no mans land out of coding bootcamp w/drew robbins who is a recent graduate of a bootcamp that now is at meta

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me, old fashioned email, social media at T D S and T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. enough to be running on that through. Let's get the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Sure. I am true. I'm currently in Contractor for Meta right now.

And I'm doing XR VR tech for them, kind of working on the new Oculus and future headsets. So that's cool. It's pretty neat how deep everything kind of goes, you know, all over the little stuff you don't even think about. So, but I'm, I'm real excited and real happy being there. That's awesome. And we're, and we're going to talk to Drew about that too. Got, we got a lot of Cincinnati in the house. No Cincinnati, I love it. San Diego, Connor, what's up? Man, got the crew, everyone's here to see Drew. So, all right. So let's talk real quick, right? So the first thing I want to talk about is your journey through self-taught.

Yes. College. And boot camp. Yes. All right. So. Yeah. So, so, so tell the people a little about your story real fast about those kind of three aspects and why you chose to do all three. Well, I initially, I think everyone kind of starts doing self taught when they have an interest in where I started, you know, I was told Python was easiest language. So So that's where I started and I struggled immensely. It felt similar to when I was in high school and getting my associate's degree in college and starting from there, I realized I needed more structure, you know what I mean? And that's kind of what led me to pursue IT and programming and networking more.

In college, I didn't like that either. It wasn't my learning style. and finally two structures. Yeah, I mean, there are two very different ways for different people. I didn't like going in twice a week, for three months of the time and barely remembering what I was doing. It wasn't me. I tried to do it on my own. And being young, it didn't click as much. So I decided after I got laid off in COVID, eventually go to a boot camp, and that's what was for me. It was 12 hour, eight to 12 hour days, six days a week for about three to four months. And it was intense.

Why did you like bootcamp over college? I enjoyed it because I could get what I needed to know done in a such a short and immense amount of time and then get to where I needed to be. That's just my preference style. If I sit on something, my ADD brand will just ping everywhere. So that's my preference style. But I respect ball three. And I know those are the main three ways pretty much to get to anywhere in the tech field, whether it's software development or cybersecurity, wherever you end up. So what bootcamp did you choose and why? So I went to General Assembly and I loved it.

As far as why, I did a lot of research and it was, they were one of the first ones that accepted me that was accredited. So usually when you start a boot camp, you have to apply to it, signups, set up some, you know, financial aid or unless you're going to pay for the thing yourself. And then it's kind of a waiting game. If you have prior experience, that's great. If you know somebody that's great. It's actually a little bit, I think this is the right word, inclusive. It's kind of hard to get into. But once you're in it, I think it's a, I had a great experience.

That's awesome. What do you think people should be mindful of when they are choosing a bootcamp? Not going the cheap route. And I guess that's kind of hard to say since I've heard of a few others and some range in the costs of hundreds, thousands, 15s, 25, it can get up to 30,000. It's the same kind of offensive they get. And I've heard some people who do the real simple, cheap one and they didn't find what they were looking for, mainly because there wasn't a lot of structure and there There was a lot more dependability. And sometimes that works for people who are, you know, leaning more into the self-taught role, who can wake up, you know, every day, put in your four to six hours of learning, or however much time you've loaded, and actually get that done, if, you know.

So I would say making sure you choose the right one that has the structure and plan for you, because it all makes a difference. And even though mine was more expensive, I'm glad I did it that way, because it allowed me to learn everything I needed to in that time frame. I love it. All right, so obviously here's the most important part. We have a few more people tuning in. Thomas, Jessica from Philly, Josh goes, we may not be in the vet diverse, but it sounds like Drew might be exactly. Raleigh represent is so funny. Central Illinois, please save you from the corn fields. That made me tackle Portland, Oregon, Chelsea.

My favorite breakfast in Portland is proud Mary. So good. I'd the coffee there. If anybody wants to get me coffee, proud Mary coffee is where it's at. Jawa, it's great to see you in ATL in the house. So the big thing I want to get across to is the No Man's Land out of boot camp, right? So Drew and I were catching up off air and I always try to chat and try to come up with a title and show notes and Drew was like, yeah, it's just really a No Man's Land out of boot camp. And so can you talk about that, how you felt graduating from boot camp and what you did to find a job.

