Break into tech

Key takeaways

1. Be intentional - research your strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis)
2. Be hungry - stay consistent in your career journey
3. Get real-world project experience for your portfolio - which EntryLevel helps with

Use code TECH0302 for a discount on an EntryLevel course - it expires on March 31, 2024.

Connect with our speaker on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Notes

Can you break into tech with a non-tech background?

From experience, most people I’ve worked with that have been amazing - have been from a non-tech background

How can you break into tech from a non-tech background?

Discover your niche

Learning - courses

• EntryLevel caught my interest
• They don’t just have a course with a certificate, they have a portfolio

Portfolio is what you should look for to break into tech

How to make your portfolio great?

It’s not just having a portfolio to share

It’s intentional

• You know what you want, where you’re going, the kind of industry you want to work in, what they need in those industries

Building portfolio to catch interest of specific industry

How do you pick the best field for you?

Start by knowing what you want to do first

Tech ecosystem is very broad

1. Understand length and breadth of tech ecosystem
2. Pick a niche and do research - break an industry into smaller units (data analyst vs data scientist, etc.)
3. Learn and make projects

The choice will guide your projects and case studies for your portfolios

Example: if financial analyst, you’ll play around with data around banks and financial institutions

What’s the best way to do that research to find out about these fields?

Personal SWOT analysis

Can understand yourself better

Understand your strengths

Explain SWOT analysis?

Strengths and weaknesses are internal (i.e. strength being good at communication)

Know these things and how it helps you take action

Opportunity: develop weakness to become a strength

Opportunities are things that are external that can give you leverage

• Maybe while taking courses on EntryLevel, you have a close friend or family that’s also a designer
• That’s an opportunity - that person can help you learn faster

Weaknesses may be a strength, but you haven’t developed them

• Help you see what you can work on

Example: you want to be a product manager

• But a weakness is communicating with teams
• It’s what you can develop and pay attention to

How much does job demand in the market play into this?

Related to SWOT analysis: it’s an external factor

You love a career path, but it might not have a lot of demand in your country or area (low demand)

You should be intentional about knowing what the market is saying in your location

Research top tech skills in demand

Do research - be intentional about yourself and the job market

Landing remote jobs?

Now, there’s a lot of borderless work going on (can work remotely for companies in different countries)

LinkedIn is best for anything jobs

Online branding and putting yourself out there

• You appear on the searches that recruiters are searching on (when they search on LinkedIn and your profile pops up)

Social media - get into tech space

LinkedIn tips?

Most of the time, from the point of a recruiter, is how accurately you make use of keywords in your profile

Some recruiters want to see what you’ve been sharing (posts) in the industry - to get insight on your skillset

Common mistakes

Imposter syndrome - feel like they’re not there yet, can’t talk about self on social media

But you can share what you’ve been learning as a beginner

• Shows you’re comfortable sharing and open to feedback

Pay attention to soft skills

• It helps you grow in tech
• Technical skills help you land the job, soft skills help you grow

#1 piece of advice for beginners?

Take a course on EntryLevel.net

Find out which course and tech career is best for you: https://www.entrylevel.net/quiz

Research about tech (can use AI to help)

Do your SWOT analysis

• Where do you find excitement when researching tech fields?

Be hungry as much as possible

• Be hungry to learn this skill
• Hunger never goes away - motivation

Resources

Take a quiz to learn which tech career is best for you: https://www.entrylevel.net/quiz

Student success stories mentioned:

• Jennifer landed her first internship by standing out with her portfolio project‍
• Eric shared his work online and got hired by a recruiter
• Melvina shared her learning journey on LinkedIn daily and landed an internship in 4 months
• Christiana was persistent and used feedback from cold outreach to improve her LinkedIn, and got recruiters reaching out to her for jobs
• Michael landed a remote tech job by showing off his EntryLevel soft skill badges (on his certificate) during an interview

LinkedIn tips: https://www.entrylevel.net/events/using-linkedin-for-your-job-search

Remote job boards:

• ‍https://blog.entrylevel.net/p/find-remote-jobs-5-secret-sites-tips-applying‍
• https://blog.entrylevel.net/p/find-remote-tech-jobs‍
• https://blog.entrylevel.net/p/5-remote-tech-job-boards

EntryLevel's Discord community has job postings: https://discord.gg/3RpSSkCvux

Jennifer's portfolio projects:

• UX design
• Data analysis‍

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EntryLevel's resources

Our website: https://www.entrylevel.net/

FAQs: https://intercom.help/entrylevel/en/

Contact: support@entrylevel.net, jennifer@entrylevel.net

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About us

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EntryLevel helps you learn and get experience so you can get hired. Our 6-week programs are taught by world-class mentors, so you can learn and build a portfolio of work.

You'll learn with a cohort of driven peers, and each lesson is unlocked after a set time so you stay accountable and finish the program.

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