This article was written by Sandra Gläsner (Director Product Engineering).

If you've decided to reshape your career and successfully completed a coding bootcamp, you're probably now facing the challenge of finding your first job in a completely new field.

I'd like to briefly share my experience as a team lead who has had an increased number of applications from bootcamp graduates on her screen over the past few months. Maybe you can take something from this for your future applications and interviews.

1. Tell your career story

In his resume, an applicant (now colleague) once added a short statement to each of his previous job stations about what his motivation was. This created a coherent picture of what drives him and made it easy for me to understand why he developed his career the way he did.

Your decision to take a new career path in (web) development will definitely not have been made on a whim. Find the common thread that underlies your decision and tell your very personal story.

2. Reflect your personal strengths and interests

Most of you have learned the same content in the same short amount of time. I have seen many practical final projects that were very similar in terms of implementation. This is because of the nature of bootcamps, which usually teach a specific, narrow curriculum.

But that makes it very difficult for me to distinguish between the different applicants and their strengths. And this is where your personal experiences come into play: tell me why you chose this masterpiece, what you had difficulties with, or what you found particularly easy and had fun with. Maybe you liked the setup of build and deployment pipelines more than everything else? Cool! Or did you fall in love with the styling part? Wonderful! Or did you spend much time on finding out what best practices are used in terms of web accessibility? Nice, tell me more!

Reflect your learning path and where your strengths and interests lie.
And finally…

3. Decide what you want (to learn next)

A bootcamp can always be just a start. Think about what you have been missing in the bootcamp or what you would like to learn more about. Please don't be afraid of the vast amounts of knowledge you think you still lack. Be patient with yourself and take one step at a time.