Mod 3 Week 1: Professional Storytelling II: Resumes & Portfolios
- I value honesty and ethical practices. A job that respects its employees and works to create rather than moderate.
What are your goals for your job search? What kind of role do you see yourself pursuing in your job search?
- Working in video conferencing or in the entertainment industry would be ideal. A position that allows for a good level of creativity and a challenge.
Based on your latest version of your career vision, list the top 3-5 industries and companies you'll pursue in your job search as of right now. Why did you pick these industries/companies?
- Video conferencing, Entertainment(movies), insurance, healthcare
- Most involve some level of creativity in the work place. All relate to the current state of the US and its shifting industries adapting to the virus. Build your resume
- I will emphasize my ability to adapt and work in teams of various size by showing off some of the group projects I have worked on through my Turing campaign.
Link to your resume or include a screenshot here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jev295hmrObRn2KJAjkJCL5iG4U1p6BkU5EPqgi2e5E/edit# Upload your resume to CV Compiler by following these steps: Go to https://cvcompiler.com/students/turingschool
Based on the feedback you received from CV Compiler, what updates will you make to your resume?
- I changed the order and some of the presentation of my Resume including my technical skills. Set up your Turing Alumni Portfolio: Log in with the link you got in your email. Going forward, log in at alumni.turing.io/user
Find a position or use a position you've put on your Huntr board and write a cover letter for that position in a Google doc or gist. Reference these cover letter resources as well as the session to complete your cover letter. Post the link to your cover letter here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cu-dK_I4qa_l3tFizW2uhV5t4cyYfEp82Sxiy2mEoTE/edit
Review your cover letter with a peer some time this week. What feedback did your partner give you? What next steps will you take to make your cover letter even stronger?
If you were to apply to this position (and you should!), how will you customize your resume for it? What other next steps would you need to take here?
- I need to find an actual human to appoint the letter to. Also, having a bit more background data on the company would be very helpful towards personalizing my cover letter.
Mod 3 Week 3: Outreach & Networking II Back to your resume and cover letter you've been working on:
- Project FREE TIME to improve these elements.
Outreach Brainstorming: Either explore the company you wrote a cover letter for or find a new company to explore this week; Go to their company LinkedIn page and start to explore the employees. Who are a couple people you could reach out to? Why? Finalize Your Plan: Who have you decided to reach out to? Why that person? How will you contact them? What do you want to talk to them about? How will you follow up?
- Adan Trevino is the director of software engineering at Twilio. This would be someone who would have a strong understanding of the position of a a new software engineer at Twilio. Execute your plan: Reach out to your contact THIS WEEK. If possible, reach out to more than one person OR find a meetup to attend also. What happened? What did you learn about the company? What other next steps should you take for pursuing this company? Be sure to update this in Huntr.
Mod 3 Week 3: Outreach & Networking II Answer the below questions in a separate gist and link them into your career journal using this template: (completed) If you will not be able to complete your journal this week, please provide an update for the Career Dev team on when you'll have it completed here (remember to reflect on what you have control over, what you want to try differently this week, and what habits you can utilize to get back on track):
Back to your resume and cover letter you've been working on: What other next steps do you want to take to make these two components stronger? Outreach Brainstorming: Either explore the company you wrote a cover letter for or find a new company to explore this week;
- Go to their company LinkedIn page and start to explore the employees. Who are a couple people you could reach out to? Why?
OpenTable - Lucy Carrasco is the contact center supervisor at OpenTable. I have made cold outreach to her and am waiting to see if I get a reply.
Finalize Your Plan: Who have you decided to reach out to? Why that person? How will you contact them? What do you want to talk to them about? How will you follow up?
Prepare for Job Shadow: AEIOU
Activities: what questions do you have about the activities that a software developer does on a daily basis?
- What does the daily workflow in the job place look like and how does it resemble that of Turings. How does it differ?
Environment: what questions do you have about the overall environment and culture of this workplace?
- Does one have to align with the social culture in order to be hired in a position?
Interactions: what questions do you have about the team at this company? What do you hope to see in your interactions during the shadow?
- I am hoping to see what the tech stack looks like and what the onboarding process was like for people hired. Are they all already familiar with the tech when hired or not?
- What considerations are made when working on user interactable elements?
- There are multiple Turing grads working at turbine labs, They are primarily working with typescript for their main tech stack and they said it was about a 6 month on boarding process of learning the tech before they were effectively adding to the code.
- Looking at the tech stack and code was engaging seeing many of the concepts we are familiar with but with a different syntax and language. The person walking us through portions of the code was making react comparisons for us to help understand the code.
