There’s been a lot of buzz lately about coding bootcamps. The idea is a super condensed crash course in some form of coding, in theory enough to land graduates an entry level job afterward in an growing, high paying industry. I recently posted a UNC Chapel Hill Coding Bootcamp Review, but today I want to go into more detail on one specific area of that article: finding a job after coding bootcamp.

Unfortunately most of the readily available info online about jobs after coding bootcamp seems come from the bootcamps themselves. Clearly they have a reason to inflate those numbers, and many media outlets are more than willing to repeat those number because they make for a good story.

First off, I’m not opposed to bootcamps. I’m glad I went to one and I’ve recommended them to people since, but I’ve also seen a lot of misleading ‘information’ about what job hunting after coding bootcamp is really like. I wanted to write a post clarifying some of that info, based on my experience and people I’ve talked to, and also provide some tips on what’s worked and what hasn’t as I’ve been job hunting for the past couple of months.

Can I Get a Job After Coding Bootcamp?

Short answer: yes, but it may not be as easy as some bootcamps lead you to believe.

Most companies look for at least a year or two of relevant experience when hiring programmers, even for supposedly “entry level” positions. This is true is many industry and, despite the shortage in experienced programmers, it’s true in tech as well. This doesn’t mean it’ll be impossible to get hired if you have no experience whatsoever, but depending on where you live and what bootcamp you went to, it may be challenging.

My cohort graduated about two months ago. So far 24% have found new full time* jobs or internships according to their LinkedIn profiles. An additional 9% have landed part time jobs, including as TAs at the bootcamp, and 61% remain unemployed or at the same job they held prior to the bootcamp (again, that’s according to their LinkedIns). 3% are pursuing additional schooling and another 3% are operating as freelancers.**

Those numbers seem a bit more bleak than what I think many of us had hoped going in. But it is worth remembering that we’re only two months out, and I expect more to find jobs in the weeks and months ahead. It’s also difficult to know how representative Trilogy’s UNC Chapel Hill bootcamp is of bootcamps in general. If anything my bootcamp was lighter on the career services but perhaps more in depth on actual academic instruction. It seems possible, therefore, that we could have a lower hire rate right out of the gate, but that we may go far in the long run.

It’s also worth noting that performance in the class did not seem to correlate as closely as I would’ve expected with success in finding post bootcamp employment. Several of the individuals I considered to be the most bright and talented seem to have not yet found new full time jobs, whereas others who struggled more in the class did. Previous experience correlated much more closely to job hunting success rate. Those who already had computer science degrees, for example, seemed to have a much higher job hunting success rate two months out.

How Many Jobs Will I Need to Apply To?

Obviously the answer to this question can vary a lot. You could apply for only one job and get it, or apply to a thousand and not get a single interview. But that doesn’t help you a lot.

A rule of thumb I heard is expect to get about one interview for every ten applications sent. Of course this statistic can vary depending on how strong you are as an applicant relative to how competitive the jobs you’re applying to are, but in my experience it’s held fairly true. So far I’ve sent out 28 applications and gotten two interviews***. I made it to the third round in both cases (two phone interviews and one in person). One company ultimately decided I wasn’t the right fit and the other I’m expecting hear back from within the next couple of days.

28 applications in two months is admittedly not a lot at all. After finishing the bootcamp I made a conscious decision to set aside a chunk of time for portfolio polishing before even starting to send out applications. After that I also made a concious decision to apply for a smaller number of more ambitious jobs and spend more time researching the companies and carefully crafting custom cover letters. (Alliteration!)

Other people take the shot gun approach: just send out a bunch of applications with form cover letters and wait for the dust to settle. Which approach is better? I don’t have the sample size to really say, unfortunately.  I do believe, however, that the interviews I have gotten have been largely to do with my cover letters and what I had to say about how I could help their company specifically.

What Kinds of Jobs Can I Get After Coding Bootcamp?

This depends a lot on what bootcamp you go to. Trilogy’s bootcamp at UNC Chapel Hill, for example, focuses on full stack web development, so the most logical positions to apply for afterwards would have titles like Full Stack Web Developer, Front End Web Developer, Backend Engineer, etc. Some also went into QA or are interested in UX/UI.