So it's really difficult going from such heavy structure, whether you're in college, bootcamp, or anywhere where you're part of a community, part of a learning team. And then I guess it's like leaving a house. Some people get kicked out of the house at 18. You're out there and you have the tools that you were given and you got to figure it out. I was part of the boot camp out in general assembly. We have career coaches, so I was likely to be in contact with someone who was kind of my advocate I'm looking out for me. But other than that point, I had to do everything on my own, whether it be applying the jobs, networking, building more projects, updating my skills.

And doing that while working part time, full time, whatever you're doing. It's really intense. It's just as- How did you structure your day, right? Because I've become fascinated, like I'm doing it with my team right now. I think people are wildly ineffective with their days. I think they just really, really are. They wake up at eight for their first meeting of the day, at eight 30, and it's just like, they're not maximizing time, and it just is a mess. How did you set up your days working part-time out of bootcamp and trying to find a job to network and interview and all that. I didn't do it that great all the time.

I, you know, a lot of, it happens a lot of people that first two weeks to a month, you just kind of get lazy and bummy. That's what happened to me. I didn't really have a set of teams. Because you're going through this coding bootcamp, would you say, how many hours a day? It's about 60 to 80 hours a week. So. Yeah, I mean, more than a full-time job, and then all of a sudden it's gone. It's gone. off, you know, and you're just like, where do I go? You just have this little flashlight in the dark, and it's what you make of it. And it can be really intimidating, really hard.

And the one of the things that really helped me was, you know, finding people in my situation as well, you know, continuing to go to events, meetups, and pushing myself out there, because otherwise, I just, I would have been, you know, like a tumbleweed lost and forgotten and just rolling on because is the boot camp or whatever learning structure did its job. You know, you got what you needed to know, but now it's all you. Yeah. So that was awesome. So like the mornings, would you wake up? And like, did you have a morning job or nighttime job? Like, did you wake up in the mornings?

And did you like network on LinkedIn? Like, what did, like, let's get a little tactical in granular here. Yeah. So I did work at night. And eventually, I built my structure back together. I made sure I spent a lot of time networking. OK, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. What did networking look like for you? So eventually, it blossomed into me mass reaching out to recruiters, to people, and just learning how LinkedIn works, because that was my main platform. I realized at the time that, you know, there's a hundred connection maximum per week of people you can add. Right. And I felt like if I wasn't utilizing that, then I'm not using my time as appropriately.

I got goosebumps. I get goosebumps when people say good things. I love that. I love that. So, you know, it was kind of you want to make it personal, but it's also casting a wide net. It's a numbers game. So I would contact, you know, one week I would do developers and just reach out to a hundred developers that we try to meet and talk to as many people that I had in common with who also like sale and you know that example. Did you send a custom note on every invite? Yes and no. I had a template that I made custom per invite. So the majority is I have this paragraph because there's only so much text you can send.

It's like 300 characters or something like that. You know, you kind of auto-fill, you know, name, you know, or just position, you know, stuff like that. And then at the end of it, I would just, after looking at their profile, I would try to make some connection or keep something in common with them. And it works a lot more than just the cold calling kind of, you know, reaching out. I would say almost double if not more. It's a look for that, you know. So did you message somebody? Did you ask for a conversation or is it literally like, hey, I'm just trying to connect?

It was really my move. I've done both. Sometimes it's, you know, hey, I'm trying to connect. You know, I see we're both from this boot camp or I see we're both from this regional area or we both like this football team, whatever it is. And it would be simple as that. And then sometimes, depending on their reply back, it would kind of grow into a conversation. If it was someone I felt that was important to a role, whether it be a recruiter or a job poster, especially, I would kind of lean more an inch for a conversation and be a little pushier about it. And that's kind of how that would usually happen.

I say, you know, hey, Taylor, my name's Drew. This is what I'm about. This is my experience. And I saw you're from Nashville as well. And this is an amazing place. I love hot chicken. Yeah, I love, I see, yeah, hot chicken. I play guitar as well, you know, whatever it may be. And just kind of go off at that point. And usually, you know, conversations would go from there. Sometimes they lead to some opportunities. Other times they don't, but they're in your network. And you, I personally feel like they remember. So, so did you, so you didn't hop, you didn't try to hop on, you didn't offer up a call every time.

