software engineering

Hi, Ashley!

Have you kept coding since you graduated from your bootcamp? If so, awesome! If not, I think you'll want to get back into it. It took me a full year of learning that started with a three month bootcamp to have the technical skills to land a role. If you're hopping back in, I highly recommend Brad Travery's channel on YouTube called Traversy Media and getting an All-Access Subscription to Code With Mosh. Try to learn a specific, modern toolchain, things that will be in the stacks of places you will apply. That will give you things you can do technical interviews in.

I would spend about half your time on the coding side of things. And spend the other half on networking and looking for opportunities. The best thing I did was a hack-a-thon. There are in-person meetups, virtual meetups and events, and Slack channels. Having a LinkedIn profile is very useful for messaging folks. But recruiters don't do much for entry-level folks. There will be times of year when entry-level roles and internships will open up and times when they are closed. So you will end up with patches of opportunity bubbling up and then quieter times. It's fine to approach folks who only have mid- to senior-level roles open to ask about entry-level roles.

What you want is to be "recommended." It's not at all a risk for the person who recommends you, so don't worry about that. It just means a real human will consider you and likely give you an initial interview. You get out of the anonymous stack of online apps.

I would start by looking for women in tech meetups if you would feel comfortable with those in your city or cities where you would be looking for a job. Just keep it churning, people learning your name and your skills both nontechnical and technical, leads on jobs. It does take a long time for most folks, one way or the other. So don't think it's you! It's a very strange sector. And getting folks on Merit or elsewhere to review your self-learning and job search strategy and online presence (LinkedIn, GitHub,etc) is invaluable. They'll tell you your strengths to emphasize and notice areas for growth. I also did some mock technical interviews. Those were also invaluable!

Congrats on graduating! That's a huge accomplishment!

I'm not an engineer myself but I've worked with a lot of them over the years, and it sounds like you have to face a lot of rejection before you find success--it's a full-time job when you're searching!

This article (https://medium.com/merit-publication/interviewing-for-your-first-engineering-job-after-a-bootcamp-ba3067304997) gives a quick rundown of some steps you can take, with advice from some engineering hiring managers. Hope this helps, and best of luck!