Go For It: Advice for Taking the Plunge and Changing Your Career
How I transitioned from healthcare to tech in under a year
A couple weeks ago I found myself in a position that I couldn’t of even fathomed a year ago, in fact the scenario was never really on my radar. I was fielding multiple offers, from companies I respected and admired, for tech positions varying from Software Engineer to Customer Experience Associate.
This may not seem that crazy, but less than a year before I was 8 years into a career as an Occupational Therapy Assistant, I had never written a line of code, I had no idea what a terminal was, and it had taken me two years to build up the courage to pursue something this far outside of my comfort zone.
This journey was the farthest thing from easy, in fact it is one of the hardest things I have ever done. But the point is, I truly believe with hard work and a strategic approach…you can do it too!
I hope these tips from my 3 month job search experience will be helpful to current and future job seekers and career changers!
Put Yourself Out There
The best way to make a change your life, is to be present in the community you are trying to break into. Fortunately, tech is a generous and incredibly connected community with an overwhelming amount of opportunities to become involved and meet others.
Meetups, Slack, and LinkedIn all provide great opportunities to meet and interact with people in the tech industry, as well as other career changers/job seekers with the same goals as you.
It is important to remember that just joining a meetup and connecting with a fellow techie is only the first step in ‘putting yourself out there’. It is vitally important that you take advantage of these opportunities by asking questions, being involved in the conversation, adding comments of encouragement, and helping people with any information you can provide when they reach out for help.
This can be incredibly challenging at first because your questions may seem insignificant to you, or you may feel like you don’t know enough. I can speak from experience, I have never been denied an answer to a question, no matter how stupid I felt the question was, and by offering the little knowledge I knew about a situation when possible, I ended up gaining a wealth of knowledge from others.
Here are a few of my favorite Meetup Groups and Slack Channels! Each one of these groups/channels introduced me to someone influential, built my confidence, and helped me grow as a professional.
- NYC Bootcampers Anonymous: An Incredibly Fun Meetup with great topics, fun speakers, and even the opportunity to present a topic of your own!
- Women Who Code: Each city has their own group, I participated in the New York City chapter. They host career fairs, provide breakout rooms that allow you to chat with and meet the presenters, and offer a wealth of empowering female presenters that make wonderful professional connections.
- BrightCode: A very supportive group of SE’s offering courses and group learning opportunities. The two devs running this group (Jordan and Greg) are Software Engineers who take time after their work day to give back to others, review code, and answer any questions! A pretty fantastic example of how supportive the tech community is.
Make Meaningful Connections
This was one of my biggest struggles starting out as a job seeker. It is hard to reach out to a stranger who is working for a company you love, or asking a friend to introduce you to one of their connections. I can’t explain to you why this feels like dragging your nails across a chalkboard of infinite length, but I can tell you, just like everything else in life the more you do it the better you get at it and the less awkward it becomes.
Here are my key takeaways when it comes to networking
- If you have a friend who shares a mutual connection, ask them to refer you!
- When you get a referral…always reach out as quickly as possible.
- Research each connection prior to chatting, and demonstrate interest in their personal experiences and knowledge.
- Be prepared with a very specific ‘ask’ when reaching out. Don’t be vague and add extra effort or work to the person you are connecting with.
- Be grateful and make sure you express that gratitude. 🌟 Don’t forget to thank the person who referred you!
- Keep LinkedIn messages brief and to the point, but show actual interest in that person.
- Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hear back. People are incredibly busy and often simply don’t have the time.
Networking is something that you will do/have been doing your whole life, it just feels different when you are in the position of looking for a job. I chose to think of each reach out/opportunity as a chance to meet someone amazing and broaden my scope in a field or area, and it paid off! 80% of the interviews I got and 75% of the job offers I received were a direct result of being connected via a friend or reaching out with a meaningful message via LinkedIn.
Learn Data Structure and Algorithms
If you are self taught or attended a bootcamp, chances are you are lacking in some CS fundamentals. I for sure was! The great news is there are so many free resources that can help you level up your skills, all you have to do is put in the effort, and take advantage of them.
