Earn a knockout career in tech with a coding bootcamp

From Financial Consultant to Associate Solutions Developer, Acxiom

"For those doubting your ability to land a job in tech, whether it be a developer role or something else. If I can do it, you can easily do it!"

This is Keith Yazdanseta, a Nucamp Back End Bootcamp graduate and now an Associate Solutions Developer at Acxiom.

Keith loves boxing and even had a brief amateur boxing career before he had to hang up his gloves.

He channeled his natural competitiveness into a career in sales and marketing, but facing clients day in and day out became an uneven matchup.

Having to be extroverted at work each day was a bigger drain than he had anticipated.

Keith thought entering the ring of creating projects, rather than selling them, would be more fulfilling.

For two years he watched from the sidelines as many of his friends moved into tech.

Keith considered the career change, but something kept holding him back from making the first move.

Then his best friend became a developer and told Keith to try Python.

Keith sized up what coding was all about and began self-studying with a few online courses.

Keith now knew he wanted to go all-in on becoming a developer, but noticed teaching himself had its drawbacks; namely lack of structure and credibility.

During his search for a career and coding coach, he realized employers were seeking coding bootcamp graduates just as much as those with college degrees.

Not having a tech background and not wanting to pay the money or time for a 4-year degree, Keith was excited to fast-track his learning by joining a coding bootcamp.

He weighed his options after contacting a number of coding bootcamps, but Nucamp won pound-for-pound.

Keith liked that Nucamp was completely online, had impressive career stats, and had a flexible part-time schedule so he could continue to work full-time while studying.

He graduated from the Back End with Python Bootcamp, not only with a confidence in what he learned, but also with great connections and friends.

Keith’s career coach was instrumental during his job search and they still keep in touch today.

“My career coach was excellent. He was extremely generous with his time and guidance. He helped me work through practice problems and prepared me extremely well for the interview process. We spent hours together online analyzing code, strategizing, and approaching interviews. He went above and beyond, spending hours helping me practice problems and has been very supportive.”

Describe your job search process.

Upon graduation, Keith connected with his Nucamp career coach and a recruiter.

He also made a goal of completing about 100 applications a month.

After three months he landed his new position as an Associate Solutions Developer at Acxiom.

Keith is currently working on a project for Citibank’s front-end marketing needs and is primarily using SQL and will soon be trained on their HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

What advice do you have for people who are thinking about attending a bootcamp, but haven't yet registered?

“Look at the bootcamp timeline, and tell your family. Make sure it’s economically feasible and do some self-study along with it. You’re spending money, make the most of it, put your best foot forward.”

What advice do you have for people who have already started the bootcamp and they are just about to finish Bootstrap?

"There was a break before DevOps. Do extra study before going into it. Be ahead of the curve, you don’t want to get lost. I would advise everyone to get on LinkedIn and connect with recruiters. Despite a lot of people being flaky, you don’t know when your skillset will match with the opportunity. I was by far the weakest coder in my bootcamp, but I differentiated myself by saying I don’t come from a technical background. I tapped into everyone in the field that was a developer to help me.“