For anyone who doesn't know much about me, I am a career changer who attended and later coached at, Flatiron School. I graduated from their online self-paced software engineering program in February of 2019 and declared my official job search start date as March 26th. Now, here I am, March 6th 2020, almost exactly a year later, still without a job, and believe me, it hasn't been from a lack of trying.
As someone who was a two-sport collegiate athlete and double major, I am no stranger to working my butt off to accomplish what I want. The grind I've been on to establish myself in the tech world has been no different.
Every single day I wake up and figure out what I plan on doing that day to make myself even just the tiniest bit better. Currently, I am working my way through a Udemy course on technical interviewing so that I can work on bettering myself in that respect.
Lately, a majority of my days are spent applying, prepping for interviews, and interviewing. It has been fun (and stressful) to be actively interviewing at 3 different companies at a time since January. At one point it was 5 companies at once which was very chaotic but I wouldn't change it for the world. Why? Well, because I love coding and I love the continuous flow of learning and improving myself.
Keeping with this determination and drive to break into tech will, one day soon, help me land a software engineering position at a company that I love. Giving up is not part of my character, it is not in my genes. So, with that said, nevertheless, I continue coding, interviewing, and learning.
Top comments (7)
Just out of curiosity and also because I'll be in the same boat shortly, looking for a job: what do you think was the reasons you got rejected?
I think one big thing to note is that I'm looking in the Bay Area and there are just so many people in the candidate pool which makes things very difficult at times to even get an initial interview (even after being referred by an employee).
Another aspect is that I definitely had a few bad technical interviews at the beginning of my search because I wasn't used to the process and concentrated more on solving algorithms versus learning what data structures are best to use in certain cases. I didn't know how to explain why I'd use one data structure over another. I knew nothing about Big O.
It's definitely important to have a good grasp of these concepts as well as an attack plan for all technical interviews. I lacked both at the beginning. The most important thing is to learn from the mistakes you make and move forward.
The process is tough, but rejections get easier with time and the bounce back becomes quicker.
Thanks very much for explaining. I wish you all the best with the job hunt!
Keep doing it, until you get it 💪💪
Your determination and work ethic are super inspiring. Your writing is awesome too.
Keep an eye on this page for jobs at DEV!
Thank you.
I’ll definitely keep checking that page! 😊
Good luck Victoria
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