Week 1: Job Searching Tips

Hi everyone and welcome to part two of the career center launch series my name is Kelsey and I’m one of the career coaches here at CodePath today I’m so excited to share with you my top three tips for CodePath students who are job searching whether you’re looking for a part-time job to gain relevant skills and experience that you can put on your resume an internship that’s related to your degree or a new grad role after completing your degree you want to make sure that your job searching smarter and not just harder that’s where my top three tips come in first tip is to treat your job search like a job that means making sure you’re managing your time well a tech job search involves a lot and can take a lot of time you might be studying for technical interviews you might be taking an additional course to gain new skills you might be applying for job applications and needing to follow up on them and studying for both behavioral and Technical interviews due to everything that encompasses a tech job search you really want to make sure that you’re on track with your time and if you need help time management CodePath career coaches are here to help you also want to make sure that you’re tracking your job search performance because you don’t get a lot of feedback during the job search that means making sure that you know where you’re applying what roles you’re applying to if you’ve heard back from any of those roles your conversion rate from your application to your first interview your conversion rate from your first interview to a final round interview that’s exactly why we created the CodePath job application tracker so that you have a way to see what you’re putting into the job search and if you need help troubleshooting your job search it’s easier to send that data to a career coach or Mentor or for you to to analyze the data so that you can see what you might need to change the last thing I will say with treating your job search like a job is to seek feedback don’t wait until you’re towards the end of your job search to seek feedback about what you could be doing more effectively a job search should not be done alone so reach out to your peers reach out to Career coaches reach out to mentors to constantly get as much feedback as you can to make sure you’re doing it the most effectively my second tip is to be more than a rese although I love résumés and I love giving ré feedback you never want to be just an application in a database you never want to be just a resume a way of standing out is to connect with recruiters and with hiring managers at networking events or Career Fairs or if you haven’t had the chance to connect with someone before you apply connecting with them after you apply or building a connection at a company as you are applying if you don’t know someone you can create a connection at that company and we also have some networking templates in our CodePath career kit to make that process easier my last tip is that I don’t want you to wait for anyone’s permission to get experience in this field or to enter the tech field there are lots of ways that you can get experience lots of ways to contribute without having to have an internship or a job in the field that includes technical projects both in hackathons and code paath courses or side projects done completely on your own no one has to give you permission in order to start building in order to be a software engineer the next thing that you could do is open-source contributions that shows you’re contributing to the field you’re getting feedback on your code you’re following specific specific standards for submitting your code and no one has to give you permission for that either the last thing that you can do is get involved in your Campus Community take on leadership roles or get involved in remote or national communities like cod paath So Pro tip to put Cod paath on your resume because you are now a member of the Cod path community and we want you to get credit for being in a Tech Community and involved in this field those are my top three tips thanks for watching and feel free to tag me on the slack Channel if you haven’t any questions