You just like, Hey, I'm looking to connect. Did when you hopped on calls with people in the DMS. Yeah. How did those calls look? Cause I think that's where people really have a problem with, right? people just feel so weird, searching people on LinkedIn, messaging them cold, and then asking them for a conversation. And I'm wondering how you did it when they were open to having a conversation. Like, like, how did that conversation go? Uh, so is this for more like recruiters or job posters or just keep more for like just random people at companies, you're DMing. Okay. Yeah. Um, so you kind of have to break that wall.

Like you are searching for them. You are looking, you know, at them and you are reaching out to them. So that's already happened. You know, there's a reason to feel these type of ways about it. Usually I would, you know, reach out, ask, you know, to talk to them, hop on a call or just to get to know them better. And at that point, it's kind of just like a yes or no whenever they have time. I realized if you get to that point in the conversation most of you are friendly, most people are nice, you know they're gonna say yes and you learn a little bit about company or each other or you build you know friendships.

I built a lot of friendships on LinkedIn and my regular social life you know. I think Diego who reached out to you you know, I met him. I think he reached out to me. He's a recruiter and he was just being just genuinely nice. He's a great person and that's how that happened. And we talk, you know, once a month. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Simple as just reaching out and, you know. So the job you found, right, so you're at meta through experience, right? So I want to talk a a little bit about working with recruiters. How did it, did you find experience, did it experience find you?

They found me. There's a pivotal point in where I was reaching out and applying so much proactively that recruiters started to come into my inbox. And when I first heard this concept, I was like, that doesn't happen unless you're really, you know, crazy. But it started happening. And some of it was junk, but people started reaching out because I was just so proactive and my name and my feed just kept showing up. I was active daily on LinkedIn. So they reached out to me and after going through good interviews, bad interviews, through the wringer pretty much, it was a two interview process. I was really refreshing to see how the first one was through a recruiter and the second one was with the hiring manager and then I was I was hired.

That's where you should be. Oh, it was pretty nice. After I think I did like a six, five interview one. Yeah. Were that like a few days before and I was drained. And so as soon as that happened, I was extremely refreshing. So how is it working through recruiters? You know, I think the one question I get a ton from people is like, there's so many recruiters out there. Yeah. You are responding back to everyone. Do I not? Did you have a strategy working with recruiters and then can you so let's answer that one and then I have another question But did you have a strategy in working with recruiters?

Yes, I kind of you know with my templates and personal messages I Kind of did have a have a strategy as far as well if they reach out to you Always reach out back because in emails if I'm not mistaken and there's tokens and if you reach out back to them they get that token back. So they're usually very grateful and you can kind of make a good connection. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, the recruiters get like a, the recruiting company can buy a set amount of DMs and every time you respond back, you're with, that's a very thoughtful thing.

You're the first person that's ever said that. Oh, it's something that I think everyone should do because it's real easy to read something and I'll go back to the question set. Yeah, yeah. It's a little easier to read it and be like, oh, that's not for me. I don't work in Java or I don't do this. But if you can reach back and say, hey, sorry, that's not for me. Here's a buddy of mine that is also more specialized in this. And you may get a referral, you may go to connection. They may have another job for you in two months. So I think replying to people just saying, no, sorry, thanks or here's a referral or do you have any other types of roles?

is very, it takes 15 seconds of your day when they reach out to you. So I feel like anyone who reaches out to you beyond common courtesy, just reaching out, it benefits you in a way. And as far as my strategy for recruiters goes, just trying to build a connection, a network, the more, I feel like the more people in your network that you have, especially recruiters, because they're essentially gatekeepers to these jobs a lot of scenarios. Yeah. It never, it doesn't not benefit you. I said it doesn't negative. Did, did, did, did, did you have like a, a call, a call quota or like a set number where you're like, all right, Drew, I'm going to hold myself to it.

Cause like my number is one conversation today. Right. Like did you happen to set out? So, so, so your goal was, Hey, I'm going to send out a hundred invites a week. I'm going to try to cap out the connections. And then were you just like, I'm going to load up my calendar with as many conversations as I can if they're open to it? Yeah, that was kind of the soft goal of doing 100. And whatever, you know, sometimes I would have more, sometimes I had less, depending on the algorithm, how I felt, how I, you know, talk to people and things like that. Sure.

