)Front end building

I went through resources such as w3schools CSS tutorial and CSS-tricks to better understand concepts such as flex box, tried JavaScript 30 to embrace the awesomeness of vanilla JS, and tried my hardest on code challenges companies sent to me. In addition, Glassdoor Front End interview questions and Hacker Rank company code challenges have been quite helpful as well.

My secret to be able to convert almost every code challenge into an on-site is always doing more. Have you made sure you are actually solving the problem the company asked you to solve? Is your front end responsive? Have you paid extra attention to layout details? Is your code clean and modular?

2. Prioritize and use Trello

Time is gold. If you want to grasp everything before going to an on-site, congratulations, you’ll be a hundred years old then. Soon after I graduated, I noticed each day I’d have a million “new things I need to learn” came into my mind. I’d be reading HTTP while being interrupted by what I needed to learn about CSS… It was very counter-productive. Then I started to use Trello and strictly prioritize my tasks each day and stuck to the schedule. It works wonderfully!

3. Be patient

Handling my emotions during job search was another challenge. Although numerous people have already said to me “it’s ok, you should be patient” or “it’s gonna be alright”, whenever I felt bad, I still felt bad... I guess it’s the same for most of the people. I mean after all, we are not robots with no feelings. If you find yourself in this situation, you should definitely find a vent.

A silent week in which I receive nothing from my applications usually gave me a terrible day or two. To vent my negative feelings, I’d go out to take a walk or work out a bit. Try not to think about anything related to job search during the process. After the distraction from my bad feelings, I could make peace with the fact that I should do more work to earn my fair share of rest later.

4. Be gritty

Being gritty, or thick-skinned, has been very rewarding to me. Whenever I apply to a company, I’d always mark down if I’m super interested in it. Then after about a week, if the company didn’t get back to me, I’d follow up with their VP of Engineering or CTO about my application.

In my follow up emails, I’d reiterate my interest in the company again, emphasize what sets me apart from other candidates, and then specifically ask for a phone conversation or a code challenge to test my technical skills because I believe the best way of knowing a candidate’s capability is not always clearly shown on the resume. Let the code talk. And when you finally get a chance with the company, seize it! Because you probably won’t get many.

I had an extreme case where I followed up with an Engineering Manager 5 times throughout 2 months to check the possibility of joining their team. Although at the end the company still didn’t give me a chance, at least I tried my best and have nothing to regret.

5. A word on referrals

Referrals are great, when they work. I was very lucky to have had friends refer me to multiple companies. However, sadly none of those referrals got me to pass resume screen.

My suggestion on referrals is: if you can find someone who knows you and your project, you should definitely ask for their referrals. But afterwards, you should keep studying as if the referrals never happened. Besides, it’d super embarrassing for both you and your friend if you get an interview but failed immediately. Right? That’s just another reason that you need to sharpen your technical skills every single day.

So all in all:

a)Prepare yourself for a long fight

b)Work on your weaknesses that are high-frequency interview questions

c)Prioritize your work and find a vent for your negative feelings

d)Talk to friends or mentors who share or understand what’s happening for you

** I want to thank my career coach Jake Pace for all the valuable advice, our lovely counsellor Rebecca Phares for being my rock, and all my wonderful 73 mates for their strong, unbelievable support. Love you all!

Alison Zhang

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