{"id":49664,"date":"2024-03-01T11:41:30","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T11:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/?p=49664"},"modified":"2025-05-12T15:29:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:29:01","slug":"at-the-job-interview-they-told-me-do-the-coding-bootcamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/blog\/at-the-job-interview-they-told-me-do-the-coding-bootcamp\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018At The Job Interview, They Told Me \u201cDo The Coding Bootcamp\u201d\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The summer days were dark for Kateryna. She was looking for work as a web developer, equipped with a degree in IT from the National Aerospace University in Kharkiv, Ukraine. But all she got was rejection letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I applied for hundreds of jobs,\u2019 she says today. \u2018The farthest I got was one rejection letter where they at least specified the reason why they wouldn\u2019t take me \u2013 my level of German wasn\u2019t high enough.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 2022, and Kateryna was a long way from her home country. \u2018I used to live in Kiev. I remember being woken up one morning at 5a.m. by the sound of explosions. At that point I knew it was time to get out of there.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kateryna underwent an Odyssey of her own to reach safety. Long treks along roads where everything was broken down, bus rides surrounded by tanks and helicopters, shared car trips, shared hotel rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018All I had was what I had been able to take with me in a hurry: my cat, my laptop, and \u2013 for some odd reason which I still can\u2019t quite explain \u2013 my little flask of perfume.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually she found a safe haven in Erkrath, a small town on the outskirts of D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany. It was a far cry from the chaos she had just escaped: here nothing greeted the eye of the visitor but elderly couples taking slow walks together, and endless stretches of countryside all around. But she was not in a position to rest. She had a life to rebuild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how? Everywhere she turned to find a job, there were only closed doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kateryna<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One summer day she took her boyfriend\u2019s bicycle for a ride. \u2018I didn\u2019t know how to ride a bike in Ukraine,\u2019 she remembers. \u2018It was one of the things I learned to do in Germany, while I was unemployed.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She rode into a field, past it into another field, past that too until she was in the woods. She found a small bench and sat to take a breather. Looking around, she realized she wasn\u2019t sure where she was anymore. Not in the forest, and not in her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It was then that I realized I had to change something. I needed to make a decision about my life.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, she was on the phone with a representative from a WBS CODING SCHOOL Full-Stack Web & App Development Bootcamp<\/a>, asking how to join their course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I needed to update my IT skills. Also, I needed a certificate that would be recognized here in Germany,\u2019 says Kateryna, \u2018And of course, I needed state sponsorship in order to cover the financing. That took some time \u2013 and yet, surprisingly, I started seeing the results before I even got in.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, just before the bootcamp began, Kateryna got called in for an interview for a position as a Junior .NET Software Developer. She told the company about her background, and about the bootcamp she was about to take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The response came a few days later. \u2018They told me they would hire me,\u2019 she recalls, \u2018only if I completed my bootcamp first.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was all the motivational speech that Kateryna needed. She threw herself into the bootcamp with everything she had \u2013 yet even so, the notoriously intensive nature of modern coding bootcamps was a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018At one point I was assigned to a team, and we were asked to deliver a project,\u2019 she says. \u2018Things got complicated real fast, we had a deadline to meet, and I ended up sitting in front of my laptop for 12 hours straight, struggling to put together something that worked. I honestly felt like giving up at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Then again, I understand why my company wanted me to complete the bootcamp first. That was a taste of what real work in tech sometimes feels like.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the joy of (re-)learning the discipline she had wanted to work with since she was a little girl was undeniable. \u2018It was amazing, even with all the work. I felt endlessly fascinated by everything I was learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The time working on our final project was the best. My teammates were foreigners to Germany like me, so we built a sort of social media for people who wished to play sports. It was inspired by my memories of playing street basketball in Ukraine.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And so, two weeks after the end of the bootcamp, on a rainy autumn day, Kateryna sat down at her workstation \u2013 surrounded with the little things she had been able to bring with her from her home, a coffee-cup holder, a mousepad shaped like Aladdin\u2019s carpet \u2013 and started on her first official day as a Junior .NET Software Developer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Some think a bootcamp is like some miracle medicine that will instantly land you a tech job,\u2019 says Kateryna at the end of the interview. \u2018The truth is that it just provides the structure, but most of the work has to come from you. You have to be really motivated and really into the idea of working in tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018But if you\u2019re that type of person, well! Just a few months ago I was having an absolutely miserable time, I was jobless and I wasn\u2019t getting anywhere. Today, I\u2019m working the job that I wanted to do since I was a child. And I feel so grateful, to so many people.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kateryna Tsyklauri graduated from the WBS CODING SCHOOL Full-Stack Web & App Development Bootcamp<\/a> in November 2023, and is currently working as a Junior Software Developer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kateryna Tsyklauri needed to reinvent her career after fleeing Ukraine and settling in Germany. This is how she did it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":49654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49664"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62495,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49664\/revisions\/62495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}