Well, something that I really try to utilize, I haven't actually, I don't have it behind me, but I usually have a giant whiteboard. Okay. All right. All right. I'm going to do how I'm going to do it. You know, if I want to do one call a day or if I want to, you know, I want to like 10 posts a day, I want to comment, I want to, you know, reach out, I want to connect with this many people. Having that for day helped me a lot, especially when I was making posts. That's something that helped my structure and build my head. Okay. So you were actually posting too.

So you're literally going all the things I talk about. So you were posting too. Yes. I was doing everything. I actually had a, this is gonna sound super shallow, I mean I had a follower count like goal per day. And I knew like I couldn't really attain that because it's just kind of random. But that inspired me to make, you know, more accurate posts. Because at a time I decided, you know, I didn't wanna just post some code snippet. I wanted to make designs and make stuff that make it visual. make it visual. So I was doing that for a little while and that's kind of where I built the majority of my network and some would kind of blow up more and go viral and some would.

And that kind of kept me more grounded in having your routine and organization. How many hours a day, how many hours a day would you say that you were on LinkedIn, specifically LinkedIn? If I were to average it out, so I made a hobby of it being on my phone. So on the computer, I would say about two to three, you know, I got rid of all my social media. I went hard on this. I stopped. What you're talking about? That's what I'm talking about. Instagram, I said LinkedIn, I turned on every notification I could get. I said, this is going to be my thing for the next six months.

Bro. Hell yeah. I mean, I put the same energy in the boot camp and to hear and it paid off, even in moments where I didn't think- So good. It was a good response again. And that's under what you have to want it. It sounds goofy, but you have to really put that effort because you're in the dark, you're in no man's land. And unless you're doing all this to stand out, there's someone else that's doing more than you that's gonna get that job. Yeah. So Kevin comes in. How did you shake off rejection and ghosting? You kind of. Yes. I think I said that yesterday at my show with somebody there.

You just don't you've seen your engineer too. He's just like never get used to it. It's a awful, crappy feeling that gives you anxiety. And it's something that you just have to like, you know, hopefully if you're in therapy, you can deal with it that way. But it's not really. It's everyone goes through it, you know, and like even. It's just a part of it. I think it's scary. I think if you get to the point, I think if you get to the point mentally where it's like, listen, it's not me, it's them. Cause most of the time, I say this all the time, 75% of the reason why you don't get a job is not because of you.

Yeah. 75%. If I told you, hey, there's a 75% chance that a hurricane's gonna hit the coast. What are you gonna do? You're gonna evacuate. Yeah. Say 5% of the reason why you don't get a job is not really because of you. It's because of red tape and budgets and hiring managers, messing things up and HR messing things up. It's just a mess. So if you can kind of get that mentality that, hey, listen, rejection is going to happen, ghosting is going to happen. I'm just going to be used to it. I think you're in a much better place. Something that helped me actually a little bit with it.

And if you have the time to do so, it's keeping track of every job you'd like to. Did you do Excel? Yeah, I just managed to make Excel less. And I was stuck with it sometimes. I didn't others. But you can see where your ghost is or you're rejected. And the thing is, let's say you applied to like Home Depot or something. I'm just going to name it off that one. I see them all the time on LinkedIn. And they go through their rejection. Well, a month or two later, unless you write it down or something or unless it comes across your mind, you're going to forget you applied to them.

And they may have open positions that they need again. So reapplying to all these companies, making your dream list, excuse me, and doing all these things, I felt like helped me with it because it felt like I have a second chance at that. Whatever they decided to do, that's on them. Maybe I wasn't the right fit, maybe they weren't right for me. If it is, I'm just gonna try that. Because if I don't, then it's just, never gonna happen either either way. And I love that. I love that you deleted every app off your phone. I've been preaching that and you did it. So realistically, how many hours in a day were you in LinkedIn?

Phone and desktop? You mean everything? I'd say six to seven, between. Yeah. What I'm sitting on here, when I'm sitting on the couch, I was hanging out with my family at the time. I'd be on LinkedIn, just liking people with commenting. I made that a habitual habit. I have to comment if I like on something. Yes, and why, why? Because it boosts your growth. Other people see it, people who are connected to them first, second, I don't know about thirds. I don't know about thirds either. It's, to my understanding, it's just how LinkedIn works. It's like a explosion. If you do that five to 10 times, you're gonna notice you probably have about five to 10 notifications on your phone by the end of the day.

