The Post-Bootcamp Job Hunt: Memoirs of Rejection, Mentorship and Leveling Up Coding Skills — Part 1
So, I’m in a bit of a transitional period — but in 2020, who isn’t?
Introduction
The prospect of being a near-thirty-year-old navigating this tumultuous time in American history was daunting even in the beginning of March when I was still employed as a full-time musician — finally able to make a living playing shows and teaching on the side after ten years doing it part-time while in and out of school.
It was already an election year, which meant social media was going to be a dumpster fire, families and friends were going to be split on political lines and the loudest minority voices were going to turn every issue, regardless of its significance, into a debate mimicking that of the “The Dress” from 2015. (Yes, that is a link to an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the phenomenon of arguing over the color of a dress — but I digress)
Enter Covid-19.
In a matter of three or four days starting March 15th, I lost every bit of work on my calendar. The music store at which I taught lessons shut down, and my life as a professional musician was over. There would be no networking trips to Austin (SXSW), LA, or Nashville — which I’d been planning and had booked since September, and there would be no money coming in until I was finally approved for “Pandemic Unemployment Assistance” in June.
I’d been learning JavaScript slowly on my own, but I knew that there would never be a better moment to take the leap and enroll in a bootcamp — so I did on May 26th, 2020.
I chose General Assembly’s twelve-week immersive remote course, as it had wonderful reviews, taught a full-stack curriculum, and had a fantastic outcomes program with stats to prove it. I was all in.
Fast-forward to now and here I sit — two full-stack projects, over 420 hours of in-class coding, over thirty wonderful new friends and mentors with whom to commiserate, and a lot of new knowledge. I could go on and on about what it’s like to do a bootcamp, but there are many articles that cover that. What I want to do with this series is document what it’s like on the job hunt in real-time.
The hunt.
Many people have shared their experiences after they land that first job, but I want to take whoever is willing to read this along with me. So every week, until I land a job, I will be writing about my experiences searching, applying, studying, (hopefully) interviewing, getting rejected, and reaching out to company employees.
In the first two weeks I’ve submitted twenty-five applications and received six responses. Three hard no’s, two no’s with a “but we’ll keep you in mind”, and one “we’re moving forward with an assessment.”
This, from what I can tell, is actually a pretty decent result to be so new to the job hunt. The job for which (at the moment) I’m still a candidate was sent to me in an Indeed email. The posting was odd in my opinion, as it was labeled as a senior role, but they preferred only one year of experience. Regardless, I applied. And this next step is crucial.
I reached out to one of the lead developers on Linked In. Within twenty minutes the company contact had viewed my profile and emailed me that they were moving forward with an assessment. There is no doubt in my mind that had I not reached out to a real person to introduce myself, I would not have gotten the chance to move forward. This is advice I received from my outcomes guide at GA, and it is advice I will forever preach to anyone looking for a job.
Reach. Out. To. A. Person.
The assessment was really tough. The job was a full-stack position and the assessment required me to brainstorm a potential fix for a hypothetical bottleneck existing somewhere on the back-end of an enterprise-scale application.
Even if I don’t get an on-site interview, it was a valuable experience and shed a light on how much I still need to learn. Rather than let this increase my already sky-high imposter syndrome, my plan is to familiarize myself with n-tiered architecture and level up. Hopefully I can keep that mindset. Time will tell.
But Even if You Don’t Get an Interview…
It is worth it to reach out to contacts at any prospective company for which you’ve applied for a position.
If it’s a company worth working for, there will likely be someone willing to respond with some guidance. At least this was my experience yesterday.
A contact that I made after submitting an application accepted my connection on Linked In, informed me that the position would likely go to a more senior-level developer, but then proceeded to:
- View my LinkedIn profile
- View my Github profile
- Read my resume
- Examine the Code on my capstone project
- Offer me tips on my LinkedIn profile layout
- Offer insight into how to increase my productivity on Github
- And even went so far as to give me specific advice on how to make a piece of code more efficient in my project
I didn’t ask for any of this. He was very generous with his time, and as a bootcamp grad himself, was able to offer a lot of personal insight into what the job hunt is like, and how to increase my chances of getting interviews.
His first piece of advice?
Reach out to company contacts.
Moving forward
So what am I doing now that I don’t have class Monday-Friday from 10am-6pm?
Mondays are filled with applications. I’m trying to do at least ten a week, and get the majority of them done Monday, with the hope that responses will come in manageable waves.
The rest of the week I’m working through a React Native course through Code with Mosh to build my skill set and work toward refactoring my React.js projects into mobile applications. I’m also going to be checking out some algorithm practice resources I found in this piece by Felix Feng, as I desperately need practice with CS fundamentals.
So that’s it. That’s where I’m at. If you’ve read all this so far, I really appreciate it, and I hope that if you’re also a grad on the job hunt you’ll keep in touch via LinkedIn and share with me your projects and stories of triumph, defeat, anxiety and everything in-between. I know it’s a roller coaster, but we all have to stay the course and keep coding.
Until next week…
Happy Hacking.