Accueil > News > Landing a job after Le Wagon: what happens during our Career Week?
Landing a job after Le Wagon: what happens during our Career Week?
There are a number of paths you can take after Le Wagon Tokyo coding bootcamp: most of our graduates land a tech-related job, some start freelancing, while others set up their own business. In order to accommodate everyone’s career goals, we designed a Career Week after graduation to give our students the best possible head start with their new life.
But thanks to our very solid curriculum, we also established ourselves as a bootcamp training top web engineers, designers and product managers, and tech companies in Tokyo recognize the quality of the education we provide.
We’ve worked hard to propose high-level career coaching, interview practice, skills development and companies introductions.
Listening to our alumni feedback, we realized that we needed to provide a soft landing for our students who would look for tech jobs, and accompany them along their career transition.
That’s why we decided at the beginning of 2019 to introduce an optional week at the end of our bootcamp: the Career Week.
Why optional? Because not all of our students need that career support.
But optional doesn’t mean we do it halfway. Over the past 2 years, we’ve worked hard to propose high-level career coaching, interview practice, skills development and companies introductions.
So, what happens during our Career Week?
During Career Week, we operate very similarly to the rest of our bootcamp: each day starts with a lecture, and students will then work on “assignments” related to this lecture.
The high-level program covers the following aspects:
Day 1 - Discovering Career Paths
Day 2 - Building a strong personal profile
Day 3 - Getting ready for interview
Day 4 - Applying for jobs
Day 5 - Post-bootcamp gameplan
On top of this already packed program, and to give our graduates a better understanding of what to expect of their post-bootcamp life, we also invite industry experts and our alumni to share their experience about freelancing, entrepreneurship or life as an engineer.
Last but not least, and probably the favorite part for our students, some of our partner companies will come and pitch positions that they currently have open. We welcome different companies for each Career Week, and make sure that the pitching companies are actively hiring and are familiar with the strengths of our graduates. Past companies that pitched at our Career Week include Queue, Cybozu, Xenon, ScientistPage or Sarah.
Let’s dive into this dense program in detail!
Lectures, quizzes and assignments
From creating a CV and a developer portfolio, to practicing coding interviews, we designed our Career Week as a mini-bootcamp to prepare our grads for their job hunting experience and help them display the skill set they gained at Le Wagon.
Each day starts with a lecture, and is designed with specific challenges and expected outcomes, whether short term (e.g. updating your LinkedIn profile) or longer term (e.g. learning new hard skills). Arron landed a job as Data Scientist in less than 3 weeks
Aside from live lectures, our graduates follow a pathway on our internal teaching platform that includes a combination of challenges, quizzes and assignments.
By the end of the week, we expect them to produce tangible outcomes, such as:
✔️ A killer CV and cover letter for a tech role
✔️ Interactive LinkedIn and Wantedly profiles
✔️ A professional Github profile
✔️ An online portfolio to showcase their work
✔️ A recorded elevator pitch to introduce themselves
We also expect them to gain insights and start reflecting on broader aspects, among which:
✔️ What are the different career paths they can go for
✔️ How to nail technical and personality interviews
✔️ What are the best channels to land their first job
✔️ How to scan a job description
✔️ What to learn after the bootcamp
Our team coaches graduates with the objective to transform the job search from a dreaded process to an opportunity to build connections and gain knowledge.
Alumni and industry experts talks
During our Career Week, we invite Japan’s tech industry professionals to share their experiences and tips with our graduates. Our past sessions featured talks with a web developer, machine learning engineer, startup accelerator manager, freelancer, product manager, digital nomad, game developer… just to name a few! These experts explain about various career opportunities, working lifestyles and skills required for job openings at their companies. There was times when masks were not needed.
Alumni talks help get a clearer picture of the life after the bootcamp, whether it’s about coding interviews, salary negotiations, or the first few months on the job.
Another highlight of our Career Week and definitely a favorite for our graduates, we invite some of our alumni for personal and no-nonsense experience sharing sessions. Working in a variety of fields, they take us through their personal journeys, talk about professional successes and failures, the lessons they learned, and of course, address as many questions as possible from our graduates. This helps tremendously to get a more vivid picture of the life after the bootcamp, whether it’s about coding interviews, salary negotiations, or the first few months on the job.
The final objectives of these alumni and industry experts talks are very clear:
allow our students to project themselves in their future careers, get a feel for the challenges and opportunities they will meet and most importantly, overcome the impostor syndrome they may feel after the bootcamp.
We understand that applying for jobs can be stressful, and we want to reduce the number of intermediaries by connecting our graduates directly during private events, allowing them to ask their most “embarrassing” questions.
These hiring events are also a great chance for companies to pitch their vision and work culture, and maximize the number of candidates they can gather for positions that they are currently hiring for.
A key aspect of the Career Week: overcoming the Impostor Syndrome our graduates may feel after the bootcamp
After over a year running these hiring events, we realized that by reducing the gap between applicants and companies, and by allowing them to engage in face-to-face (or over Zoom) conversations, each side gains a better understanding of the other, which results in much higher hiring rates.
A typical Career Week day
How does all this content fit in our daily schedule? Here is a typical example of a post-bootcamp day:A typical Career Week day
A Career Week, then what?
Our graduates’ lives with Le Wagon does not end after the Career Week.
Lifelong access to our teaching platform
Along with a great skillset, our grads keep lifelong access to our teaching platform and video tutorials to help them grow professionally, from anywhere in the world. This content is regularly updated to make sure they can benefit from the latest trends and tools in the tech industry.
Stay connected with our 10,000-strong community
Through our Slack community, which currently gathers more than 10,000 alumni and team members worldwide, our graduates can stay connected with us, ask for help on their personal project, gain insights in specific career paths, or even reach out to local communities for any Le Wagon city around the world.
Unlimited Office Hours
Last but not least, whether they need help with an upcoming interview, or advice for their next career move, our alumni can book a one-on-one appointment with a team member for a dedicated coaching session.
Start your tech journey with us!
Our alumni survey data says it all: 95% of our grads looking for a job landed one in a tech company. If you are motivated, serious and dedicated to a career in tech, you will definitely nail it
Do you have a question about our career support after the bootcamp or need advice for your specific situation? Book a call with our bootcamp manager to discuss your career goals and needs.
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