It's my people talking about people liking And the people who have the most growth on here, and I wish I would stuck to it as much, I'm going to continue again, are the people who are consistent, consistently liking, consistently commenting, consistently just talking and networking with us. I want to give Alison a shout out. She just got a job, she's going to come on the show. There's some reason we weren't connected until this week, and she is on it. I mean, she is posting all the time, and I always see her face. So Allison, keep doing what you're doing. Final few things we wrap up here.

Now, the one question that we'll probably people probably think of is like, oh, that sounds great, Drew. You were on LinkedIn seven hours a day. Congrats, right? Good job. Did you get this job because of all your LinkedIn activity? I think so. I think, I mean, derived from LinkedIn, the recruiter, he says to me from LinkedIn, I've never heard of it's experience before. There's a lot so many contracting companies that go through. So many. So many. You know, experience goes through Google. They go through a lot of different. Yeah. It's called now. But these big giant tech companies. And that's pretty common nowadays. You know, sometimes there's a difference between being, you know, a full time actual employee in there and being a contractor.

But to get your foot in the door somewhere is the step in the right direction. Most people need. Yeah. I love it. All right, last three minutes. I have one question to wrap it up, but I always leave a kind of a moment that if we didn't cover anything, is there any other words of encouragement you want to give to people in their job search or out of bootcamp? It'll happen. Everyone told me it'll happen. You just got to keep pushing, keep waiting. I was living, I didn't mention this. My fiance at the time and I were living in my grandparent's house where all of this was happening.

We were in a one bedroom. It was very humiliating at the time because I lost my job due to COVID and now I threw $15,000 at a boot camp and now I'm in debt. And I was like, it's never going to happen. Did I make a giant mistake going for this and shooting for this? And I didn't. No matter what, whether I would have landed the job I'm at now, or if I I was still in the job search. I'm still gonna get to where I'm gonna get eventually, you know, just be my time, or I may not be putting in the effort. And another kind of token to, you know, the seven to hours a day on LinkedIn is, I don't think people realize how much time on their phone that they do have.

You know, I hate to be like that, but you know, I think you realize, even if it's an extra hour a day, you know, you're just kind of sitting around. If you can mentally rewire yourself to be like, Okay, I need to invest in myself so I can get to where I want to be so I can, you know, make the money I want to make, support my family, be in the career I want to be in. Then it's just, it's a different mindset because everyone's at different places in their life. So good. All right. Last question, we wrap it up here. And again, Drew, thanks for obviously hanging out with me today.

And thanks for everybody who, who watched a, we had a full house today. We had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, elementary school. But now what we need them most, we don't really have them, right? I joke and I say they're therapists now. What would be your biggest advice to your younger self from a career perspective? The first perspective. Um, get organized. Honestly, it's something I still struggle with this day. I'm not an organized person, but the second I force myself to write things down and the do stuff that made me uncomfortable and make it a habit is the second I started of doing better, being more productive, going down the path that I wanted to go down.

And it's not naturally who I am, but I made myself get organized. I made myself build a routine and do things that I wasn't comfortable doing. And now, a few years later, I'm reaping the results of all that effort that I put in. So it sounds cliche, but it actually does help in your own way, however you can make it work for you. I love it. I love it. Well, y'all, thanks again for hanging out with us today. That is it. I'm off for two weeks actually off a little bit more than two weeks because I literally come back. I literally come back on a Saturday and I leave Monday for Magnolia JS to speak out of Mississippi.

So there won't be lives actually probably for about three weeks. So Drew, you were the last one, Congrats. And and y'all have a great few weeks. If you do listen little little self promotion here If you do want to follow along with my travels connect with me on my instagram or tick tock So that's why I do a lot of like my personal stuff. So t dessin. This is my tick tock in my instagram handle So feel can call me there. I'll be I'll be vlogging the our entire trip over to europe But drew thank you for coming on man. Your story was amazing And y'all, if you are watching this and you found Drew's story inspiring, please share it because I feel like Drew's story can be very powerful to others.

So Drew, have a good one, man. Stay on real quick so I can say bye to you. But thank you all for tuning in to God's Council 2.0 and I'll see you in a few weeks. Peace y'all. Bye. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it.

Please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T.S. and on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.