the power of self care, networking, and community w/annie t. bellefleur a software engineer at stitch fix

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to, to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdss and t d e s s e y n. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Taylor, let's give the people what they want. Annie, who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Before we get to that, I do want to say I was excited to go to render, but when I found out that you were going to be the host, I was like, I'm going, I have to get my ticket.

But anyway, so yeah, I'm Annie. I am from Douglasville, Georgia. I'm a health, came from healthcare field and I'm a software engineer and I've dedicated a lot of my free time to helping people, more people get into the tech field because I know it's been life-changing for me saying I know it's going to be life-changing for a lot of other people. So excited to be here, excited to talk to you, excited to see everyone. Yes, definitely, definitely. All right, so let's dive into it. So I want to talk about your story, right? So I kind of did a call, Call for speakers, call for action, whatever.

I was like, hey, listen, I want to highlight more individuals in their stories on the job sequence. I was very manager heavy, leadership heavy for the first half of the year. So second half of the year, I want to do more job secret stuff. So Andy, talk about your story. Healthcare boot camp, coder, talk about what, let's start first. What made you go from healthcare to potentially go into coding? So I got into, I was in healthcare for about 20 plus years. I absolutely loved what I did, right? I thought it was my passion. I was going to do it for the rest of my life.

But then I kind of got tired of it. I was like, I've been doing this for a minute. I could do it with my eyes closed, whatever, I'm over it. I didn't know anything about software engineer. All I knew was, in order to get into the field, you have to have a four-year degree. That's all I knew. And I had done the school thing, I was over it, right? But then I met up with an old college buddy of mine, Ruben Harris, who told me about- Hey, Ruben Harris, like career-corner, Ruben Harris? career karma Ruben Harris. Yeah. I've been trying to get Ruben on the podcast too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we need to get him on here. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, um, so yeah. So I, you know, I talked to him because he was, you know, he started career karma was helping people get into the tech field. And so I had a conversation with him and he told me about bootcamp. And I was like, huh, this might be the way to do it. Then a little bit of self study fell in love with coding. Like I would stay up late at night learning programming, learning HTML JavaScript. And I'm not a night person. Like if I don't sleep, I have a terrible day.

So for me to sacrifice my sleep to learn this thing, I was like, maybe this is right, what I need to do. So I finally got into bootcamp, did the whole thing at general simply for three months, loved it. Well, it was a love hate relationship, but loved it. And then two and a half months later, I got my job at Stitch Fix, and it's been an amazing journey. Wouldn't change the world. So how did you go? Did you have any criteria that you picked out for General Assembly? Was it that they just email you one day and you're like, I'm gonna go here, because I'm kind of curious, right?

And like I said, I get to a point, like I'm very blessed. I've only been on the job search once, and that was to find Vaco, and ever since then I have male adopters. So I understand that it's not, Like I try to put myself in as many people's shoes as I feasibly can, but at the end of the day, I can't. So talk to me about like, like, what was a mindset around, okay, college education versus bootcamp? Like did Ruben tell you, hey, listen, you don't need a college education? Yeah, so yeah, he said, you know, to get into the tech field, you don't necessarily need to have a college degree.

You just need to know how to do the job. You need to know how to code, you need to know how to program. But the criteria for me to get into general assembly was number one, did they offer financial assistance? So at the time, I really couldn't pay 14,000 dollars. Right? And they did, right? They offered the ISA Income Sharing Agreement type of program, which was great for me. And then I read reviews, right? I kind of read reviews from people who had been there before and interviewed a few of them to kind of get their experience and see if this is where I wanted to be.

And then the other thing was a length of time. There's different, But who can that do three months, six months a year? And I really didn't want to take too long to learn and get into the field. So three months sounded like the perfect time frame for me. And then those were the things that I looked at, but the biggest thing was asking around, asking questions, asking people who had been there, who had gone through that experience, what they liked, what they didn't like to see if I was, that's where I wanted to be. Yep, I love it. I love it. So went to boot camp three months.

