Axl Alumni Spotlight

AXL:

I didn't do anything IT-related really in the military. I did more office administrative stuff. But funny enough, I got out in March of this year, started Sabio in April, graduated in August and got a job offer in September. Like, it's all seamless. 

I started applying about two weeks off from graduation. I probably put out 2k plus applications with 2k plus rejections. Had maybe 20 to 25 actual people hit me up and do meetings with me. Near the end I actually made some adjustments to my resume and I started getting more and more final round interviews. One piece of advice I would throw out there is, you know, the easy apply on LinkedIn.  Yeah, it's easy. You can spam a whole bunch of applications that way. But honestly, not a lot of recruiters look at that because like I said, they're being spammed by a ton of people. If you actually take the extra second to go on the website, if it is a website, and apply, they actually look at those a little bit more carefully. You know one thing is – don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you apply and then they move the application over to “under review” or you’re waiting for your final round, keep applying because nothing is concrete, nothing is certain until you get that job offer.

Q: What was your job interview like?

AXL:

They just talked to me like a person. They wanted to know, do you have drive, do you have the passion to learn, to be intuitive, the hunger for knowledge because that's what they want. Especially, you know, somebody that doesn't have a lot of background. They want to see that you have that want, that need to better yourself, to get ahead because that'll make them a lot more willing to give you a chance because it shows, hey, this guy's actually going to get ahead in the company instead of, you know, just being a guy that's collecting a paycheck.

Q: What should you say if they ask if you went to a bootcamp?

AXL:

Don't advertise it. But if they ask you, Hey, where did you learn your skills? Don't lie because that doesn't look good on you. And if it's a behavioral thing and, you know, they interview a lot of people, they're going to pick up on it. Don't just outright lie. If they keep digging down and you're saying, yeah, I went through an intensive hands-on program that taught me a lot of skills, etc., etc…Like I said, make it sound nice, but don't advertise it because you can throw yourself out there in the same level as the new grads from college that don't have any professional experience where you do.

Q: Did you negotiate your salary?

AXL:

I told them, Hey I'm looking for a position between 75 to 85. And they’re like, Okay, cool. Came back on September 1st and said Oh, hey, we're going to give you 87k, full benefits. Okay. I didn’t negotiate it because you know I was just happy to get it. And it was above my expectation so I had nothing really to negotiate. So I was, you know, pretty friggin happy.

Q: What is the day-to-day like at your job?

AXL:

It's all remote. My company is down in Tennessee, actually, which is where I'm from. Surprise, surprise, I’m using .NET and Microsoft SQL Server. Right now I'm going to be switching over to Angular, which is similar to React. It's another front end language but the experience and knowledge of React and JavaScript, everything makes the transition a little easier whereas, you know, learning it all from scratch. But yeah, the skills definitely transfer over. The standups? Guess what – companies have them. I actually had mine this morning. I met the entire team. Really nice people. They are a little bit different from Sabio, a lot more in-detail, but it's really cool seeing how everything works and seeing the team come together and answer questions. It's great. Everything you're doing at Sabio happens at companies.