Five Oopsies Coding Bootcampers Make While Looking For A Job

Used to show recognition of a mistake or minor accident…: oopsie

Some of these are a bit bigger than an oopsie. They may be categorized as “whoopsie daisies” or even “oopsie doopsies.” Trust me, you don’t want to be doing oopsie doopsies while you are on the job hunt. I shudder at the thought. Keep your chin up and your nose clean by avoiding these common mistakes made by coding bootcampers in their job hunting journeys.

#1: Giving Up

The first oopsie daisy for coding bootcamp grads is the biggest of them all: giving up on the job hunt. It’s a real pain in the arse to go looking for a job after getting a coding bootcamp certification, and it can be really tough to get rejection after rejection. Getting ghosted is even worse than rejection, and it can be demoralizing to keep throwing good resumes after bad down the deep, dark hole of job posting sites like Indeed and LinkedIn. Keep. Going.

#2: Not Learning From The Process

Although you ask for feedback after getting a rejection, there’s a strong chance you will only hear crickets. How can you learn if you keep getting ghosted? There are free resources for getting feedback on your LinkedIn profile, your resume, and your website. You can Google a local university + mock interviews or your local town + mock interviews to help you find a way to get feedback on your interview style. Treat the job hunt like a programming problem: test something out, get feedback, improve, and try it again.

#3: Polishing Your Resume Too Much

It can often feel like if you just include one more key word on your resume, you’ll get that call back. Maybe if you format it different. What if you used a different font?

Your resume is only one tool that you can use in your arsenal to get a new job, and it’s usually the tool everyone focuses on. If you get people who are already in the tech industry to look at your resume and have had three or so revisions since then, that’s about as good as you’re going to get with the resume. When it comes to job hunting, it isn’t usually the keywords or format of the resume that keep you from getting the interview. It’s the fit.

#4: Over-Using Job Listing Sites

When a company wants to hire for a specific position, they put a posting on LinkedIn, Indeed, or Monster.com. Then, hiring managers get the avalanche of resumes from junior software engineers with very similar experience. They went to a coding bootcamp, they have a little side project, they know React and Word and Excel and have graduated from high school.

Faced with a sea of similar resumes, only a few stick out, and only those few get interviews. Use those sites to find jobs, by all means, but by searching for specific companies you want to work for and applying through their websites directly (often under a “work with us” or “careers” menu item in the footer of the website) you can find jobs before the horde of same-same applicants arrive.

#5: Applying To Jobs You Don’t Really Want

Job hunting fever takes over. You’ve iterated on your resume, built out a side project or two, made a portfolio site, and your GitHub has little squares filled in on that timeline every day for the last three months. After choosing a few select companies to apply to without a call back, you go into resume-flinging overdrive – shoving resumes under doors and into emails and doing some skywriting. You apply to every company where your skills meet half their criteria.

Then the interview requests start trickling in, and maybe even at more than a trickle. Uh oh. What does this company do again? Oh, it’s an oil company and you did that environmental protest last year. Hm, that might not work. After the interview, you realize it’s not a remote job and you’d have to move to Ohio! You hate the snow!

Applying to jobs you don’t want is a surefire way to waste a lot of time, not only for yourself but the companies you apply to as well. Do everyone a favor and make sure you could actually see yourself working there before applying!

More Oopsies Than You Can Count

There are a trillion and one ways a job hunt can go wrong, but the key to remember is: you only need it to go right once to completely change your life. You are on the precipice before a huge change in your career trajectory, and you are right on the edge of making it in tech. You can do it! I believe in you!