Bootcamp Highlights - Reverse Engineering Your Career
Written by guest blogger Kimberley HaywardAt Mondays Summer of Tech event Reverse Engineering Your Career, John Clegg shared with us some useful information about the Summer of Tech process, as well as some advice on what students can do to improve their chances of an internship later on in the year.First order of business, don’t have your profile up yet? It’s not too late, but you might want to get cracking! Looking at past stats, a lot of past interns had their profiles live sometime between March and May. It’s not hard to do, just sit down when you have some spare time and get it done!Next, go to bootcamps! While it has been mentioned in previous events, we really can’t stress enough how important and valuable the bootcamps are. John shared with us how they choose who runs the bootcamps, and it’s good news for students! Companies apply to run them, because as much as it’s a chance for you to meet people in industry, and do some valuable networking, it’s a chance for them to find potential employees. They want to meet you! And if you impress them, they’ll make a point to remember you and you’ll be that much closer to landing yourself an internship with them later in the year. Of course, if you have you profile live, it will make it that much easier for them to do this!Another thing you can do now to help your chances for an internship later in the year, is start working on a project in your own time. It doesn’t have to be big and complicated, you don’t even have to have it finished by the time Meet & Greet comes around, you just need something to show off your interest in your chosen field of study. If you want a coding related role, create yourself a GitHub account, make a repository, and start coding something in your spare time, making sure you commit your changes regularly. Similar goes for designers, create yourself an online portfolio and upload any work you can to it. You can put links to these in the designated fields of your Summer of Tech profile for potential employers to check out, and they’ll give you something to talk about when you meet people.
And finally, make sure your enthusiastic, curious, and professional whenever you meet potential employees. While having relevant skills is useful, it’s much more important to ensure you have the right attitude, and they’ll remember it if you don’t!
