Your Most Amazing Product
Posted July 18, 2018
Stop worrying about white board tests and acurately predicting every possible formula output. Know your code, but sell yourself.
In my freshly completed full-stack program we endured six months of 10 classroom hours and 20-40 hours of homework per week. Added tutors and mentors to our speed dials. Loaded countless new programs and libraries onto our hard drives. Challenged ourselves to think as both solo and team developers. Expanded our vocabularies with phrases such as NPM package, MVC components, master branch, and version control. And once and for all, we learned Java has nothing to do with JavaScript.
At this point in our class, it's safe to say we were firmly focused on code. So it's not surprising many of us lost sight of the fact the skills we'd learned in previous endeavors still informed our learning.
Meanwhile in the career prep zone
On the career side, we created portfolios, polished our resumes, created or updated LinkedIn profiles, and forced ourselves to network. Sometimes we discovered amazing organizations like KCWiT. Other times we attended Meetups where you could almost hear the subject matter whiz over our heads.
Finally, our six-month cohort came to a close. We proudly walked through our final projects, graciously accepted our certificates, smiled, shook hands, and promised our team we’d keep in touch.
Once the homework angst passed, everyone started mulling the ultimate assignment: finding work. At our final course event — a demo day for employers and recruiters — I heard more discussions about blending previous experience with new knowledge than debates about the merits of React vs Vue.
Now what?
Most of my fellow full-stack program students are looking for work in a new field. And if they’re like me, they’ve been fine-tuning their portfolios, soliciting feedback, and sneaking peeks at others’ work. All this to meld the experiences of the past six months into a cohesive, marketable package that showcases their full-stack skills. Presenting the best site you can create is a crucial part of achieving that goal, but it also presents one enormous pitfall:
Don’t lose sight of what you’re promoting. It’s not your homework or your portfolio. It’s not even the full-stack technologies and languages and libraries you can recite. It’s you.
YOU are the product you're selling
If this epiphany seems like a no-brainer, read about Airbnb’s rebranding journey. During a brainstorming session, it took a handful of the company’s designers, all of whom are professionals already working in the digital space to realize this critical point: “the product is the trip.” In their efforts to revamp the website and improved user experience, they had to refocus on the reality it’s the offline experience they’re actually selling, not airbnb.com.
Likewise, as nascent developers, our portfolio may be the portal, but it’s not the end product. It’s tangible evidence of our new skill set, but it only tells viewers about a fraction of what we bring to the table. Maybe we have people skills. Or we might have built-in R&D acumen from our former science careers. Perhaps we’re good at mentoring others. We could even provide a vital link between the marketing and IT teams thanks to our hybrid experience in content writing, SEO, analytics reporting and web development.
My cohort included amazingly talented people of all ages from all walks of life. I empathize with their efforts to find their place in the digital workspace since I’m out there searching too. It’s easy to get overwhelmed while juggling new skills, career change, and life in general. Just remember to stay focused on the amazing, one-of-a-kind, limited quantity product to which you have exclusive marketing rights: You.