Was it was it a full time 40 hours a week type situation? Yep. Okay. And it was during the pandemic, which was helpful for me, because I just left my job and I was committed to doing full time. Okay. Awesome. So did the boot camp, what was your focus in the boot camp? We focused mainly on JavaScript and Python, React, and yeah, those those things. What I really loved about it was the support though. Like talk about that. What would you be aware of when you say support? From the professors, are they going to take the time to answer your questions or try to rush through just to give you to teach you what you need to learn?

your career coach, are they going to be available to help you with your resume and interviewing and stuff like that? Are they going to give you all the resources that you need to be successful? And then after classes, is there someone available to TA's to kind of help you as you're going along, working on your projects, working on your homework and stuff like that? Those things are really important because you can learn, but if you have those questions when you're stuck is there someone there to help you to guide you to help make sure that you understand what you're doing. Okay, okay, awesome. And then so, so let's talk about coming out of boot camp, right?

That's kind of the scary thing. I think going from zero to one is obviously like you're kind of in a cocoon, I would say, and then like you're kind of like, all right, it's time to fly. Like, oh shit, right? So what was a process like like, what's the mentality like when you're wrapping up a boot camp? Well, what was your mentality and then how did you end up ending up at stitch fix? My mentality was a little Unrealistic right because I thought I know how to program. I'm gonna lend a job two weeks later Well, I think that's nothing that's a lot of people.

Yeah, I think it's a lot of people's like listen I'm in a great boot camp. I know what I'm doing Right Right exactly what I didn't take into account was boot camp gave me structure, right? I had a schedule, I knew Monday through Friday, this is what I was gonna be doing, this was what I was gonna be working on. When you're done with bootcamp, you don't have, you have to make that for yourself. Like you don't have that. And so it becomes really chaotic and frustrating and overwhelming, right? Because you're like, like, I have so much to do. Like when am I gonna have the time to do all of this?

So I didn't think about that ahead of time, right? And so in the beginning, the first couple of weeks, was a lot. But eventually I realized and having conversation with other people, I realized I need to give myself some structure or this is going to drain me. So I'm so passionate about this right now. I think people, I think 99% of people on this chat and there's a lot of people on this chat are probably wildly inefficient with their days. Yes, agreed. And I interviewed, I don't know if you all remember, was it I'm blanking on his name. Shoot. I had him two weeks ago through to go on the show right before I left for vacation.

Um, but he's coming back on the show, but he talked about the same thing about how he had no structure and he struggled with it so bad. And so for those of you who are coming out of bootcamp, you have to be intentional time block. Like, and I'm talking about, and Annie, I don't know if you got this gradual or granular, I'm interested, like nine to 10, send out DMS. Go ahead, go ahead. Yep, that's exactly like I had a full on schedule from the time I woke up, when am I gonna do my prayer meditation? When am I gonna, what days am I gonna focus on my project?

What days am I gonna focus on networking? Like literally everything was planned out. So if I, I'm not gonna remember my schedule for real, but I was actually about to ask like, do you remember, I'm not asking, do you remember what you did from nine to 10, but do you remember kind of how you structured your days to maybe help develop boot campers with this? Yeah, so I would do something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Networking. It's my days to focus on networking and interview prep. And that's all I did those days, right? Setting out networking messages, code emails, posting, engaging in posts and stuff like that, posting on Twitter, right?

That was what I was doing. For the second, for sure. And then I would use Pramp.com to do mock interviews and do mock interviews with my family and kind of look up interview questions that I might need to focus on a little bit more, right? That's what I did those days. On Tuesday, Thursday, I focused on project, data structure and algorithm. I was working with a few senior engineers because this was during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. So I was working with a few of them to create a website to help people understand where are the polling stations and stuff like that.

