Wednesday, September 5, 2018
You've got a couple weeks left in your bootcamp or you've just finished, and it's crunch time: not only to complete and polish up your portfolio/projects, but also to begin the job search. There's no doubt this is the most stressful part of any bootcamp. It's real life knocking on your door! You'll hear a lot of advice that could pull you in many directions and make you feel more stretched than you already are.
When in doubt, focus on your your code. It goes without saying that your portfolio and GitHub should be what you fall back on. Here are some other things to consider as you begin your transition from soon-to-be bootcamp graduate to professional developer.
Take a look at a job posting for a web developer and you’ll quickly notice a pattern: Demonstrate that you know basic web development, can learn quickly, and that you are a human being that can interact with other human beings. It’s honestly that simple. Companies are looking for a balance of hard tech and soft interpersonal skills. Sure, employers want someone who has the technical skill to get the job done, but they do not want to hire a robot. If they wanted a robot, wouldn’t they just buy one?
If you’ve had a previous career in something completely different, demonstrating that you have worked with teams to complete large projects, working through hiccups and roadblocks as they present themselves, how you solved problems, and dealt with stressful situations are going to be just as important as whether you know how to code in Python or JavaScript. At the end of the day, you will be working with other people, and you must be able to communicate with your colleagues to ensure builds are completed on time and to specification.
As someone who spent a decade in the communications field, I was lucky to understand the power of presenting an audience with a succinct "package" of information. For applications and interviews, the package was my experience and skills. Thinking of it this way helps you focus on consistency between the visual presentation of your site and your spoken words. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for employers to view your projects, get a sense for you as an individual and how you’d potentially fit into their team.
As a developer, you must have a portfolio site with your projects on it. The portfolio site is not just a platform for you to present your projects: It is also a project in itself. So, be creative with it, but don’t get overly complicated. When I graduated from NYCDA, my portfolio was one HTML document, with some jQuery, and one JS library (Scroll Magic). It had one cool animation at the beginning (which I reproduced on this site!), but that was the extent of the bells and whistles.
Make sure your site and projects are complete, functional (i.e. no bugs - or as few bugs as possible) and polished (well-styled/behaves across devices). As you’ve gone though your bootcamp, you’ve been doing individual and team projects. Now is the time to show them off. This means: get ready to ship them! Make sure every one is accessible from a public url. As I mentioned before, this is the one thing you should make sure is absolutely solid before applying for a job to give yourself the best shot at landing an interview.
No doubt you’ve had to use GitHub in your bootcamp. Be sure that your GitHub repositories are clean and have a nice Readme.MD file that talks about what your projects is and how folks should download/clone it and get it set up. Make it easy for people to access and understand your cool projects!
Be prepared to talk about yourself succinctly! You’ve surely heard of the term “elevator pitch” where you should be able to explain something to a complete stranger in the time it takes for a typical elevator ride. For an application or interview, it's about who you are, what you can do, and why you're the right fit for the role. It’s much easier to do this when you’ve thought about your strongest points ahead of time.
Don’t feel the need to present yourself as a tech expert (unless you are)! Rely on your experience. No one knows you better than yourself, so think about those overarching strengths you have and apply them to the position for which you’re currently interviewing. As an example, I was interviewing to be a front-end developer, which means users were going to be interacting often with my work. I took my background in communications to explain my knack for knowing who the audience was. I saw that as a great parallel to being a good front-end developer: I could put myself in the shoes of our users who are expecting a certain type of experience when they interact with elements on our website and product.
NOTE: The natural question for an employer to ask a recent bootcamp grad is why you switched careers and decided to become a web developer. In addition to your elevator speech, prepare a short story (about a minute long) explaining that. The story should set you up to then demonstrate your passion for web development and building nice things. Employers want to know that you’re committed to constantly improving yourself and picking up the new and emerging technology that could propel the company to the next level.
If you’re wondering whether you have the technical skill to be competitive for a job, you’re not alone. I can’t tell you how many times I was very intimidated by the languages, frameworks, and concepts required for web development positions. I simply didn’t have experience with each bullet point listed in the job description.
But, don’t view that as a negative. It’s an opportunity for you to pivot to a strength. For instance, if a job description says that familiarity with particular libraries are desired, but you have absolutely no experience with them, pivot to your knowledge of the language in general. If you understand the basics of the underlying language, you will be able to quickly learn the library. Bonus, you can then point to one of your projects where that language is featured heavily.
Building off the previous situation, you can read a bit about the library in question in advance of the interview and be able to at least speak about it. Talk about why it’s a good framework to use, the advantages of it, and also maybe when not to use it. That would be enough to show that, although you’ve never coded in it, you’re aware of it and have a bit of an opinion! That, or if you have free time before the interview, make a little project in the framework (skill up!) and be able to say, “Well, I didn’t know much about it before, but in advance of this interview I made a little project in it to show that I can learn quickly!” - and then show them!
Ignore Your Cohort
This one is short and sweet: Don't be phased if your cohortmates are finding jobs before you. Every company, engineering team, need, and interview is different. Just focus on your code, so you can land interviews.