Getting a job with treehouse on your resume.

There's a whole list of success stories here:

http://teamtreehouse.com/stories

Hey Michael:

I only started with HTML and CSS about 3 weeks ago and will be doing wordpress. I was lucky enough to secure a 3 month training program alongside my current job.

Good luck with it. The skills you learn here, as you know are quite valuable.

Thank you, novice :) Question: did you have an online portfolio or some examples of your work in the wild for your prospective employer to reference? Or was making your profile public sufficient?

@Michael If you can build something, even if you don' think it's AMAZING, I would build something, just to show that you can. You have to have something that people can go to and see in the wild.

John Locke

Hi John:

I did not show any online portfolios because it is a training program.

However, they did ask for some experience and I mentioned what I have been doing with TeamTreehouse. They fired questions at with the regard to UX, CSS, HTML and I answered all of them to the best of my ability.

Bear in mind, as they are going to be training me, I just needed to show initiative more than anything else. Knowledge went a long way in helping me as well.

As it is a web marketing position with elements of HTML, CSS, SEO, WordPress, etc etc, it was worth my while to put in a few hours on here.

I learned the hard way that experience counts more than fancy degrees...

John Locke

But if you can show something you've built, it will go a long way. No one will pay me thousands as a web designer that just started a few weeks ago, hence the training program. As time goes on, I will be blending web marketing and web design.

This is turning into a very informative discussion :) So here's a question I'd like to field to both John and Novice. What resources did you use when looking for your respective web design gigs?

Hi Michael:

I have a background in marketing and business. As you are well aware, things in the two fields have changed and conventional marketing or business practices alone don't work anymore.

I decided to take practice HTML and CSS in order to develop into a better marketer with the ability to use online resources.

As such, I used my past experience and the practical work I have done on here to get the training. Because this is a training, all I need to show was initiative, knowledge, understanding of concepts such as HTML and SEO etc etc. I also showed them some of the index files I practiced on.

That went a long way for a training/internship where only my expenses will be paid. In order for anyone to pay me well for web design, I need a lot more practice and training so I will be putting on the hours.

Does that help or answer your question?

novice J You need both. You have to have a baseline competency, but showing that you have a track record of being able to learn new things is vital. Things change on the Web all the time. Projects are actually a great place to try new things, and test your comfort levels. I always have a side project going on top of work that I get paid for.

@Michael Finding my way was a real lonely place at first. I didn't know anyone in the design community when I began. Meeting people in person definitely pays off, do it when you can, just to show you're a decent human being. But getting paying jobs, at first, I had to keep building things to show people, and applying to stuff until someone finally got a hold of me. Training on this site and others like Code School or Lynda help a lot, but I had already been reading books for a long time, but there is no good substitute for building something. Building something for others really has a different feel than beuilding something for yourself, too. My advice is apply to whatever you think you're capable of doing (and most ads - 20% of the list may be things you won't need -you will get a feel for it after a while). Meet other designers and developers, and build stuff you can show. A small hosting package can hold a lot of sites.

To be short and sweet. While I was doing my undergrad, outside the classroom I would do Treehouse. It filled in a lot of voids, I guess I'm a slow learner but persistent. After I graduated I interned as a Network Engineer for SAIC under the NASA NICS contract. During that time I coupled my Treehouse learning with some other eLearning resources. Now I am a entry level Software Engineer for DTS's NASA MITS contract building, editing, testing websites and applications.

Treehouse helped me tremendously, and it is aiding me in pursuing my graduate studies and with some freelancing WordPress development on the side.