#Career Week Phase Guide
Congratulations on graduating the program and welcome to Career Week! It’s always impressive to see the vast array of projects presented on graduation day. Our team is excited to work with you on your career transition and jumpstart your job search.
Career Week will help you build a foundation for your post-DBC job search. The tools we cover throughout the week are best practices. There is no silver bullet to job searching, but we share tactics that graduates have found most effective.
For Career Week to be most effective, you are expected to attend all Career Week workshops and participate actively in all activities.This is also something you've agreed to via the Graduate Agreement form
A few things you’ll be accountable for completing: Graduate Information Form (pre-career week), the Career Week Feedback Form (after Career Week), and the Employment Verification Form (post-employment).
Career Week runs from Monday to Friday the week after Graduation. Each day, Career Week starts at 10:00am and ends at 5:00pm with lunch running from 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm. Yes, we still participate in 2:00 pm standups.
If learning to code at DBC is like being in freefall, Career Week is like finally pulling the ripcord on your parachute. Coming out of the program and moving into a slower, less structured phase can be jarring.
Your job search is going to feel weird. Lean into it. There are going to be high highs and low lows. The great part is you’re going to go through the extremes together as a cohort. It’s going to be rough, but it’s going to lead to your new career life.
It may seem weird to compete with your cohort mates for jobs. Although, the cohorts that do the best are the ones who lean on each other and just acknowledge the awkwardness of competition. Your ability to support one another will help smooth out the highs and lows of a prolonged search. After the DBC experience, it is easy to feel isolated and uncertain.
Stay active with your coding projects during the job! You have learned a lot over the last 9-15 weeks onsite, but it’s all short-term memory. Use it or you'll lose it! You will need to balance your job search with growing as a developer. We'll be focusing on how to manage your time to balance everything!
Your job search is probably going to take longer than you think. The broader and more flexible your expectations are, the easier your job search will be. Don’t rule out internships and apprenticeships. Many people turn down three month internships, only to continue job searching for three months when they could have been coding every day and searching too. Graduating from DBC is tough, but finding a job is even tougher. Career Week provides tools that help grads search smarter, not harder. So breathe, get support, and get ready to lean in!
##Prep Work This activity will be the first workshop Monday morning. Be sure to complete the Petal Exercise from Chapter 7 over the weekend leading up to career week.
###Activities
- [Chapter 7](./Resources/WCIYP/Ch 7 - What Color Is Your Parachute 2015.pdf)
- [Printable Petal Exercise](./Resources/WCIYP/Blank Flower Diagram.pdf)
Here are the other resources that go along with this exercise.
Pro tips:
- Spend ~15-20 minutes on each petal (there are seven), you can always come back to one or two later on
- Ignore the prioritizing grid, it's too time consuming
- Petal 3 can be a time suck. Think of several scenarios but don't feel the need to come up with seven detailed ones, the skills are more important than separate situations to pull them from.
- Petal 5 is a good basic financial planning exercise, if you haven't gone through something like it recently, it could be helpful
- Petal 7 is deep - read over the prompt, give yourself time to reflect and come up with your "kingdom."
Here's [the schedule](./Resources/Career Week Schedule Jul 24 2015.pdf) for this week.
| Quick Reference for Career Week | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | ||
Welcome to Career Week! I'm excited to kick off this journey with you.
- Complete your resume.
- Complete your LinkedIn.
- Write out your 30 second and two minute elevator pitch.
You’ve made it through to day two and hopefully are the proud owner of a shiny, new LinkedIn profile and resume!
Today we'll be doing a lot of reviewing, workshop'ing, and self-guided work. You will be working in pairs and groups throughout the day.
- Peer Reviews
- Finding New Opportunities
- [Trello Board](add link)
- Boolean Searching
- Dev Connect with Sarena
- Outreach/Introductions
- Incorporate feedback on your LinkedIn and Resume.
- Add five (5) companies with details in your Trello board.
It's the long awaited day of interview prep, excited?! Good, because it'll be another fun-filled day! First, please make sure you’ve sent me your employer-ready resume and LinkedIn for review before our first session kicks off at 10am this morning.
- Practice your two minute elevator pitch
- Add five (5) additional companies with details in your Trello board.
- Cracking the Coding Interview
- Elements of Programming Interviews
- Data Structure and Algorithms Made Easy
You've made it! Last day of Career Week comes to a wrap this afternoon, congrats on surviving through!
Please do me a favor and complete the Career Week Feedback Form. Remember Actionable, Specific, and Kind feedback. I do use this to tweak future career weeks, so I appreciate all the feedback :)
This morning we'll be practicing how we tell our stories. Then you'll have lunch with Courtney and Emily which will then roll into self-guided work time while I meet with each of you one-on-one.
- Continue filling in tracker details for all 20 companies.
- You will forever be tweaking your LinkedIn, Resume and Cover letter, never stop working on it :)
- Be consistent with your Accountability Groups -- they will be a life saver in your search!
- Interview Thank You Note
- How to Ask for an Introduction
- How to Follow Up on a Job Application
- Ask to be Mentored
- How to Ask for a Referral
- Learn more about apprenticeships from the Chicago co-Founder, Dave Hoover. A free version of his book on Apprenticeships can be found here.
- If you're interested in Freelancing. Watch this video first.
- Check in on Emily's Community Calendar for upcoming events.
- Following Career Week, there will be a six-session, alumni-run Whiteboarding Program. You will begin recieving emails from Glenna Mowry and Dalal Al Rays about the program.
- Life After Dev Bootcamp Recapped
- Learn about DBC Alums moving into their second jobs
- Informational Interviews are really important in job searching. Learn how others are utilizing this tactic in their search.
- Know why you're attractice to employers. Three Non-Tech traits Employers Look for in Junior Devs
###Finding Your Runway: Please take time to calculate your runway. Here are the budgeting resources to help as your prep for a realistic and sustainable job search.