And I dedicated my time for that. But I gave myself that structure. And when I did, things were not as difficult. I love that. I love that. A few comments coming in here. And I want to give a shout out to people who are tuning in. So Nicholas out here, networking. I love it. Alex, Christina, sleep effects are memory to 100%. Yolanda, Anna, Anna is a fellow General Assembly grad. I love it. Noah, my man, good morning. Carla out here asking who shoes are cuter. I am wearing orthotic shoes, so probably Annie's. I'm wearing fluffy slippers. I love it. Love you, so Virginia, as crazy you.

Alex definitely saying that, and same Demetrius, and same Lauren, and same Romero, everybody struggling right now with time blocking coming out of boot camp. Yes, it's very, very difficult. Nicholas comes in, graduated a few months ago, and he's fried my brain, trying to focus on the next thing. hard working full time and trying to try to fit time to study work on projects. So any more thoughts, any on just obviously these two comments right here? Yeah, so I would say make sure that your schedule fits with you and what you got going on, right? If you can't do eight hours a day with networking and working on projects and all you can do is two hours a day, put in those two hours a day.

All you can do is four hours, but do do what works for you, right? As long as you're getting in those practices, as long as you're doing your networking, as long as you're doing those things, just make sure that it works for you and you're not overwhelming yourself, right? You're not working eight hours and then coming home and doing 10 hours of job search stuff. Yeah. That's not gonna work at the end of the way. And we're getting into this here too, with so much to cover, I already feel a part two coming on Annie, but basically, like I've gotten very passionate again, again, because I go through waves because I hate working out.

I hate physical fitness. Hey, man. Like my wife loves it. And she jokes with me. She was like, are you mad at me? And I go, no, I literally just hate what I'm doing. And but again, I've challenged myself. I actually said a challenge for myself yesterday. And I was actually talking to one of my team members about trying to at least move for 30 minutes a day, six days a week. And it's not 30 minutes. Like I'm not asking you to go to the gym and lift weights for 30 minutes, because the drive is an extra time on either side. Like I talked to my cowork about it, just go walk for 30 minutes, like just move.

So, and I think kind of going what you're saying Annie, just time block a little bit every day. It doesn't have to be 10 hours, it can be an hour, it can be hell, it can be 30 minutes, maybe reciting your pitch in front of a mirror about who you are, right? All that makes sense. So let's see here. You have to remember that, you know, people have families, they have to have lives, you know what I mean? 100%. Great question from Zoe coming in here. Zoe, thank you again for tuning in, girl. How did you network? What platforms did you use? All right. All right.

Hold on. All right. Let's work pause on this real quick. Now. All right. Let's just talk about there's so many questions. So let's just go ahead and hit this. Okay. How did I network? Most of my networking was done via LinkedIn and Twitter. I was heavy, heavy on Twitter when I was in a job search. When you sang heavy on Twitter, Twitter's its own animal. So what is that? Like, can you define a framework of what heavy meant on Twitter for bootcamp rec? What heavy meant on Twitter, well, for me, was I was heavy networking with the tech community in Twitter, right? So I was commenting on engaging on post on Twitter.

And somebody posted about was posting about a certain framework that they were learning or a certain experience that they had. And it resonated with me. I would comment on that. Like I would be visible is what I'm trying to say. Right? And I was also posting like my work, what am I learning, my projects, how am I working on my projects? I was posting like snippets of what I was doing each and every day so that people can start to see me, see what my work ethics are. You know what I mean? Like there's this thing called the no like and trust factor. The more people see you, the more they know you, the more they start to like you, the more they start to trust you, right?

Can you say that one? I just got a goosebumps. That was so good. Can you check that out? Can you say that? Yeah. So the more people see you, the more they start to know you, the more they know you, the more they start to like you, the more they start to like you, the more they start to trust you. And it's easier than for you to say, Hey, I see that there's a job opening at your company, you know, would you mind giving me some more details about what does the work look like or, you know, how to get my foot in the door?

