This is my talk from Umbraco's Codegarden 2021.

In it, I cover different ways to catch the attention of future employers through building a solid portfolio of personal projects.

At the end of 2019, I decided I wanted to change the trajectory of my life and career by making a transition into the wonderful world of tech and software engineering.

I spent all of 2020 learning new concepts and then applying those concepts into personal coding projects. As my skills improved, so did my portfolio.

Throughout the process, I made sure to share my progress on platforms like Twitter and Dev.to. It was awesome to build a community of other folks who were on the same path that I was.

Near the end of 2020, I was contacted by my now-colleague who was looking into building his team at a very early-stage start-up at the time. Fast forward a week and a half later after a couple of interviews and a pair programming exercise, and I had a job offer in hand for my first role as a junior software engineer!

In this talk, I cover some of the key actionable insights I gained over my year of making a career transition into software engineering!

Here's the link to the talk, and here's a link to the subsequent panel discussion after the talk. Enjoy!