Here are some of my favorites
- LeetCode: The majority of entry level job opportunities will ask LeetCode questions from easy to medium level. A few interviews asked the exact question from LeetCode, so it is to your advantage to practice, Practice, PRACTICE!
- Terrible Whiteboard: This youtube channel offers great walk throughs of LeetCode problems should you ever get stuck or want to look at another possible solution.
- BinarySearch: This was one of my favorite platforms, because of the collaborative and competitive aspect. You can join timed sessions with friends then discuss/compare solutions once everyone has solved.
Knowing that understanding data structures and algorithms is a requirement for most interviews actually puts us at a great advantage. There is no excuse to not prepare and put effort into it, when we have been provided with the game plan for a coding interview. I highly suggest you choose not to dread the process. Embrace it fully and understand that with practice (a lot of practice), you will get it! Once you do start to get it, it’s a pretty awesome and creative feeling.
Share and Celebrate Successes with Others
Each blog post you write, each interview you participate in, and each meetup or continuing education you complete, provides you with an opportunity to share your new knowledge or perspective with others who may benefit from it. So much of my success can be directly attributed to someone who went before me and chose to share what they have learned with the world. Due to the overwhelming support I constantly received from friends and strangers, it was hard not to view sharing as a way to pay it forward.
- Take your time and do research that allows you to write a thorough and thoughtful blog post. I have read countless blogs that broke down a topic or algorithm in a way that helped me understand.
- Share interview tips with others who are interviewing with the same company or just interviewing in general. Interviews feel incredibly intimidating and I believe helping set others up for success in turn brings you success.
- When you complete a course or challenge, talk about it! So many of the resources I found were from others sharing their accomplishments.
Knowledge is power! The more knowledge that we freely share with the community around us, the better off the world will be.
On the other hand, don’t overshare. We all know interviewing is hard and doing it over and over again can be really draining. We don’t need to hear about everyones negative experiences or frustrations. If you had a negative experience with an interviewer or company their is no need to put them on blast and complain to everyone on LinkedIn. If you failed a code challenge learn from it and write about what you learned, but don’t cry to everyone else in your network. This not only spreads negativity, but doesn’t put your best foot forward to potential coworkers and employees. Just keep pushing forward!
Practice Interviewing and Set Yourself up for Success
Interviewing is an art. If you are anything like me, you probably haven’t done it in awhile. The only way to get better at interviewing is to practice!
- Prepare a 30 second elevator pitch and practice it out loud until you can present it on the fly without just spewing a memorized paragraph.
- Practice explaining technical topics and projects in a mirror, to a friend, whatever you do practice it out loud. It is different verbally presenting a topic versus walking through it in your head.
- Research companies and have talking points prepared prior to an interview. One tip I found that proved incredibly effective was to google the board of directors of the company, find interviews and fireside chats, and formulate questions based on these interviews. Also many companies keep blogs that provide a lot of valuable information to stimulate questions and talking points.
- Always send a thank you! Even if the interview was terrible, even when you get rejected, be grateful for the opportunity. I have heard countless stories and had one personal experience where this led to a follow up opportunity after an initial rejection.
Preparation not only alleviates stress that is naturally brought on by the pressure of an interview, but allows you to present yourself in a way that is genuine and authentic. I will never forget the first tech interview I participated in. It was with a company I absolutely loved and was dying to work for (Pinterest), I was so nervous and anxious leading up to and during the interview. When the interview ended and I contemplated on the last hour and a half of my life, I wondered ‘was that me that was talking’ and ‘how did I bomb that so terribly’. Practice and preparation allows us to truly be ourselves interviews, and makes the experience better for ourselves and our interviewers.
Conclusion
Changing careers is exciting but astonishingly intimidating. It will take a lot of work! There are going to be days you completely doubt yourself and worry that you made a huge mistake. Sometimes the journey will seem impossible…but it isn’t. I am so grateful for the friends and complete strangers that have played such an important role in helping me get here! It takes a community to make big things happen, but it is up to each of us to find, connect to, and participate in that community! GO FOR IT!
I would love to connect with anyone else working through this process or hear advice from others who have been there/done that!
