I'm posting this on behalf of someone else. She is in early 30s with a college degree (not CSE) and has left a career of being a school teacher and is looking for opportunities as a software engineer. She has completed a coding boot camp while working as a teacher. She has applied to a few companies and programs but can't seem to get to an interview. A sample of those that have been tried so far: - Vanguard (ghosted after coding challenge) - Twitter career change internship (rejected after coding challenge) - Goldman Sachs (recently submitted coding challenge, waiting) - Lyft (ghosted after coding challenge) I (the poster) have been discouraging her from applying from the "sweat shop" coding jobs, but she's quickly running out of places to apply. Is there no other option for a company that is willing to invest in her? (and compensate more than sweat shop rates?) If anyone has recommendations or referrals for career change internship programs or entry level opportunities that can be remote (US), it would be appreciated. If anyone has advice on how to succeed in any of these programs, it would also be appreciated. #internship #twitter #goldmansachs #vanguard #careerchange #remote #lyft #swe #entrylevel
Were the coding challenges sent to her automatically, or did some recruiter screen her application?
I'm not sure. Some of them seem to have a delay in sending the coding challenges, but as to why the delay exists I'm uncertain. I assumed that there was some manual screening, but it could just be batching candidates to HackerRank.
Well, one possibility is that she isn’t doing well enough on the coding challenges. Find someone who’s an experienced SWE and has done these online coding tests before. Ask that person to review her code
Why is she failing the coding challenges?
That is a good question. She can make all the test cases pass on the HackerRank questions and some of these tests have essay questions. I can only assume that the rejection would be unrelated to the test and more that there are just enough more qualified applicants.
She should try the LinkedIn apprenticeship program. It targets career changers but she does need to do well on coding challenge to pass, of course. Try to get her submissions critiqued by SWE or web dev.
Maybe she can try smaller companies or maybe even internships? She'll probably start with low TC but at least she'll be growing and doing something she enjoys. She can also continue applying to big name companies in parallel.
All of the big name company jobs she's applied to are "career change internships" as far as I'm aware. They're internships designed for people that have non CSE degrees and have work experience.
Oh OK I wasn't aware. She just gotta keep trying then, there's no science to this honestly.