Where to begin? I began my self-paced, remote bootcamp with FlatIron on September 24th, 2018. I begin my first job on a development team on December 27th, 2018. It seems like so long ago, but this is how it happened.
I began the self-paced remote bootcamp so that I could maintain my job as a Paralegal at a law firm (so that I could pay bills). My full-time job was approximately a 1 hour drive away from my apartment, which made planning my time out extremely important.
My general schedule was:
- 4:15 am - Get up, eat breakfast, shower, begin FlatIron
- 7:00 am - Pack lunch and finish getting ready to leave
- 7:30 am - Leave for work
- 8:30 am - Clock in
- ~12:00 am - Grab empty conference room to eat lunch (usually Amy’s frozen meals)
- ~12:15 am - Code for last 45 minutes of lunch break
- 5:30 pm - Clock out, head home
- 6:30 pm - Pick up some fast food or bake something frozen in the oven
- 6:45-7:00 pm - Start FlatIron
- 8:00 pm - Hit the bed
- REPEAT
The above schedule was pretty strictly adheared to. One of the most important pieces for me was to get in approximately 20 hours per week in order to graduate from the bootcamp on time. I strongly recommend using time rather than ‘lessons completed’ as the metric to gauge the amount done each day.
I began looking close to where I live and the town I work in for meet-ups of any type. I saw that there was a career fair about 10 minutes away from where I worked happening around mid-October. However, it started at around 1:30 pm, so I had to ask off work early that day to attent. I ended up going to the career fair and giving my resume to anyone I saw. I was sure to be honest about my status as a current bootcamp student. Although the majority of the recruiters told me to “come back when I graduated,” there were a select few that took an interest and suggested I apply on their company’s website and reach out to them via email once I had done so.
On November 6th, 2019 I received an email from one recruiter asking that I complete a brief coding test that consisted of personal questions (i.e. why I would be a good addition to their team), technical questions, and then a coding challenge that was to essentially find problematic lines of code in JavaScript.
Two interviews later, for two separate positions at the same company and I was offered a job. What was the secret to getting a job in tech half-way through the bootcamp? There wasn’t. There isn’t. That is the secret essentially. The company that hired me told me that the thing that stood out about me was the fact that I was completing approximately 20 hours of coding a week, holding a full-time job, and while driving 2 hours each day. The secret was that I attended career fairs during the work week and actually followed up with the recruiters that showed interest. The secret was eating sandwhiches in the car on the way to interviews that took place during my 1 hour lunch break. The secret was waking up at 4:15 each morning despite how much I wanted to stay in bed.
The biggest kept secret, is that there isn’t one. Finally making myself quit looking for ways to get hired and to just put in the time and work was the key.
Hope you all have a great Christmas and HAPPY CODING!