Knowledge gained at a bootcamp can also be just an extra feather in your cap towards other jobs. For example, both the interviews I had were actually for Scrum Master jobs. If you’ve never heard of Scrum, it’s a framework for approaching complex problems that’s widely used in the tech industry. Scrum Masters facilitate the framework. They’re generally non-technical, meaning they don’t actually need to know JavaScript or anything else we learned in the bootcamp, but part of my pitch to employers has been that I know Scrum, and hey, I also know how to code so I’m going to be better at talking to your engineers.

There are many other jobs out there that aren’t primarily developer jobs, but where having some coding skills will be a leg up. My advice would be don’t think of coding bootcamp as an all-in-one path to a new career, think of it as an opportunity to gain a new set of skills that you’ll combine with other skills you’ve learned and will continue to learn. 

The new economy isn’t about getting one degree or certificate, it’s about building a portfolio of skills. If you find ways to combine coding bootcamp with other skills you already posses and continue to seek out new skills in the future, you can turn yourself into a highly in demand swiss-army-knife employee. You can seek out niche job opportunities that combine several of your skills therefore making you the obvious hire.

This can include clearly related skills like extra programming languages, cyber security, DevOps, networking, etc. Or more seemingly disparate areas like art, design, video, e-commerce, politics, marketing, business etc. Programming has permeated so many different areas of the economy and taken on so many different forms that it’s possible to find overlap in ways you may never have thought of.

Because it’s talked about a lot: most of the entry level jobs I’m seeing in my area are in the $40-60K range. Six figure incomes seem very possible once you get some experience. Starting salaries are no doubt higher in major markets like New York and Silicon Valley, but so too is the cost of living.

What Do I Need To Have To Start Applying For Jobs?

Here’s a checklist:

1. Portfolio site
2. Resume and/or CV
3. LinkedIn profile
4. GitHub

Projects are a big part of most coding bootcamps, so you’ll already have a lot to work with by the end of the class. The trick is polishing and organizing. I setup a personal website that had links to all the web apps I’d built with short description, including my role in the project. In some cases I also included screenshots of development charts and UI mockups created while building the sites. Because I have an art/design background, I chose to include some of that on my site. The idea was to seem more like a well rounded person, like I wrote about above.

CVs are basically longer, more detailed resumes. Some companies ask for CVs, some for resumes. If they ask for resumes, you should generally keep it to one page only. Resumes/CVs can be challenging if you’ve just graduated bootcamp and don’t have a lot to list. Just try to pull in whatever experiences might be relevant. Think outside the box. Our career services councilors recommended having an “Applications Built” section where you could show off some of your best portfolio pieces. The trick is to not say they were just bootcamp assignments.

I chose to remove the dates from my education section. I did this because I had several prospective employers balk at the fact that I’d just graduated from a bootcamp.

LinkedIn and GitHub should be fairly self explanatory, but just make sure both are up to date. Having professional profile photos for both is not a bad idea. Pin your best work to the top on GitHub and try to get some reviews and skill endorsements on LinkedIn if you can.

Conclusion

Basic take away: 99% hire rate with median six figure income straight out of the gate is not realistic at most (or perhaps any) coding bootcamps. That said, coding is a great skill to have right now and if you combine it with other skills, you can make yourself very employable.

By the way, several of my cousins went to other coding bootcamps (not operated by Trilogy). They both found jobs quickly and are now happily working as developers, despite no previous technical experience. What I’m writing about is just what I’ve seen and heard from the program I did. I hope it’s helpful, but if your experience was different, please feel free to comment!

*Appeared to be full time jobs or internships.

** It’s common to use “freelance” as a void fill for resume gaps. Therefore I only included in the “freelancing” category those who appeared to be actively pursuing and obtaining freelance work. If it appeared to be only a resume void fill, I included the individual in the unemployed/same job category.

*** To be clear, these weren’t actually for coding jobs, though they were for jobs I wouldn’t have heard of, and may not have been competitive for, had I not gone to a bootcamp. (See What Kind of Jobs Can I Get After Coding Bootcamp? section above for more info.)