They like they trust you at this point so they're more than happy to help you out in any way that they can yeah So good. I love it. I talk about Hold on talk talk about LinkedIn How did you use did you use LinkedIn and Twitter similarly like what was the biggest difference between the two that you used? so When I was when I was job searching I didn't know much about LinkedIn right? I just knew it was a professional platform people do that's why I'm so loud about it because But the LinkedIn is legit. It's the place to be. But because I didn't know so much about it, I kind of just worked on my profile.

I made sure I look really professional, talked about who I was. And then I would reach out to recruiters and hiring managers on there, right? Maybe some VPs or directors or CEOs of smaller companies. So you would call DM. You'd be out there calling DMing. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Ruben is actually the one that gave me the idea to code. And I was code emailing. I was like, I need to meet that. I need to meet the manager next year, which I'm so excited to have an excuse to him and hang out with him. But yeah, so he's smart. Yes. But yeah, I was code messaging people.

I was, you know, if I saw a job posting, hey, I would love to talk to you about this posting. What can I do to get my foot in the door? How, what are you looking for? I mean, stuff like that. But I wasn't on LinkedIn as much as I was on Twitter. Let me tell you the experience I had on Twitter though. Yeah. was so visible. I had hiring managers reaching out to me asking me if I was interested in working at their company because they saw my work on sit. Yeah, on Twitter. Hey, you already here. You all act like I just make shit up all the time.

It's for real. It's real. Everybody's on social media. So everybody get your face out there and people see you. They'll reach out to you. Let me ask you this, because this is it's such it's such a I mean, excuse My friends just the only way to say excuse my it's such a mind fuck because You're out here tweeting You're out here linked in Like applying to jobs. Yeah per se. I mean I'm sure you apply them fine Yeah, I I knock on applying to jobs. I think there is a time and place to do it But you're out here doing a lot of content and just a lot of one-on-one conversations Did it ever feel like you weren't getting anything done?

Because I think that's the biggest mindfuck for people. They're like, I'm going to message one hiring manager and talk to one hiring manager when I could apply to 30 positions in an hour. Yeah. Yeah. It did at some point, at certain points it did because I felt like I was missing out on doing another other things, right? But when I started seeing the benefit of being on social media and networking and stuff like that, I kind of pivoted more towards doing that than just focusing on networking because they was giving me better results. Yeah. Well, and then I met you because so really we jumped on.

We so I was jump on 15 minutes before with my guest and we chit-chat and kind of get a game plan of what we're gonna talk about. And I told Amy, I think we both agreed that we feel like we know each other and we've never met. We've never met. Like literally now like I could go hang out and grab a drink with you like and it would be an absolute blast at this point. But like I would even like do that beforehand because Annie was so present. She is so engaged in my content. I actually look forward to any comments and and I'm not bullshitting with you just because you're on the show.

Like you bring a lot of great thoughts and comments and it's just wonderful. And so again, I just want to tell people like this is the way to go. Like this is it. Like this is the absolute way to go and come to job. All right. More questions moving on. Nicole, what are your thoughts of people starting this path post pandemic? Is it harder now? It's hard regardless when you do it. It's yeah, it's hard regardless. It's hard regardless. Now, I will say if you're talking about in terms of finding a job, people are hiring, right? There are going to be companies that are hiring.

There's a bunch of companies that are starting out that are looking for engineers. Disclaimer, if you want to work for a startup, please make sure you work for a funded startup so you can get paid. I just want to put that out there. But there are a lot of companies that are hiring, right? So don't, in terms of that, don't think that that's not possible but it's hard regard this. Right it is. Let's see here you know Alex saying I'm definitely going to do a schedule I think it's smart Erica it's always great to see a girl. I love this from Jara I've been keeping a detailed journal of my job search progress it's really motivating on days when I felt unfocused.

