Hi everyone,
I wanted to come by and let everyone know that things do go well sometimes.
I came to this section so often when I was feeling low, and not really confident that I’ll be able to make it into web development. And now that I did, I’m hoping my message will helps those who are still applying and waiting for the phone to ring or for that new email to be something other than spam or bills.
My Background
I graduated in 2016 from a college degree in mobile development. And then I spent the next two years applying for mobile position with no success.
In end of February 2018, I said “screw it, I’m going front-end”. And I started religiously doing the freecodecamp cursus after work ( I work in QA for games ).
I kept bulding stuff, stated reading and watching more on the side (Medium articles, Lynda videos etc…) and after having a few things on my portfolio ( nothing fancy, mostly single page stuff) I started applying, around mid-April.
I got a few phone interviews, but no second calls or live interviews. One day, the HR person from a pretty big company (in Canada) called and asked a few questions. She specified that the job I applied to was 3hrs away from where I lived, which I knew, and then she said she liked my attitude and that I should let her know if I don’t hear anything back after 5 days.
The next day, I was scheduled for a live interview with the lead developer and head of section of the said company and I had a week to prepare.
Took the day off, got bus tickets, packed business clothes, and headed out.
The interview went pretty well. I had to wait a bit for the director to copy a few papers and while I waited, I chatted a bit with the lead dev about random stuff. And then the interview started.
We got to talk tech, but nothing major. There were no classic dev questions. Just a regular back and forth. I was asked if I knew about accesibility design for disablities and such, and I said I had no idea, but I’m totally willing to look into it.
7-8 days later, I was asked some more details about my background check ( they already took everything on the first interview)
3-4 days after, I had an online quizz about behaviour in the workplace.
1 day after, I had the job offer.
I still can’t believe it. I had my doubt about freecodecamp. I knew it would work eventually, but not in less than 5 months. It definitely helped that I had some programming background, but I never really worked with most of the web stack. Not even git.
So if you’re still grinding through the course, keep at it! Keep learning and even when it’s not looking so great, keep building stuff. Things WILL get better.
Good luck everyone!!
