Step 1: Research

Explore diverse tech roles to pinpoint your interests and align your skills with the right path. Use roadmap.sh for insightful overviews and roadmaps for roles like UX/UI designers, technical writers, DevOps engineers, and software developers.

🔭 Explore Roles: Dive into various tech roles to understand their unique challenges and opportunities.
🗺️ Use roadmap.sh: Leverage roadmap.sh for comprehensive insights and skill development roadmaps.
🎯 Narrow Down Interests: Identify roles that align with your aspirations and skills.

Step 2: Network

Having narrowed down your desired tech role, it's time to build connections that can shape your path. Follow these steps to effectively network and gain valuable insights:

🚀 Leverage LinkedIn for Tech Success! 🌐

Utilize LinkedIn as a powerful platform to connect with professionals in your chosen field. Search for individuals holding the role you aspire to and send personalized connection requests.

🤝 Expand Your Network

As you engage with professionals, expand your network by connecting with others in similar roles or related industries. Building a diverse network will expose you to various perspectives and opportunities within the tech sector.

☕ Request Coffee Chats - Brew Success!

Initiate conversations by requesting virtual or in-person coffee chats. Politely ask if they'd be willing to share insights about their role, daily responsibilities, and experiences at their current company. Many professionals are open to helping aspiring individuals in the tech field.

🎓 Learn from Their Experiences

During the coffee chats, absorb information about their journey into the tech industry. Inquire about the skills they found most valuable, challenges faced, and any advice they have for someone making a career switch.

💡 Tap into Valuable Advice

People within the tech community often provide valuable advice to those looking to transition. Use this opportunity to gather insights that will guide your next steps, helping you navigate the tech landscape more effectively.

Step 3: Learning!!

Embarking on a career transition demands a solid foundation in tech skills. Delve into the curated list of free resources meticulously compiled to empower you with the essential knowledge for success. These resources, thoughtfully organized on Google Sheets, cater to various learning preferences and are categorized into two distinct tracks:

🎓 Self-Paced Learning 🎓

Explore the flexibility of self-paced learning, allowing you to tailor your educational journey according to your schedule and learning style. These resources enable you to progress at your own pace, gaining in-depth insights into the intricacies of diverse tech domains.

🤝 Cohort-Based Learning 🤝

Immerse yourself in a collaborative learning experience through cohort-based learning. Join a community of like-minded individuals, engage in structured learning sessions, and benefit from shared insights. Cohort-based learning provides a dynamic environment that fosters collaboration, discussion, and collective growth.

I want you to act as an expert tech industry resume writer and reword this job duty in a way that shows my transferrable skills. “Handling and resolving customer complaints regarding product sales to customer service problems”

Certainly! Here's a revised version that emphasizes your transferrable tech skills: "Managed and resolved customer inquiries spanning product sales and customer service, leveraging technical expertise to address issues seamlessly from initial contact through resolution. Demonstrated proficiency in troubleshooting and effectively communicating solutions, contributing to enhanced customer satisfaction and retention.

Step 4: Optimize your resume

You may be thinking that none of your past roles or your current roles are relevant to the new tech role you want but that’s not the case! You have MANY transferrable skills that are valuable to you succeeding in your new tech role.

My favorite tool to use is ChatGPT to help me figure out ways to rewrite job duties! You will have to play around with your wording when asking ChatGPT to rewrite your transferable skills but my favorite way to start a prompt is by telling it to act as an expert in the subject area I am trying to fix, for example: ➡️

This is of course a little too long of a job duty, you always want to aim for one sentence per job duty but it’s a great baseline to nitpick the verbiage you’d like to use in your new resume template! You also want to add KEY VALUE METRICS, numbers make people happy and if you can show you increased productivity by 20%+ your interviewee will like that.

Don’t downsize any previous job you’ve had, they are all valuable life experiences that form your professional self to this day and have helped you reach to the point you are now! REMEMBER THAT!

Step 5: Optimize your Linkedin!

Your LinkedIn is one of the most important things employers see alongside your resume, especially in the tech industry. It’s also necessary because you will be using LinkedIn to network with people as I mentioned in Step 2.

Here’s a checklist of things you should be doing to optimize your LinkedIn:

📷 Get a professional headshot and use this on LinkedIn.
🤝🏽 Create an authentic banner that includes your name and portfolio, be creative with it don’t pick a stock photo on Canva and call it a day.
🗣️ Create a capturing headline

Avoid using the words aspiring or looking for a tech role. Think of your headline as a short sweet elevator pitch. What do you bring to the table? I transform ideas into code OR I help companies automate their workflow. You could also ask ChatGPT for help with this with a similar prompt from the resume writing: I want you to act as an expert LinkedIn career coach, and help me write a good eye captivating headline, I am just starting out in tech and I am learning technologies to be _XYZ_.

✍🏽 Write your summary and tell your reader why your switching to teach, what motivates you, and what you hope to accomplish if and when you land such a position!
💻 Document your journey!

Write a post a day on LinkedIn and youse hashtags so you can get your posts noticed and interact with other people’s posts. As a developer I’ve personally done #100daysOfCode, which involves me dedicating an hour a day to coding and writing on LinkedIn what I learned each day. That got me noticed by quite a few people and helped me network with others. Remember when I said companies also look at your LinkedIn? Yeah well if you're documenting your journey you're showing evidence that you are dedicated to learning and becoming better at the role you are going after!

Thank you so much for reading this guide.

I created it because lately, I’ve had many people reach out to me for advice on resources and what they should do since they are starting out. I figured it would be better to have a guide that I could give each person full of many resources and tips and tricks to help. It would be great to connect with each and every one of you so add me on LinkedIn and provide any feedback you’d like about this guide!