My First Job

It all began in the summer of 2015 when I started to worry about what will happen after I finish my Masters degree in Information and Communications? Will I get a job easily or I will have to apply a thousand jobs and hope for a reply. Through my summer holidays I kept applying a lot of jobs in Communication field as I have a Bachelors degree and a Post Graduation certificate in the field. As expected, nothing really happened. Being an international student in a country where I don’t speak their native language it is almost impossible to find a job. Still I kept applying in several companies for several positions, got a few calls but nothing after that. I was extremely disappointed and went by a river for a walk to think it all through. I still had a whole year left of my Masters degree so I had time to do something before it was too late. I was always afraid of coding and learning coding languages as I thought it is really difficult and never found it interactive and interesting in any form but still I knew if someone knows programming in any language, getting a job is easy. So, I decided I will start learning how to code and shortlisted iOS and Android platforms.

I have a MacBook Pro and an iPhone from a long time and have always preferred using iOS so I decided I will learn iOS programming. Bought a few courses in a bundle through some tech website and started right away. The first course I took was very basic and that’s what I needed to get familiar with the first steps of coding. Soon after that I found a course “iOS 9 and Swift 2: From Beginner to Paid Professional” on Udemy from Mark Price. Without wasting any time, I started the first section. Day by day as I was learning from this course I gained so much, I learned how to make an app for iOS, I learned how to use GitHub, I learned the basics of coding in the most interesting and clear way, and the list goes on. Almost half way through the course I applied all that knowledge to make my first app “Polish 250” that has over 250 basic Polish words for anyone to learn. Soon after that I made another app “Tip Slide” and finally a wish list app “MustGet” that uses Core Data. Looking at my apps on the AppStore makes me feel I achieved something and gave me a huge confidence to move forward. Soon after that I was making apps for my Masters Thesis and applied for total five internship/junior iOS developer jobs. The unbelievable thing is three of those companies got back to me within a week and two of them arranged an interview. One for internship and one for job. For internship I had a skype interview and a project to complete, which I did within the time limit (thanks to Mark’s course). For job I had a 3 hour interview that had general talk and test. I passed that as well. After only two days the company called me and asked me to join them as a Junior iOS Developer. As I am writing this I am so happy and proud of myself but more than that I am thankful and forever grateful to Mark Price for his amazing course that literally changed my life. From no coding experience to an iOS developer in about 7 months! Tomorrow I will go, sign the contract and start my job.

Abhijeet Chaudhary
June 26, 2016