Career change: advice for next steps

Hi,

l suppose companies are more interested in how creative you are and what you can bring to the table. Mostly do ask for computer science degree but then you realise most people are self taught. So l don't think not having a computer science degree would make much of a difference. You would need to show off your skills through your portfolio. Start with family and friends, tell them what you can do and get jobs from them for starters. Now in this illustrate your skills, if its a bit of CSS animation that you can do to get a site more interactive do it. l am also currently searching for job and have had a few interviews let me share what l learnt from the first two.

The first one was with a local agency. Almost everyone working there had been to university as l did my background search on linkedln. But this did not put me off l still applied for the job and got an interview. They were looking for junior/graduate front-end developer with skills in HTML,CSS,PHP,JS and WordPress. My failure to getting the job compared to other candidates was my less attention to the job description. l was sat in the interview making reference to Ruby,Objective-C and that. l was in that mindset that if they think l know more than other candidates interviewed l would get the job. But that really wasn't so. l also failed to show them a tidy a wordpress site. Now let me share with you the feedback l got from the Director of the agency.

"Unfortunately on this occasion we have decided to progress with another applicant mainly because he had a little more agency experience than yourself.

If we had a little bit of feedback to pass on it would be to maybe tailor and focus your cv and presentation a little more. We for example were looking for a strong, junior front end developer to work on wordpress so small references to objective-c and python etc are of less interest.

If you had a single very tidy wordpress site to present I think it would come across better. Maybe even copy a design from a theme you see on themeforest but do the code from scratch which will help from a presentation point of view?"

So maybe if l knew l have shown them a tidy wordpress site and talked more about what they wanted to know they would have taken me on. This might be an interview but the idea is pretty much they same .you would want to tailor your CV and give them links to what they want to see and relevant to your job application.

On my second interview l learnt, l have a lot of knowledge l have not used with my clients. They were happy to know stuff that l had done but l did have any thing live to show them that l have really done it. l realised that l need to start pushing stuff that l learn on here to my github or get them live, after l learnt and build it on my own and technically the code is mine. Theres a difference between saying you can do it and you have done it. That makes a difference as most graduates would walk in there saying they can do it but haven't really done it. Also remember experience counts and thats what they are looking for as they won't want to baby sitting someone they have taken on, afterall they got enough on they plat.

ln Summary, my advice would be still go for those jobs after building your portfolio and been very creative with them is to tailor your CV to fit in with the Job and give links to things they want to CV. it doesn't always have to be something you built for a client. it could be something you did on codepen, a side-project or something you did just for fun and pushed it online. Mostly you get asked what have you been doing or show us some of your site,make use of your presentation skills at this stage to win them over.

Hope this helps.

Hi Silvia! I am based in the UK but I imagine the situation in the US is similar. One of the best places to find new clients as a freelancer is to go to local business meet ups. These might be organised by a local bank, council/government agency or independent organisation. Here you can get advice on running your own freelance business and also get to meet other people who are starting out. The great thing about this is that all the other people attending will be potential clients for you as they are starting new businesses and will likely need websites!

Another avenue would be meeting up with other local developers as getting to know them would give you the opportunity to collaborate on projects with them - they could bring work to you. You could try looking for nearby groups on meetup.com.

On the degree front I wouldn't worry too much. In my experience in this field employers want to see your work rather than a piece of paper. A great way to do this aside from a portfolio is on Github as people can see all the code you've used very easily. You can still apply for the job even if they're asking for a degree, tell them you are self taught and stay on top of all the latest advances with Treehouse.

In the UK a comparative starting hourly rate would be £20-25/hour ($32-40/hour). Could someone from the US give an idea of what they started out charging?

Thank you, Kelvin and Tom! After reading your experiences and advice I feel more confident to apply for jobs, join Meetups and look for clients. I would appreciate some feedback to my work-in-progress portfolio website: sandcatwebdesign.com. I created this website from scratch after learning about parallax effects and I plan to update and modernize the 2 websites I made so far for friends and family, when they will send me new pictures and material. Any idea how many examples of recent works should be listed in the portfolio?

Thank you, Andrew, for the feedback and advice! Good luck with your projects as well! I just joined Git and still figuring out how to use it. We can collaborate if you don't mind a beginner :)

I just recently finished the front end web developing course. I am to the point of looking for jobs and every time I do look for a job they want someone with experience their looking for are 2 to 5 yrs experience. In which sometimes looking for a job can be downgrading. Are there any advice or for a person whose looking for a job? Thank you and much aprreciated.