Design a 40-hour "work week" that provides time for:
- Code (ideally, 2-4 hours a day will be dedicated to coding)
- Outreach & Networking
- Job & company research and tracking
- Interview Prep
- Housekeeping (refining your professional story, updating your resume, writing cover letters, updating your Turing portfolio, updating your LinkedIn profile)
- Other (social networking, blogging, planning talks, etc.)
- Check-ins: who are you talking to and when?
How much time will you spend on each? When will you do each thing?
Action Step #1: Establish a shareable calendar (like Google Calendar) and block out time on your calendar now to adhere to these goals. Be prepared to show this calendar to your instructors during your portfolio review.
Action Step #2: Backwards plan for your big goal. What is your cut-off for ending the job search? When do you want to receive and sign an offer by?
I need to have a job by the third week of August at the latest. That is a very short window, but I have a few prospects so it should be manageable.
Action Step #3: Based on what you outlined above, create monthly, weekly, and daily goals to reach in order to reach your big goal:
By August:
- Have an offer By Week: 1: Have two interviews scheduled 2: Have second round or follow up interviews scheduled 3: Have a job offer or a realistic timeline Daily Goals:
- Communicate with 3 of the contacts in the companies I am interested in
- Find 3 new companies that are of interest and identify contacts in each
- Reach out to 3 people in my network to talk about job search or experiences
Keep in mind:
- What is feasible in your schedule?
- What actions will give you the most impact in your search?
For time spent coding during your first 30 days post-grad, consider:
- What skills would you like to improve or develop?
- I want to continue to develop my learning in Go, and would like to work on refactoring. I plan on doing the 99 bottles of OOP project from Sandi Metz and then will try to apply those skills to some of my old projects.
- Are there areas from Turing's program that you feel weaker in? How will you level up?
- I am still kind of weak in Javascript. I plan to rebuild a couple of the mod 2 apps in Node to improve my skills
- Are there new languages or technologies you'd like to learn? How and when will you do that?
- Docker and Terraform are at the top of my list of tech to learn. I am going to try to dockerize the capstone project so it can be deployed together
Action Step: Establish a “daily-practice” repository where you’ll put small daily exercises or work on issues from your own projects that you want to update to keep your skills sharp and your GitHub activity chart active. For your Mod 4 portfolio review, be prepared to describe to your instructors what you plan to work on to sharpen and advance your coding skills for the first 30 days of your job search.
As we've discussed, meeting people, forming relationships, and having conversations are the key pieces to getting your foot in the door at any company. It's important to be proactive in your approach to outreach and networking to stay on track during your first 30 days.
Action Step #1: Identify at least 3 individuals from companies you're tracking who could connect with during your first 30 days. Describe why you want to connect with these people and what you hope to talk about, when you will email them by, and what your follow-up will look like once you've met with them.
- Andy Puch from Healthgrades - an excellent connection for code mentoring. He knows go and Docker and has already offered to help me learn some of the things I am interested in. I will reach out to him Monday of next week with to talk about resources for learning Docker. I will try to have another coffee meeting with him later that week to review what I have managed to implement.
- Devon Winders from Canvas United - a great resource and mentor that I have met with several times already, and who may also be a good lead on a job. I plan to reach out to him Saturday to see if we can do another in person meeting. I sent him my capstone repository and he is going to give me some feedback and advice.
- Anna Dolan - Turing alum that works for Bonusly. I will be reaching out to her Thursday of this week to see if I can set up an in person meeting to talk about Bonusly and the job hunt after Turing. If I can schedule a meeting I will send a follow up email middle of next week thanking her for her time and asking about the open position at Bonusly.
Action Step #2: Find 3 new meetups or other career networking events to join during your first 30 days post-grad and describe why you'll attend those particular events. How will attending these meetups benefit you in your job search? How can you contribute to the community of these meetups? If you're interested in speaking at any of these meetups, describe how you'll connect with the organizers to arrange that and give a brief (2-3 sentences) pitch on what you might talk about and why.
- Denver.rb should have an August meeting that I want to attend. The meetup is an excellent community of Rubyists, and the organizer Jesse Spevak is an acquaintence that I would like to talk to more about the post Turing job hunt. He could be an excellent resource both for job hunt strategies and to expand my network in the community. I know that Denver.rb is always looking for speakers, and will talk with Jesse at the meetup about what is required to give a speach.
- I recently joined the Denver Devs slack and would like to go to one of their meetups. The community is large and very supportive. Attending their monthly meetup would be an excellent place to network and get to know some of the people from the slack channel.
- I will also be attending Build a Web App with JavaScript & jQuery Aug 14th to start to get involved in the JS community. I have no real plan for how this will help the job search other than to expand my network outside of the ruby community.
Success in the job search means staying organized. The best way to do that is to have a clear system to keep track of your contacts, research, and updates on what you're doing.
Action Step: Show how you've set up jobtrack.io to keep track of all your company/job outreach, who you talked to, what you learned, what next steps you'll take to follow-up, and anything you might do differently next time. Be prepared to describe this system to your instructors during your portfolio review.
https://app.jobtrack.io/a/dashboard
During this module, you've had multiple opportunities to practice your technical and cultural interviewing skills. Think about how those experiences have helped you identify strengths and weaknesses in your interviewing skills.
Action Step: Identify 2-3 areas you'd like to continue to improve on for interviewing and outline concrete action steps on how you will improve those skills. If you plan on setting up more mock interviews, identify who you will set those up with and by what date.
- I need to polish my answers to technical questions. I know that leetcode offers some mock interviews as does interview.io. Part of the weekly plan of action will include a mock interview. I will also do one code challenge a week to keep those skills fresh.
Make sure you have all your job search components up-to-date and looking their best!
Action Step #1: Ensure your Turing Portfolio has at least 3 projects displayed, including your latest work, and an accurate list of your desired locations. Be prepared to show this to your instructors during your M4 portfolio review.
Action Step #2: Ensure your LinkedIn is up to date and indicates that you’re job hunting. Indicate here a summary of any adjustments you made and how you'll continue to update it and/or use the site to build your network and online presence.
- I plan to revise my skills as I get more comfortable with new technologies, but my linkedin has been up to date for a couple weeks now.
What other areas would you like to focus on during your job search? Some possible ideas include:
- Social Networking
- Blogging
- Planning and submitting meetup and/or conference talks
- Participating in hackathons or open source projects
Action Step: Identify one of the areas above or an additional area that you'd like to develop further during your first 30 days post-grad and be prepared to discuss this with your instructors at your portfolio review.
Accountability is key during a job search and being able to check in with a person whom you trust (or, ideally, more than one person) on your progress will increase your ability to reach your goals in the timeline you've created.
Action Step: Identify 1-2 people you'll check in with during your first 30 days post-grad. Consider how you might continue to utilize your PD Peer Groups. Describe why you will check in with this person, how you will check in with them, what you aim to talk about, and what you hope to get out of these check-ins to benefit your job search.
- Margaret Williford - As job search rockstars together we already have an accountability plan. We have a weekly Monday standup to list how we did in the job search that week, and we share our communications with each other for review.
While you've made concrete plans for how to achieve your goal, it's also important to take stock of what could hold you back in the job search.
Action Step: Identify 1-2 "barriers" you might put on yourself in this job search as well as the steps you will take to overcome them. Be prepared to describe these in your M4 portfolio review.
- I tend to get tunnel vision. I will utilize jobtrack and my Monday standups to make sure that I am approaching more than one company at a time.
Fill out this part only if you have already secured a job prior to graduation. This part is optional.
As a member of the Turing community, your support in the job search makes a big difference for your peers as they pursue their first position. Complete the following action steps to
Action Step #1: Identify 1-2 people from your PD Peer Group who you will continue to check in with during the first 30 days post-graduation. Describe what you will do in these check-ins, how you will help keep them motivated, and how you will follow up with these cohortmates afterwards.
- Margaret and I will keep up our Monday checkins and are going to start sharing deadlines for follow ups. Adam Conway, Margaret and I have a system for sharing jobs the others might find interesting.
Action Step #2: With the person(s) you identified above, describe one area of the job search that you feel particularly skilled in and will commit to helping them with on a regular basis during the first 30 days. Examples include: review outreach emails, review blog posts, practice storytelling, attend meetups or other events with them, etc. Why do you feel that you can help in this area? What will your help look like?
- I am particularly good at networking at meetups. I have offered to take any of my fellow job hunters along with me. I tend to start conversations with total strangers, and can help them to network with new people.
Action Step #3: Utilize your networking experience in the job search to recommend 1-2 people whom you've met that others in your cohort would benefit from meeting as well. Describe how you will make the introductions for at least 1 person in your cohort and when you will execute this by.
- I am being mentored by Andy Puch from healthgrades. He is really knowledgeable in Go and Docker. Adam Conway expressed some interest in continuing to learn Go. i will set up a regular check in with him this week, and introduce him to Andy as a way of creating a Go support group.
In this section, you'll find action steps that you should aim to complete during your first 30 days post-grad, but these are not steps that you need to have completed for your portfolio review. Instead, you should begin thinking about how you will achieve these steps, and your post-grad job search support coach will ask about progress on these during that first 30 days.
Scheduling Post-Grad Action Step: At the end of each week during your first 30 days, assess what worked with the schedule and what didn't so that you can make adjustments as needed and manage your time even more effectively for the following week. This will also help you keep a record of what you've done in your job search.
Outreach Post-Grad Action Step: During the first 30 days, you should aim to reach out to at least 10 individuals. Even if you don't have a list of all 10 for the draft of this plan for portfolio review, be prepared to meet this target during your first 30 days of the job search.
Job/Company Research & Tracking Post-Grad Action Step: Reach out to and apply to at least 10 companies/jobs.
Housekeeping Post-Grad Action Step #1: During this timeframe, you should establish a “master” resume that you’ll customize per employer. You should already have a working version that you submitted in Module 3.
Housekeeping Post-Grad Action Step #2: Establish a “master” cover letter with your key talking points that you'll customize per employer.
Use this checklist here to make sure you have everything needed in your plan for your portfolio review. Your instructors will also use this checklist during the portfolio review.
- Establish shareable calendar and show to your instructor(s)
- List your cut-off date for having a full-time position
- List monthly, weekly, and daily goals
- Create "daily_practice" repo and describe to instructor(s) what you plan to practice
- List 3 people you will reach out to. Describe to instructor(s) why you'll reach out, when you'll email them by, what you hope to talk about, and what follow-up will look like
- List 3 meetups you'll attend and describe to instructor(s) why you'll attend them
- List the job search tracking system you're using and describe to instructor(s) why you're using it/how it will help you
- List 2-3 areas you'd like to continue to improve on for interviewing and outline concrete action steps on how you will improve those skills to describe to instructor(s)
- Turing portfolio is updated with 3 projects
- Summary of how you've updated your LinkedIn profile
- List additional area you'll focus on in your job search and describe why to instructor(s)
- List 1-2 people you'll check in with during job search
- List 1-2 "barriers" and describe how you will overcome them to your instructor(s)
- List 1-2 people from PD Peer Group who you will continue to check in with during the first 30 days post-graduation. Describe your plans for these check-ins to your instructor(s)
- Describe one area of the job search that you feel particularly skilled in to help your cohortmates with and how you will do that with your instructor(s)
- List 1-2 people whom you will recommend your cohortmates to, how you will make that introduction, and when you'll do that by to share with instructor(s)