What would a typical week look like for you? Mondays are usually a quite busy day for me between SAB meeting during lunch, project kicks/checkins/etc as well as some outside of school obligations. Realistically, I don’t expect this to be a heavy job hunt day but I don’t want to be completely disconnected so I will probably set up a quick reference for preferred job boards and check through that to see if there any new postings. After that, I would check my Huntr or whatever tool I decide to use to know if there are any email/phone follow-ups or replies I need to get to and do that.
The rest of the week, I’d like to incorporate the above ideas but also give some extra time to do at least one solid-sounding job application as well as, when possible, allocating time to go to a coding-related meetup, both to practice interacting with other coders/recruiters and also to become more engaged with a meet-up or two. My hope is to appear multiple times over mod 4 and make some connections, and then hopefully become actually engaged in the meetup, which could open doors to a lot more network connections for the job hunt now and in the future, when that time comes. Some of the meetups I’ve been eyeing are the ReactJS and the Front Range Front-End ones.
When do you work best during the day? I work fine at just about any time, the big thing for me is finding a quiet space without distractions. I find that I am derailed easily by switching my focus between work or people coming up to talk to me. I would likely either work in one of the little rooms by the kitchen (I forget what these are called lol) or the pairing alley, or just leave the school to a coffee shop.
What is a realistic way to spend your time? (Don't overcommit yourself; consider blocking out 1 hour a day or a few times a week) I believe I covered this question mostly up above but maybe to elaborate, I would like to do some of my heaviest hunting on the weekends and give myself an hour, or maybe a little more, during week days. This will allow me to tee up work throughout the week and then do my heaviest focused activities such as cover-letter writing for my days where I don’t have to commute or worry about class.
Job search schedule (most events repeating weekly)
Why do you want mentoring in the job search? The most important part of this for me, is to have somebody to answer questions about what the most effective methods might be for outreach are, ways and places to search for openings, advice on salary negotiation, etc. Mostly things that I would need more experience to know. On top of that, accountability. I know that left to my own devices, I can slack at times or get distracted so to have that layer of accountability would be really helpful for me to stay on track.
How will you hold yourself accountable to balancing time for your job search and following your mentor and group's advice? I find that if I have clear deadlines and times set to do certain things, I am less likely to let work I am supposed to do to slip. It’s when these sort of things are in vogue that I procrastinate or forget to do therm and then they take longer than required to get done.
What is the focus of your job search (timeline, ideal job, steps you’ve already taken)? Be as specific as you can. I have limited time with traveling, school work, and outside activities that happen around the holidays so I have been trying to focus on what I find to be the strategies that offer the highest success rate and that is face-to-face meetings with recruiters. I have been to a couple Job Fairs in the past couple weeks and had some great conversations and initial contacts. My strategy has been that even if they don’t say they have any current openings to try to follow up and keep lines of communication open. In a few cases when it seemed feasible, I have tried to at least get a sit down meeting with HR or a lunch meeting. I currently have a job shadow with the engineering team at MojoTech on Jan 17th after having spoken to a couple people at their booth at the hispanics in tech meetup that Sal is part of.
Link to my alumni portfolio with updated resume below: https://alumni.turing.io/alumni/victor-abraham