![]() “She took a lot of that stress away from worrying about the job search, because I knew I had that career support to fall back on. “My career advisor was my favorite person at the time,” Matthew shares. She helped him set benchmarks to move from employer-ready to employer-competitive, taking him through assignments to optimize his resume and directing him to job postings, employer webinars, and all the other resources available in the program's Career Engagement Network. Upon finishing the boot camp, Matthew began working with a career advisor, one of the many support services that come standard with the program. The boot camp kept me learning how to work with people from all walks of life-even the ones who don’t get my jokes.” You’re always jumping into projects with new team members who have different values and personalities. And the way they kept emphasizing how tech is constantly changing, and how they kept assigning different groups to work together, helped prepare us to be as agile as possible in the real world. Learning templates for REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs were really helpful, as was creating containers with MySQL and developing queries. “My instructor and TA were both very patient with everyone and generous with their time outside of the live class. ![]() “The boot camp knocked it out of the park as far as being extremely informative and building community,” he says. But his instructor’s real-world expertise and unique approach to teaching helped Matthew further enhance his balance of tech and people skills. Matthew’s knack for taking initiative and putting people at ease gave him a leg up in the boot camp. I wanted more, and it wound up changing my life.” Becoming Employer-Competitive Through a Mix of Tech and Human Skills It gave me that drive to educate and better myself, and once I got a taste of that feeling, I couldn’t let go of it. “I enjoy figuring out puzzles and patterns through trial-and-error, and the pace of the boot camp helped me learn how to learn fast. “Whether it’s back-end or front-end, coding is an art form-you can pretty much create anything if you have the passion and you know how to do it,” he explains. To Matthew’s delight, absorbing all the material in the boot camp came a lot easier than expected he found coding to be another way to express his artistic side. I’ve already made double my bartending salary, plus I have benefits and healthcare, so I can’t trade that for anything.” The time and money I spent with the boot camp were worth it, one-hundred percent. He knew I’d be good at coding, so after going on unemployment, I took his advice because I needed a job as quickly as possible. When we were younger, we’d mod video games by opening up the code base and changing files to tweak the gameplay. ![]() My best friend, who recently passed away but once worked for Apple, was always encouraging me to take a boot camp. “But once the pandemic hit, everything shut down and I lost my job. “I was bartending for a restaurant group, mixing drinks that taste just like PB&Js,” Matthew says.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |