- (completed)
- (partially complete)
- (not started)
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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?)?
I've made a good draft of my resume and wrote a pretty decent cover letter that I can use as a template/reference for future cover letters, so I freel pretty good about where those are at. However, I haven't actually outreached to anyone at a company yet, so I definitely plan to make that a priority over intermission. I also have been feeling not as good about potential companies I identified interest in - for many of them, the more research I did about them, the less I was interested in them. This was due to issues like a long commute (over an hour), extremely small teams that likely wouldn't hire a junior dev or have the ability to provide the mentorship I'm looking for, or companies that seemed to have their engineering teams located overseas. I need to do some more searching for potential companies and be more organized with writing down my findings & then eliminating companies when I really have no interest in them anymore. -
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?
- 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:
Company: Sondermind
Why: I love their mission overall - to help people more easily connect with mental health professionals. Health and fitness have always been passions of mine, and have recently become even more of a priority due to health issues. I have always wanted to help others by helping them to get better control over their physical and mental health and as a result, have a better quality of life. I would bring previous experience working in the health field (working for a wearable health tech company) as well as general empathy and understanding of mental health difficulties to this position. I already know the company is open to employing junior devs, as they recently posted a junior dev position that is now filled. They also have great views on Glassdoor and seem to have a really good, supportive culture that would provide me with the mentorship I'm looking for.
Outreach: I discovered I have a connection to a software engineer, Dave Revere who works there. He is connected with Erich, a software engineer who I worked with at my job before Turing. I'm sure Erich would be happy to introduce me to him. However, he has only been there a month, so I could also reach out to Tori Soler, the talent manager.
Plan #2:
Company: Healthgrades
Why: Healthgrades helps connect people with health providers, providing easier access to care. As a person with a chronic illness who was had many frustrating experiences trying to get connected to the right providers, dealing with insurance, and having to advocate for myself to get the care I need, I know firsthand that any way to make this process easier and less stressful can be lifechanging. Working here would definitely align with my mission of helping improve people's lives through improved health. Additionally, they seem to have a company culture that values employees' wellness as well, actively tries to recruit diverse individuals, and have mentorship/job training opportunities.
Outreach: Eric Fransen, a 1406 Turing grad, works there as a software engineer, so I can reach out to him on Slack!
Plan #3:
Company: CirrusMD, Inc.
Why: CirrusMD is another company in the healthcare space that provides an on-demand virtual care/text-first platform to help improve patient access, patient/provider relationships, and overall quality of healthcare. Again, this aligns with my vision and personal struggles/passions well. Their benefits package aligns with what I'm working for as well, and it suggests that they truly care about their employees
Outreach: Jhun de Andres, a 1508 Turing grad, works there as a software engineer, so I can reach out to him on Slack!
- 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.: 2 / 4 / 4
- Coherence: how it aligns with your career vision 4 / 3 / 4
- Confidence level: how feasible does this feel to you? 2 / 4 / 4
- How excited you are about it? 4 / 3 / 4
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?
CirrusMD will be my starting place. It's great that a Turing grad works there, so I will reach out to him on Slack soon and ask if he'd be willing to do a virtual coffee chat so I can learn more about the company!