Schedule & goals for the first 30 days Post-Graduation
Design a 40-hour "work week" that provides time for:
- Code (ideally, 2-4 hours a day will be dedicated to coding)
- Outreach & Networking
- Job & company research and tracking
- Interview Prep
- Housekeeping (refining your professional story, updating your resume, writing cover letters, updating your Turing portfolio, updating your LinkedIn profile)
- Other (social networking, blogging, planning talks, etc.)
- Check-ins: who are you talking to and when?
Action Step #1: Shareable calendar
Action Step #2: Backwards plan for your big goal. What is your cut-off for ending the job search? When do you want to receive and sign an offer by?
Action Step #3: Based on what you outlined above, create monthly, weekly, and daily goals to reach in order to reach your big goal:
Daily - At least 1 cold outreach per day; code at least 2 hours daily (include code challenges or exercisms).
For time spent coding during your first 30 days post-grad, consider:
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What skills would you like to improve or develop? Promises, React lifecycle methods, Async testing (testing in general), adding a backend to a frontend project.
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Are there new languages or technologies you'd like to learn? How and when will you do that? React Native or Angular.js, Ruby and Rails, ember.js
Action Step: Establish a “daily-practice” repository where you’ll put small daily exercises or work on issues from your own projects that you want to update to keep your skills sharp and your GitHub activity chart active. For your Mod 4 portfolio review, be prepared to describe to your instructors what you plan to work on to sharpen and advance your coding skills for the first 30 days of your job search.
Action Step #1: Identify at least 3 individuals from companies you're tracking who could connect with during your first 30 days.
- Josh Scott - we are meeting next week (co-founder of Craftsy)
- Justin Su/ Corey Fink - Goalbook- connected with other ed tech companies
- Lovisa Svallingson - ca Technologies (Mineral UI)
- Annie Wolff - Peaksware (can connect me to TrainingPeaks position)
- Marina Corona - GoSpotCheck (Turing, TFA Alum)
Action Step #2: Find 3 new meetups or other career networking events to join during your first 30 days post-grad.
- Jan 16: ReactJS- React + D3 - I am interested in learning more about D3.
- Jan 30: Tech Ladies Denver - Women in tech are usually pretty badass.
- Feb 7: 6pm Denver: Elm for Everyone - I am interested in a company that works in Elm.
Action Step: Show how you've set up jobtrack.io to keep track of all your company/job outreach, who you talked to, what you learned, what next steps you'll take to follow-up, and anything you might do differently next time. Be prepared to describe this system to your instructors during your portfolio review.
During this module, you've had multiple opportunities to practice your technical and cultural interviewing skills. Think about how those experiences have helped you identify strengths and weaknesses in your interviewing skills.
Action Step: Identify 2-3 areas you'd like to continue to improve on for interviewing.
- Area 1: Practice potential interview questions- mock interview practice (first one schedule for next week with one of my mentors).
- Area 2: Code Challenge Problems - Work on an exercism for 30 minutes every morning during the time I have blocked out for coding.
Action Step #1: Turing Portfolio
- At least 3 projects displayed, your latest work, an accurate list of your desired locations.
Action Step #2: LinkedIn
- Up to date
What other areas would you like to focus on during your job search?
- Big 3 of potential interview questions
- Blogging
- Open source projects
Action Step: Identify one of the areas above or an additional area that you'd like to develop further during your first 30 days post-grad and be prepared to discuss this with your instructors at your portfolio review.
- I do best when I break down responses into 3 key points. I plan to outline 3 points for all potential interview questions.
Action Step: Identify 1-2 people you'll check in with during your first 30 days post-grad. Consider how you might continue to utilize your PD Peer Groups. Describe why you will check in with this person, how you will check in with them, what you aim to talk about, and what you hope to get out of these check-ins to benefit your job search.
- Amy Holt
- Lani Young
Action Step: Identify 1-2 "barriers" you might put on yourself in this job search as well as the steps you will take to overcome them. Be prepared to describe these in your M4 portfolio review.
- Confidence
- Balancing curriculum writing
In this section, you'll find action steps that you should aim to complete during your first 30 days post-grad, but these are not steps that you need to have completed for your portfolio review. Instead, you should begin thinking about how you will achieve these steps, and your post-grad job search support coach will ask about progress on these during that first 30 days.
Scheduling Post-Grad Action Step: At the end of each week during your first 30 days, assess what worked with the schedule and what didn't so that you can make adjustments as needed and manage your time even more effectively for the following week. This will also help you keep a record of what you've done in your job search.
Outreach Post-Grad Action Step: During the first 30 days, you should aim to reach out to at least 10 individuals. Even if you don't have a list of all 10 for the draft of this plan for portfolio review, be prepared to meet this target during your first 30 days of the job search.
Job/Company Research & Tracking Post-Grad Action Step: Reach out to and apply to at least 10 companies/jobs.
Housekeeping Post-Grad Action Step #1: During this timeframe, you should establish a “master” resume that you’ll customize per employer. You should already have a working version that you submitted in Module 3.
Housekeeping Post-Grad Action Step #2: Establish a “master” cover letter with your key talking points that you'll customize per employer.
Use this checklist here to make sure you have everything needed in your plan for your portfolio review. Your instructors will also use this checklist during the portfolio review.
- Establish shareable calendar and show to your instructor(s)
- List your cut-off date for having a full-time position
- List monthly, weekly, and daily goals
- Create "daily_practice" repo and describe to instructor(s) what you plan to practice
- List 3 people you will reach out to. Describe to instructor(s) why you'll reach out, when you'll email them by, what you hope to talk about, and what follow-up will look like
- List 3 meetups you'll attend and describe to instructor(s) why you'll attend them
- List the job search tracking system you're using and describe to instructor(s) why you're using it/how it will help you
- List 2-3 areas you'd like to continue to improve on for interviewing and outline concrete action steps on how you will improve those skills to describe to instructor(s)
- Turing portfolio is updated with 3 projects
- Summary of how you've updated your LinkedIn profile
- List additional area you'll focus on in your job search and describe why to instructor(s)
- List 1-2 people you'll check in with during job search
- List 1-2 "barriers" and describe how you will overcome them to your instructor(s)