Tips to Get the Job: Bootcamp Edition

When I first decided to take General Assembly’s Software Engineering Immersive Course, I had a goal in mind. I wanted to leave the boot camp with a job. My TA’s warned me against setting my expectations too high. My career coach told me that it took, on average, 3 to 6 months for a full-time job seeker to land a job. But I held out hope. If I just put a concentrated effort into networking and learning outside of the boot camp, I had no doubt that I could get a job before graduating. The course was 3 months long after all and I had some useful contacts going in — I thought it would be no problem.

It didn’t work out this way.

In the end, it took me a month to get my first job offer and three months to get the full-time position I would eventually accept. But as I slogged through the job search, I learned some invaluable tidbits along the way; maybe they can help you too.

The Hurdles

1. Software Engineering interviews take a long time. That was the biggest hurdle to me obtaining my goal, and the one I anticipated the least. I have yet to experience an interview process that didn’t have at least 3 rounds (usually some mix of phone screenings, behavioral interviews and technical interviews). And each of those rounds can have weeks in between them! It’s frustrating but it made me understand why my career coach told me it took 3–6 months for graduates of our course to land their first job, and it’s good to know when you’re planning your own job search deadlines.
2. Succeeding in technical interviews requires skill and experience. I studied my butt off for my first technical interview and I still bombed. Up until that point, the only experience I had with those types of interviews was what I had heard from others. Fact is, it’s extremely hard to prepare for a technical interview. Companies asked me different questions every time and the difficulty of each question varied wildly. So, you can either memorize everything (insane), or you can do what I did and use companies like practice rounds. Nothing prepares you for a technical interview like a technical interview. I’d also recommend doing mock-interviews with tech meetup members and asking your peers what questions they received as they continue their job search.
3. Heed the red flags. Trust me, I know the desperation of the job search. After a few weeks, you just want it to end and you’ll jump at any company that gives you a chance. But don’t let that rush you into a bad time. If your interviewers are biased, rude, or high-stress, then the job will probably be the same way. If the company gives you an offer quickly but the contract is shady or non-existent, don’t accept. The relief and happiness of locking a job down won’t last very long if the job itself is trash.

The Tips

1. Be strategic with your interview scheduling. If the way to get better at technical interviews is to experience a bunch of technical interviews then it makes sense to save your top-pick companies for last. Practice on the nobody companies that you don’t care about and you’ll be an expert in the technical interview by the time you reach your goal companies.
2. Take tests. I love CodeSignal because it gives you the option to take practice assessments. That’s a simulated technical interview right there! And you can strengthen your skills by tackling the Company Challenges or Arcade section too.
3. Boot camps move quick — fill in the gaps! I know that after I had graduated, there were lots of things that I still didn’t know and things I didn’t fully understand. But it’s hard to know what you don’t know, so when my friend told me about these JavaScript tutorials on MDN, my life was saved. Reading everything from beginner to advanced helped me to understand what’s happening “behind the scenes” of the methods and data structures I was using. And that is invaluable in a technical interview.
4. Work at it everyday. Might seem obvious but I know I underestimated the slog of job searching, networking, and coding every day. The first week seems easy, but as time passes other things come up. And it can be discouraging to see other people either at their jobs or getting offers while you’re on your 15th rejection email. Having a productive space is key to fighting that. For me, that meant being at General Assembly for at least 5 hours nearly every day. Being in the space that I had studied in for 3 months helped to keep me productive, and seeing peers from my cohort kept me accountable. I won’t lie, I felt awkward answering the 20th question about how my job search was going. But I would do it 100 times over for all the benefits I got.
5. Keep adding to your portfolio and updating your resume. That means more than just changing up your words — make sure there’s actually something worth adding. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the job search but keep looking for opportunities to demonstrate the experience you’re gaining. Consider lending your software development skills to a nonprofit, or even to other students still going through the camp. Experience is experience, whether or not it’s paid.
6. Stay in touch with your peers. As they continue their job search and begin getting jobs, they’ll gain experience, skills, and networks that will be invaluable to you. For example, they will have gone through interview processes with different companies than you have and can offer insight for things to look out or prepare for. Or maybe they’ll stumble across networking events you weren’t aware of and make contacts that would be helpful to you too. You won’t know if you cut them off as soon as you graduate.
7. Spring for LinkedIn Premium. I didn’t have it when I got the interview that would eventually lead to my offer but, having done the job search with Premium and without it, I can definitely say I got more attention from potential employers when I had it than when I did not. Consider it an investment.
8. Take advantage of meetups’ slack channels. I got my first freelance position as a software developer from responding to posts in the gigs and jobs channels in the Technologists of Color meetup group. These groups are literally established so that members can support each other. Don’t feel like you can’t respond to posts because you’re new or haven’t been to the meetups. Take advantage! (Then make sure to give back your share when you make it)

Now that I’ve made it to this point, I can look back and say that I’m so proud of what I accomplished. It took me longer than I thought it would, and it was more of a struggle than I imagined, but I am so much different than I was when I started. It’s funny but sometimes things line up much better than they ever would have if you had planned them. Now I’m more confident, more knowledgeable, and more prepared to face the industry I’ve chosen.