Environment: what did you notice about how they talked about the culture and environment of this company?
- They said culture is extremely important and they said after the first interview they would conduct 3 more interviews with their perspective employees that were just culture fit interviews. They even shared an anecdote saying that one of the interviewees was better qualified but because the ex turing student was 'more fun to be around' they hired him instead.
- Everyone seemed very relaxed and happy to be working there. Most of the employees seemed to be living within close proximity of the company even though they were all still working from home.
- They were using typescript and used GitHub for their workflow controls.
- All style choices were made off of a theme created by the head of front end at the company who was also talking to us. Everything had a universal styling applied to it so if someone were to create a new button it would automatically appear in the style consistent with all the other buttons the same applied to inputs or text or h1-h6's etc.
What are your main takeaways from the shadow? How will you use this information to help you with your job search strategy?
- It seems like culture fit is a very important element of the job hiring process so it may be a good idea to scope out companies that will naturally have a good culture fit with myself before applying. Interview Prep:
Pick a successful project and write about it with the STAR method (What was the situation/scenario of the project? What was the task/target of the project? What action steps did you take? What were the results?):
- A star wars game I had made. I had the explicit goal of making a robust and complete testing suite. From the offset testing was a high priority and in the end I had learned a lot about React testing and had a full testing suite with integration tests and received a good grade.
- I had failed in my personal project in mod 3 which made me repeat. I learned that even though something is hard that avoiding is much more detrimental than taking the challenge on to learn about it. I had been avoiding react testing up to this point because I was not as efficient at it as my team mates were. Because of this when it came to the solo projects I had emphasized making a working app over any robust testing. I have learned to focus on my weakpoints as soon as they are recognizable.
- I have played different roles in different teams. There have been times when I am working with team mates who are more familiar with the language and the code base than I am. In this case I often try to play the role of support, if I see that they are occupied on a large component I will try to take what is not being worked on and put my best effort in to help the team. I have also filled the opposite role where I have more of an understanding of the language than my team mates. In this position I try to walk my team through the code as much as possible trying to teach my team mates the way I would want to be taught were the roles reversed.
Do some research into your top companies' tech stacks; what do you already know? What can you compare to your own learning? What do you need to learn more about?
- One company I was researching was Twilio they appear to be using a Vue tech stack. I have made a project with Vue so I am familiar with its syntax and structure. However the project was a real struggle and many large questions were left lingering by its end specifically in the field of testing.
Taking stock of where you are: what have you accomplished this module? What have you learned? Where are you stuck (have you not been able to follow through on outreach? Is your resume not finished?)?
- This mod I have learned React, React testing, React hooks, Vue.js, Vue test utils. I have struggled with Vue testing. I have attempted outreach unsuccessfully. Granted I have been very busy and my attempts at outreach have been minimal. I am hoping to create some more contacts over this break and this upcoming mod so hopefully by the end of this 6 week period I at least have a few potential contacts that I can reliably exchange with in the pursuit of a job.
Create plans for 3 different companies you want to target:
Questions to reflect on here: Why do you like this company? What makes you want to work there? Why are you a good fit for this company? What do you bring to the company? What transferable skills do you have? What do you already know about the company (product, team, culture, company size, location, etc.)? What do you need to learn?
- Mcdonalds, Expedia, Twilio. I think working for a larger company to begin might be a smart decision for a starting position so that there will be a clear onboarding process to learn the neccessary technologies.
Steps to take:
Outreach: look at the company’s LinkedIn page: who could you reach out to? What questions do you want to ask that person? Experience: once you've made a connection at the company, how could you find out more? Consider setting up a job shadow or exploring their tech stack in your projects Read back over the plan. How does it reflect your vision?
Imagine that you get the job. A year later, what have you gained from this experience? How have you started to fulfill your vision?
Plan #1:
- I only want to get a position at a fun, challenging and ethical company with perferrably a decent salary to kickstart my experience in the technical field. Right now I am targeting large companies but if this does not bear any fruit in the near future I will begin reaching out to smaller companies or perhaps even start ups.
Make it actionable: rank each plan on a scale of 1-5 for how much your plan aligns with the following: Available resources to help you pursue it: contacts, time, knowledge of the company, etc.
- Right now I have a decent vision of what I am targeting though I am trying to cast a fairly wide net. Confidence level: how feasible does this feel to you?
- Imposter syndrome is still present.
- Very Very excited to work in the field.
Now, pick the plan with the highest numbers across the board. What steps will you take next to pursue this strategy as you go into the next module?
- I will see if any of the large companies I am applying for bears any call backs or interviews. If not, I will begin targeting some smaller businesses and perhaps some start ups.