Post-Work Roadmap

Introduction

Consistency yields results. As you embark on a job search, establishing a routine that works for you is one of the best things you can do. The structure and accountability in your Flatiron program allowed for a significant amount of learning in a condensed period of time. Now as an alumni, it is up to you to establish this structure for yourself.

Striking a balance between your personal life and continuing to code while investing in your job search is a challenge unique (and real!) to each of us. This lesson includes suggestions for how you might structure your time - both week-to-week and over the next few months in order to optimize your continued learning during your job search.

Laying Out the Work Ahead

In working with Flatiron’s Career Services team, let’s take a moment to account for the activities you’ll be responsible for during your job search. The Career Services Commitment (or CSC for short) outlines the specific requirements you’ll need to meet in order to remain eligible for Flatiron's Money-Back Guarantee, and was designed to set you up for success in your job search. The Weekly Job Search Activity lesson within the Career Prep Track goes into greater detail on each requirement and also includes lots of useful advice. We recommend reading through that lesson now before continuing. If you have any questions about this, you can ask your Career Coach.

To summarize, the Career Services Commitment requires you to complete the following minimum activities each week throughout your job search:

• Make contact with at least eight (8) individuals, verified by first, last name and title, at prospective employers within your field of study
• Post at least one (1) written or video blog post
• Post at least 5 GitHub contributions per week to your public GitHub profile

In addition to these, you will likely have other tasks in mind based on your personal interests and career goals. At the moment, this list might include some or all of the following:

• Polish up and deploy your portfolio projects
• Build a personal website
• Practice code interview challenges
• Practice general interview questions
• Review programming topics you want to be more comfortable with (and learn new ones)
• Self-care!

Take a few minutes now to brainstorm and write out the tasks you would like to accomplish to help you put your best foot forward. Some of these will remain on your list throughout your job search (learning new programming topics), while others might be short-term tasks (i.e. you only need to build your personal website once). This list is something you can share with your Career Coach to help you prioritize and find ways to optimize your efforts while continuing to consistently accomplish the weekly CSC requirements.

Establishing Your Routine

With your list of tasks, you can now plan a routine for yourself. Some students find it helpful to use a Google calendar to do this - you can block out time, configure reminders, and set up recurring weekly events to help stay on track.

Map out a routine that works best for you. We highly recommend front-loading priority tasks and starting the week off strong, especially if you know that you are prone to procrastination.

Here is an example of what this weekly calendar might look like:

Find a schedule that is realistic for you and your personal life, but do your best to stick with it.

Be strategic in how you tackle your job search tasks

Our most successful job seekers often find ways to combine the weekly CSC requirements in a way that supports their ongoing learning.

The calendar above shows how you might anchor your week around a new technical skill to drive the completion of your CSC activities. After identifying a specific topic to learn about:

• Build a small app or add a feature to an existing project based on what you’ve learned, fulfilling your git commit requirements.
• Write it all up to crystalize your learning and be able to share it with others, fulfilling your blog post requirement (Some students really like the tutorial format for blog posts).
• Share a link to your latest post in your prospective employer outreaches, fulfilling your requirements for contacting employers.

In another example, one alumn decided to ship his portfolio site in Week 1 of his job search and then commit to adding one new feature each week, blogging about what he had learned following. This meant his site was continuously improving as he was.

What if you have an upcoming second or third round interview scheduled? How might you focus on building something related to this company in order to demonstrate your interest - and importantly your effort? Can you preemptively write a blog post about a topic you want to highlight to the employer? We call these value-added projects, and they have helped hundreds of graduates seal the deal. In one particular case, the project was sent around to the whole company and they were so impressed by the thoughtfulness and creativity that they made an offer on the spot.

Plan your weeks in such a way that you get to learn something new, practice it, write about it, and share it with others as you continue to expand your network.

If you aren’t sure about where to start, or what skills to begin improving, check out this article for some ideas.

Mapping Out the Road Ahead

A job search can take time, and while it’s hard to know exactly how much time - spending a few minutes to write down a roadmap for yourself can help you prioritize based on your goals. It can also help prevent anxiety caused by trying to keep tabs on everything entirely in your head, and can help you anchor to a plan.

When writing out a roadmap for months ahead (we recommend planning for 6 months), don't think about the time as one large chunk of time. Instead, think about the time in milestones - where would you like to be in one month? What is realistically achievable in that time?

To help you get started, below are some suggested milestones based on the Career Services Commitment and some of the content in this track. Use this as a starting point and adjust it to fit your own plans and goals.

First Month

At the end of your first month, you should aim to have the following completed:

• Four post-graduation blog posts published
• At least 32 total contacts made with prospective employers
• At least two of your portfolio projects fully polished and deployed online, with complete and well-documented readmes

In addition to these, this first month is a good time to do some self-assessing. Take some time to identify what technical topics you need improvement on. For instance, are there any recurring topics or skills you should learn based on the jobs you've applied for? If you've gone through any interviews, what sort of feedback have you received?

Use these questions to help shape goals for your next milestone.

Second Month

• Eight post-grad blog posts published (this means eight new topics you’ve learned about!)
• A minimum of 64 total contacts made with prospective employers
• At this point, three of your portfolio projects should be fully polished and deployed online, with demos recorded
• Your personal website is up and running
• You've worked through most of the Computer Science content in this track and have started completing code challenges consistently on a site like CodeWars

Third Month

• 12 post-grad blog posts published (oh yea!)
• A minimum of 96 total contacts made with prospective employers
• You've completed many code challenges and are comfortable talking about some of the common code interview data structures like binary search trees and linked lists
• You've continued to advance your JavaScript skills by learning more about Node, Express, and have started building a new project using full-stack JavaScript

Fourth Month

• 16 post-grad blog posts
• A minimum of 128 contacts made with prospective employers
• You've spent significant time practicing your interview skills and incorporating feedback from the interviews you've had so far. You are comfortable answering many of the most common interview questions
• You've finished and deployed your first post-graduate portfolio project
• You've started writing tests for your projects and are incorporating some into your existing portfolio projects

Fifth Month

• 20 post-grad blog posts
• A minimum of 160 contacts made with prospective employers
• You've participated in a hackathon and have continued to improve your submission, turning it into an additional portfolio project
• You've worked your way through the first half of Eloquent JS
• You've greatly improved your knowledge of React and incorporated Hooks and Context into a project

Sixth Month

With six months of continued learning, you'll have significantly improved your skills compared to where you were at the beginning of this journey.

• 24 post-grad blog posts
• A minimum of 192 contacts made with prospective employers
• You've finished Eloquent JS
• Based on some of the jobs you've been interested in, you've started to learn TypeScript and have used it in your React projects

Conclusion

Again, beyond the required tasks, your individual roadmap may not have the same goals as those listed above. It will be shaped by your own self-assessments, the types of jobs you're applying for, and topics that interest you the most.

The essential concept here is that you build your own structure. Don't keep it all in your head. Use whatever tools work for you to establish an effective routine and try to stick to it. And leverage your Career Coach to help keep you accountable.

The greatest challenge during this time isn't learning and improving skills. You've already proven you can do that. The greatest challenge is developing the habits you will need to continually work towards your goals. In case you haven’t heard this lately, you’re doing a great job. Keep at it.

Resources

• So, You've Finished Bootcamp. Are You Employable?

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