Turing Career Development - Mod 0

The Career Development component of your Mod 0 work is divided into 4 sections and should take about 2 hours to complete. Submission Directions are at the bottom of this page.

Part 0: Career Development Overview (15 mins)

The objective of Career Development is for all Turing students to have the skills and abilities to pursue full-time employment in high fulfillment technical careers upon graduation. To do this, our curriculum focuses on five specific competencies:

  • Networking: Using outreach and networking strategies to make connections in the software industry to support a student’s job search
  • Interviewing: The skills needed to thoroughly respond to behavioral interview questions, articulate technical process, and demonstrate technical knowledge through code challenges
  • Materials: A student’s branding materials that showcase their work for employers, i.e., LinkedIn, resume, portfolio, cover letter
  • Job Search Strategies: A student’s understanding of their own goals and creating a set of steps to achieve them
  • Negotiations: Understanding software industry market rates for compensation and the resources needed to negotiate for competitive rates

You can find all information on the curriculum and job search support on the Career Development site

Part I: Pairin Survey (15-20 mins)

One tool we’ll be using for your professional development at Turing is the Pairin Survey. This survey measures over 100 coachable and changeable skills. This activity invites you to begin building an understanding of how learning about and developing your strengths applies to your success in your new career. We will discuss the results of this survey more in-depth in your first professional development session at Turing.

Part I Action Items to Complete:

  1. Take the survey using this link. It will prompt you to create an account when you take it. There are 2 sections for this survey:
    • First section: Choose adjectives to answer how you currently are
    • Second section: Choose adjectives to answer how you would like to be. The second section is marked as “optional,” but it is highly recommended that you fill out this section in order to provide more data for you on how you’d like to grow. The survey should take you about 15-20 minutes.
  2. Download the PDF of your Pairin Top 4 results (or take a screenshot) and include it in your prework survey submission (see submission directions here).

Optional: To build an understanding of your Pairin results, here are additional resources:

Part II: Complete Each Activity Below for Each Competency (60-75 mins)

As you begin this new chapter of your career, the Turing team is here to meet you where you are and help you achieve your goals. To help us understand more about your background and comfort levels with each of the 5 competencies, please complete each competency section below. You’ll submit them in the Mod 0 Project survey submission (see submission directions here). Each competency section should take about 10-15 minutes to complete.

Networking

The first step for networking in your new career as a software developer is to assess the network you currently have. Please complete this activity and be prepared to share the link to the tracker you create (note: to make your own copy, go to File>Make a Copy). You’ll also respond to these questions in the submission survey:

  1. Please rate on a scale of 1-4 how easy the networking activity was for you.
  2. As you start at Turing, what are your biggest questions or concerns about networking?

Interviewing

Whatever your comfort level with interviewing, an effective interview comes down to being able to communicate about who you are. Please prepare responses to these questions to submit in the prework survey:

  1. Tell us about yourself. What is your background? Why are you pursuing a career in software development?
  2. What are your goals for this career?
  3. As you start at Turing, what are your biggest questions or concerns about interviewing?

Materials

It’s important for the team to know about each student’s level of experience with job search-related materials. Please prepare responses to these questions to submit in the prework survey:

  1. Do you have a LinkedIn profile? If so, how do you currently use it? How frequently do you use it?
  2. Have you created a resume before? If so, how confident have you felt about your resume’s effectiveness previously? What questions or concerns do you have about writing a technical resume?
  3. Have you written a cover letter for a job posting before? If so, how confident have you felt about your cover letters’ effectiveness previously? What questions or concerns do you have about writing cover letters?

Job Search Strategies

Please prepare responses to these questions to submit in the prework survey:

  1. Describe your approach to job searching in the past. What steps were part of your strategy? What was effective for you? What wasn’t effective for you?
  2. When you think about job searching for a software developer position, what are your biggest questions or concerns?

Negotiations

Please prepare responses to these questions to submit in the prework survey:

  1. Have you negotiated for a salary before? If so, what were the results? How did you feel about the experience?
  2. When you think about negotiating for a software development position, what are your biggest questions or concerns?

Part III: Submit Your Career Development Mod 0 Work (15 mins)

Please fill out this survey to provide your reflections and activities from Parts I-II as well as a few other questions to help the Turing Team know how to support you at the survey link here.