Andy did you do any sort of journaling? I know I talk about it a lot. I'm curious if you did. Yeah I did bullet journaling when I was on a job search of get because there are days when you just feel down and you and if you have that to look at where I've had success here I've had better results here it kind of boosts up your confidence and your motivation so good good kudos to you Jara on that that's amazing absolutely and and I coming in personal trainer here let's get a tail I love it I love it my wife's practically a personal trainer at this point so so Demetrius comes in I don't even know her start with Twitter so Demetrius so I'll I'll tell you this, I have a podcast, you have to kind of scroll through a little bit, it's like a few months back, but I break down how to get started on Twitter, I may do another live episode here soon when it's just me, but I don't have a guest on where I go over Twitter again, but kind of a few quick hits for me.

One, go to Twitter lists. Twitter lists is a great way to get started. So, you know, so again, so if you go to your home screen and you swipe over, right? There's something called lists. So if you go to lists, there's gonna be pushed lists to you based off your interest, right? So obviously all mine is software development. So go to list, follow a bunch of lists to get started and just start engaging with people there. I think that's a great starting point. I think a lot of people don't know who to follow or where to get started. I'm surprised Twitter doesn't promote list more because it's such a great way to dive in and twist.

So check that out. Oh, there was one question I wanna get to. Demetrius again, coming up with some great questions today. Where's good place to find interview questions? Did you have any specific place? Did you journal your interview questions and prep on those? Like how do you find interview prep? So I googled, I googled, most popular tech interview questions, most popular software engineer behavior questions. And I kind of chose a few of those. And yeah, I wrote out my answers. I wrote out how I was going to respond using stories, using the star method, and kind of practice those along the way. But really, I just googled.

And then when I was talking to different software engineers, I would ask them, especially hiring managers, like, what kinds of questions should I be prepping for or getting ready for? And I just jot those down and jot down my answers. OK. Awesome. So, Carla comes in, what's the last local meetup you went to? Questions for you both. So I created one. I create a recruiters anonymous one up in Nashville because there's no meetup for recruiters. And so we actually have our second meetups. Our first meetup was a packed lunch or 12 people, very first meetup because I like small things because we're introverts. We haven't even talked about that any, how you would have both introverts.

Yes. I like small communities. That's just, I play better than that space. So I started recruiting on this, but we're having our happy hour next week. So any of you been anything? It wasn't a meetup, but I went to a conference last weekend. It was a tag and entrepreneur, entrepreneur's conference, a Revolt Summit. Oh, you went to Revolt. Yeah, a lot of the render folk there too. I wish I was there. It was amazing. I really loved it, but I haven't actually been to a in-person meetup. I've usually done virtual meetups. Yeah, yep Let's see here Anna comes in. I mean this will preach for sure building relationships and reputation will take you so much farther along though What's worth it a hundred percent?

Yep, Randall comes in I have trouble with making content rather than personal connections Randall I've seen your shit you make good content. I think Yeah, you're great Randall for real I'm a company like this. Let's see here. I've been using Twitter search to find devs at companies. Ooh! Trey! This is some like 301 shit right here. That's really good, Trey. Great idea. Let's see here. Yes. Christina, was that a guy that comes from meet up? We had a meet up for my show in Vegas. We had a handful of people there. Yes. And Melanie came last time. Let's see here anything comes in do you think it's a numbers game for getting a job.

I Don't like that word Like the numbers game type. Yeah, I don't like that. I think it's a strategy's game Yeah, yeah, I think it's all about your strategy if you put together a good strategy in terms of Knowing what you want knowing what kind of companies you want to work for or having a strategy for networking, having a strategy for prepping, for interviews and stuff like that, practicing, I think you'll be fine. But if you're just sticking to applying for jobs and then yeah, it is a numbers game. And it's not fun. I think it's an intentional numbers game. I will say that. Okay.

