Life after boot camp
Progress update and resources
It’s been roughly two months since I officially started my job search after finishing at Flatiron school, and I’ve decided to write about my progress and the resources I have been using. In this post, I’ll be talking about my job search, about different ways I’ve been trying to network, my workflow, and a few of the resources I’ve been using. As of writing this, I have applied for about forty jobs, and I’ve had only two phone calls. I like to be positive and think of it like this, in the beginning, I wasn't getting any response, then straight rejection, and then phone calls. So I’m moving in the right direction, and they say you only need one person to say yes.
Now I did have a nasty bout of imposter syndrome a little while ago. It crept up randomly, I was at my day job, and all of a sudden these terrible thoughts appeared. What if I do get to a technical interview, would I even be able to pass it? The answer to that was I didn’t know, which is obviously a problem. This brings me to my first point, time management. I spend more than half my week just applying for jobs and reaching out to people. Now that is important, but I have to make more time for coding and just plain learning.
I’ve been working with a product management tool. It helps me keep track of my schedule, as well as projects I’m working on. I’ve recently switched to Notion because I believe it has more functions, but I was using Trello before. I recently started using the roadmap template, which allows me to create cards for all the projects I’m working on, and then move them between the different phases of production. I also use a calendar view to help plan out my week. One thing I’ve found useful is to plan out the week ahead, I only have a few hours every day to get things accomplished, so it’s nice to be able to see what those are. The hard part is sticking to the schedule and not falling down the rabbit hole on one particular task.
I like to spend a little bit of time every day doing different tasks, as opposed to doing one thing a day and then switching. I like the variety of this, as it helps break up the monotony of any one task. I usually try to limit a weekday to only two tasks, so that I can give each one at least an hour. I play catch up to get more done on the weekends. Let me just say, that my weekly schedule is a suggestion of what I need to get done. I will sometimes get really caught up in a task, and just move the other task to the next day. I don’t do it that often, and I really try to make up the difference the next day, but it will happen. Another technique I like to employ when I’m working is the Pomodoro technique. Which is a way of breaking up work into 25-minute intervals with a five minute break at the end. I linked to the wiki so you can really get into the logic behind it, and I will link a web-app in the resources below.
The age of covid(this post is going to age well) has made it impossible to network in person. So my ‘cold calling’ people online game has gotten strong. I’ve been trying to attend virtual meetups whenever I can, which isn't a perfect system, but it’s currently the only thing available. There are a couple of different techniques, to not only find jobs to apply to, but to also reach out to people about those jobs. The most important weapon in my arsenal is Linked In premium, which I’m currently paying for after getting the first month free. It allows me basically unlimited free messaging to anyone on Linked In. I also use a chrome extension that can find peoples email addresses, it doesn't always work, but it is still very useful.
A number of years ago I went to see Colin Quinn do standup. His first joke went something like this ‘You know what Pittsburgh should get, a lot of cities have it, The SUN’. So needless to say we don’t get a lot of sun this time of year. So it’s understood by almost every native ‘yinzer’(google it), that when the sun comes out, so do you, no matter the temp( My family went for a hike in 30-degree weather yesterday). Now I mention this because it struck me as a very good way of looking at things. You have to seize the opportunity whenever you have the chance because you never know when another one will come.
I’m going to list some resources below. Hopefully, you find them useful. Let me know what tools you use. What has worked for you, what hasn’t? Just know that job searching is hard, so try and stay positive, and realize you are not alone.
RESOURCES
WORKFLOW
JOB BOARDS
CONTACTING
