Ask a tech recruiter

I’m a recruiter for technology startups with clients all over the world. If anyone has questions about their job search, I’d be happy to help.

I am taking the FCC program and I have a strong tech background, but I was missing the day-to-day hands on coding piece. I’m a skilled product manager working on UI, wireframes, user flows and user stories, and writing out features/requirements specs. I have a strong understanding of what’s going on under the hood and always interfaced well with development teams. I’ve decided to take the FCC program to completion so that I can increase my skillset to be more of a full stack developer and be able to do end-to-end production of a product.

I’d like to contribute back to the FCC community by helping answer questions (privately) about your job search. Please reach out to me here via msg or you can check my profile and see my contact info. No phone calls please, unless we schedule one ahead of time.

–Steve

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Hi Steve,
Thanks so much for your kind generosity and willingness to assist others.
You’re a good egg.
My name’s David and I am brand new to Code Camp and programming ( less than a week ).
From what I’ve read, it seems to me that the key to getting a job (short term as freelancer, or long term) is to provide your potential employer with several substantial examples of actual real life projects you’ve completed as an example of the code you can write.
Does this sound accurate to you? In your opinion, will this compensate for my lack of formal education in the programming field?
I was considering borrowing $13,000 to attend an immersive Boot Camp (and the decision has to be made in the next week to meet the cut off time in case I decide to attend), but I’m now thinking I’ll be better off teaching myself using this resource and books and then contribute/complete 5 or 6 open source projects available on github and then go to an employer with that as my resume.
I would love to hear your opinion from the perspective of an employer.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and offering to help others.
Thanks,
David

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@recsci that is a generous offer. And welcome to FreeCodeCamp!

I hope you don’t get too seriously flooded with requests. :slight_smile:

Cheers…

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Hi David,

Thanks for reaching out. Yes, if you are able to show examples of projects where you can actually do the work, and have clean, well written code, it will matter less what your formal educational background is in some cases, with certain employers. There are some employers who have policies about hiring only people who have completed their bachelors degree, etc, but those are becoming less and less nowadays. As long as you can get the job done, and fit in with the rest of the company, you should be able to get several offers from companies out there in the marketplace.

I cannot tell you what to do regarding borrowing money to educate yourself, but my own personal decision has been to suffer through learning on my own before investing my time in something more costly. I need to see if I have the knack, patience, tolerance, mindset for coding before I take such an intensive and costly approach. Everyone’s situation is different, and I am sure there is tremendous value in one of those intensive bootcamps, beyond what the free ones offer, but think of it this way… you will likely spend the rest of your time as a programmer researching and looking up solutions on the web for yourself, so see if you can do that first, because no matter how much an intensive bootcamp might propel you forward, you will always end up relying on sources like google and stackoverflow, etc, for help. Those paid intensive bootcamps aren’t going anywhere, and they’ll likely come down in price over time, as more become available.

Yes, participating in open source initiatives is a good idea, and it’s especially good if you plan to work remotely in the future. If you can show some public repos of code or contributions to open source as part of your job applications, this will definitely go a long way, as long as your code is up to par.

I hope this answer helps. Remember, I’m only one person with my own thoughts and ideas, so I encourage you to ask around to other people and weigh everyone’s advice accordingly. I wish you the best of success David!

Regards,
Steve

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Awesome! Thanks for this offer and welcome to FCC! This is a great community and there is a ton to learn! Welcome aboard. :ship:

I will PM you about job searching.

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