I think, and it's the same thing, Anna, you and I, I mean, we believe, I mean, it's the same principle, but, you know, I think numbers game is fine. if you can have intentional conversations, right? So I think the more intentional conversations you have, yes, the better you're gonna be, but just flinging resumes or just flinging simple conversations that don't have any meat to it, it's just not gonna go anywhere. I agree, 100%. All right, so let's talk, I mean, again, we're almost out of time, which is crazy. So I'll definitely have to have you one again. Everybody, thank you for asking questions. If you have any more questions to ask because Anne is a wealth of knowledge.

So talk about self-care, right? So that's one thing that you brought up, that I'm passionate about too. Let's talk about self-care just from a work perspective, job search perspective. Just give me some general thoughts on self-care. If I'm gonna use a sort of a cliche thing, but if you don't take care of yourself, you won't perform well. That's just the basics of it. But because we're using our minds so much as software engineers, we need to give our minds time to have a break, to regenerate, to be re-energized. So we have to take care of ourselves, whatever that looks like for you, right? So for me, when I was job searching, I would schedule in breaks, right?

Schedule in breaks. Schedule in breaks. Yes. Like 30 minutes to just walk TV or watch an episode of... Exactly. Or have a dance party, whatever. You know what I mean? I love it. Whatever kind of gets me re-energized to continue the work that I'm doing. And then I'm a Sabbath keeper. So I take the Sabbath to rest, Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. And on that day, I did nothing related to job searching. Let's stress you out. No, did not. It actually gave me more energy. It made me feel more relaxed, more motivated and ready to tackle the week because I just gave myself time to just woo-sah and just do whatever.

So you would say for people on the job search to actually give yourself more rest because you'll be able to attack the search with more tenacity. Yes, exactly. Exactly. I love that. I was asleep if you can. You know what I mean? I love that. Because you need it. Your mind needs it, your body needs it. If you look at athletes, if they don't take a break, they will not perform or they'll burn out, you know, they'll injure themselves faster, right? Yeah. You got to do the same thing for yourself. Yeah, I've noticed with my work, I start to get real distracted by the end of the day, like that four to five o'clock hour, I catch myself on TikTok a lot and, and, and, you know, Twitter and just kind of scrolling aimlessly.

And I've gotten to the point now where I've started to step away. Like once I noticed my mind start to go and it just becomes very difficult, I step away. Yeah. So I think that's a dance huge. I think that's huge. All right. So Annie, we're going to wrap it up. That went by so freaking fast. It did. Yeah. Jar comes in here. I just landed my first full time dev job in three weeks out of boot camp. A hundred percent. Hey Jar, shoot me a DM. I want to interview you, man. I love these stories. So Jar, shoot me a shoot me an email.

Taylor at Vaco.com. And let's get you on the show. So Annie, I asked this question to my guest at the end of every episode. Do we have guidance counselors in middle school? We had guidance counselors in high school. But we don't really have guidance counselors now. It's called therapist. What would you tell your younger self from a career perspective? Like what advice would you give your younger self? And your younger self could literally have been like bootcamp self. I don't know. But just what would you tell your younger self? Oh, good question. What I tell my. If you need a minute. I would have to be patient.

Be patient. Be patient. And to believe in yourself. I mean, I got the job. You will get the job. That's a fact. But just be patient and do the work. I love that. I love that. Any last words of wisdom, Annie, before we end it? Any last words of wisdom? to everyone on here who's still looking for a job. You will get the job, you know what I mean? Just believe in that, believe in your skills, believe in yourself. And one day you'll be on the other side of the track and I'll be celebrating with you. I love that, I love that so much. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today.

That was wonderful, Annie, you're a gem. Go connect with Annie on LinkedIn if you haven't. And we'll see y'all. So I'm off for the next two days. wife and I speaking of rest doing a little staycation. A little takecation, as you could say. So I'm off for the rest of the week. So today was the last guy who comes to Q4, no other week. So I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week. Please connect with Danny and you'll have a great we'll see you all next week back. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful.

Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finish an entire episode, so I appreciate you so so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please, like, right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Dessin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.