I meet a lot of Bootcamp graduates looking to get hired and find themselves frustrated with the constant rejection. They see their Bootcamp experience as useful, but not ‘real’ enough to get hired, and wonder what they can do better. I haven’t had a chance to give highly personalized advice… until now.

This week, I had the opportunity to hire a recent Bootcamp graduate with no formal experience. As a matter of fact, they had no experience beyond their Demo Day project and their own learning. Despite this, they exceeded not just my own but my team’s expectations and we excitedly made an offer.

Looking back at this experience, I realized that this candidate did some things differently than most traditional Bootcamp graduates, and I wanted to share this with anyone else who is interested in making the jump.

Networking Had a Big Effect In Getting To The Interview

I had about a dozen or so people apply for the job, but only a few people actually got one on one interviews. The people who got through this initial interview process had one of two qualities:

• Their resume had a lot of positive signals (certifications, past experience, work experience that matched what we were looking for) and a lack of negative signals (long gaps, no direct experience with the tech, etc), OR
• I had a personal connection to the interviewee, either through an internal connection to my team or through meeting the people myself

In one case, the person who applied to my job not only emailed me but also had a resume that was full of positive signals. In the case of the Bootcamp graduate, I knew them from their demo day project. It wasn’t a typical project either, it’s clear they put in a TON of effort and went above and beyond to make something great. That left an impression.

Because of that Demo Day project, I reached out and asked to meet, which eventually led to the interview with my team.

It’s Not About Your Experience, It’s About Doing Everything You Can Do with What You Have

One of the things I noticed in the Bootcamp Graduate we hired was that had a TON of practical knowledge about the tools we wanted. It was clear that this individual had spent a lot of tinkering with the tool, making projects, and learning to the best of their ability.

We asked a bunch of questions related to these tools and processes, and this individual was able to answer the questions in a practical manner. However, it wasn’t fully complete knowledge (for example, this person didn’t have great knowledge of enterprise monitoring or secret management).

When speaking to my direct reports, I asked them if these knowledge gaps were an issue. To my surprise, they said it wasn’t a big deal. Why? Because this was an experience our team knew you could ONLY get working in an enterprise working environment. Of course the candidate wouldn’t understand how compliance work, they’ve never had that experience and wouldn’t be expected to.

But, it was clear that this individual learned everything they could with the tools and environment they were given, as meager as that seemed. This signaled to my team that this person was a self-motivated learner and this gave us confidence that if this individual came into our organization, they would soak up that knowledge as well.

And this is an absolutely invaluable characteristic.

Put Your Project Work In Your Resume

The Bootcamp graduate did not actually do a great job of showing the work he did have in his resume. I knew from their Demo Day and subsequent networking that he had experienced, but when presenting his resume to the group, they were quite confused about why we were interviewing him. Even the recruiter initially removed his resume from consideration before I rescued it.

Because of my personal connection, I was able to fill in the context and during the interview, he did a great job. However, had that personal connection not existed, we would not have had the chance to chat. And that would have deprived both him of a great opportunity and our team of a great candidate.

Instead, I’ve seen people take the project work they have done and put it in the experience section of the resume. While it’s true that it doesn’t fit the traditional role of ‘experience’, it does a couple of things well:

• When reading your resume, I can see what you’ve done and will take that into consideration
• If you put your project work as experience, it signals to me that you’ve taken that work seriously and that you treated it as real work
• Even if I mistake your project work for a real job, you’re more likely to get to the next phase of the hiring process, where you can better explain yourself

A word of caution: if you didn’t put the effort into your project and you try this strategy, you’re going to have a bad time. Our candidate DID put the work in and it showed, but you can’t half-ass your project and expect results. However, for people who DO take their project work seriously, this can be a great strategy for showcasing your abilities.

Conclusion: Take Your Project Work and Networking Seriously

One of my people put it best: “He’s a diamond in the rough”. Clearly, the individual we hired has some areas of improvement, but they are areas we are very well suited to be able to teach. And honestly, those are some of our favorite candidates to hire for.

But we were only able to get this person because they put in the effort to learn the tools as best they could. He had no special knowledge of the industry, only using the cloud resources and paid courses online to learn the tools. But by doing everything he could and being able to showcase those skills during the interview process, we decided he was a candidate worth inviting onto our team.

And anyone reading this has the ability to do the same thing.

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