[00:00:00] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: All right, guys. Today I'm really excited to talk to you about something that's very dear to my heart, which is a no BS approach to career change, especially the code. Now there are seven steps. Or seven stages to career change whether it's to go to something else And most people tend to focus on one or two and forget about the seven And the problem is this is a bit like a person thinking.
[00:00:19] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Well, the only way to be or This is a bit like a person thinking that to become a best selling author. All they need to do is write the book No, that's not what you need to do. That's the first step. That's not all you need to do There is lots more to come after that and often it takes two to three times You The amount of time to actually get an editor, get reviewed, get published, market the book and actually get into the shelves, then it takes to actually write the book.
[00:00:45] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Okay. And it's very similar with career change. So let's just dive into that.
[00:00:50] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: There you go, you can see my screen so you can see that I've got a picture here of the seven stages All right And the first three I've marked is not enough which is what most people focus on And the next four are the essential steps, which most [00:01:00] people never really think about until it's too late.
[00:01:03] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: But let me read out the SACRED SEVEN as I call them the seven steps one is clear goals Two, design a study plan.
[00:01:09] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Three, learn the fundamentals. Four, upgrade from fundamentals to professional grade skills. Five, get interviews, also known as opportunity generation. Six, interview preparation. And DSA is not the most important thing for that, right? No matter what people say. And the seventh step is offer selection or negotiation Right, which is really important for your long term step.
[00:01:31] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Now, let me break each of these down into a little bit more detail for you And then i'll point out some interesting things but note that each of these seven right all of them are complex skills in themselves, but also each of them requires an Individualized plan for that step You Right, you need it's a sub goal.
[00:01:52] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: And so you need a specific plan for each of those sub goals Now in my previous episode, I think it was number eight Where I talked about the only three reasons why people fail being [00:02:00] wrong plan wrong execution and wrong expectations These are the only three reasons the really powerful framework to analyze Why you're not getting the results you're wanting and you'll see that the most important one there is having the wrong plan because that's Going to set your direction right and for each of these seven steps.
[00:02:14] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: You do need the right kind of plan Now, let me dig into these a little bit more. So what's clear goals? Well, we all know the importance of goal setting but most of us do it really badly For example when we say I want to get a coding job. That is a terrible goal Why it's a bit like saying I want to go to holiday Why?
[00:02:30] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Because it's a bit like saying, I want to go for a holiday to Africa. Great. That is actually not helpful because you don't know where in Africa you want to go. Right. And if the plane would have just throw all the pilot, would it kick you out in the middle of Africa somewhere with a parachute and say, well, you're in Africa.
[00:02:45] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Now you'd be deeply unhappy. You want to get on a plane that knows exactly where it's going. And it takes you all the way there. In fact, you argue that when you're going on a holiday, You don't want to go to most of Africa, you want to go to the specific parts of Africa that you want to see, right?
[00:02:59] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: [00:03:00] Similarly, saying I want to be a coder is like saying I want to go to Africa for a holiday. It's completely non specific and you're not going to want to go to most of the places you end up being because that's not what you actually wanted. So, clear goals require specificity, right? I've covered this in the other episode, I think in episode number 8.
[00:03:14] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Similarly, with designing a study plan, right? Most people just leap into action, they just immediately start learning anything some social media influencer said or they read in some blog. Or they see a lot of now, keep in mind that the reason why you see a lot of some languages represented in social media is because search engine optimization, right?
[00:03:30] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: People are producing content based on things you're looking for So that's why when the ai stuff started happening and chat gpt became big which by the way was later Like the ai stuff happened before chat gpt at least six to eight months before that there was you know The rise of llms But ChatGPT made it really famous.
[00:03:48] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Everyone started searching for ChatGPT and LLM and stuff like that. And so what ended up happening is people said, Hey, there's a huge amount of search interest. I'm going to write or publish blogs or articles or videos on this topic. And because they [00:04:00] did that, it looked like this is the most important thing in the world.
[00:04:03] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: And I'm not saying it's not important. It's super important, but that's an example of how SEO Drives the content creation calendar and the content creation calendar then makes you believe that that's the most important thing in the world When it's not it puts this little algorithmic bubble around you, okay?
[00:04:17] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: So designing a study plan requires you to have clear goals and a clear understanding of your circumstances. Again See the previous episode on the three reasons why people fail to understand more about this process Okay, but you have to design a study plan and that's a whole skill in itself.
[00:04:31] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Then you need to learn the fundamentals, and there's a whole lot of stuff about sticking to the right thing and making sure it's the right sequence of events or sequence of learning that you have and so on and so forth.
[00:04:39] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: That's learning the fundamentals. Now, most people think you can learn a little bit of some language like SQL or, which is not even a coding language or JavaScript or Python or Java or whatever it is. I'll get some basic coding knowledge and then I'll get a job. That is not how it works. That's like saying, I'll, I'll learn a little bit of basketball and then I'm gonna go and compete with LeBron in the NBA.
[00:04:57] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Okay, , it's not going to [00:05:00] work! Learning the fundamentals is the starting point, then you need to go to step four, you need to upgrade your skills, your competencies to get professional level skills. Why? Because your competition are professionals. Your competition is not people like you.
[00:05:12] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: If you're changing career to code, your competition are other established coders with two plus years of experience, computer science degrees, and lots of runs on the board, lots of track record. Okay, that's your real competition. That's who you're competing with for your first job.
[00:05:25] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Now, if you have basics and they have professional grade skills, obviously you're not going to get a single interview, which is why step four is important. You need to upgrade your skills from the basics, which is just literacy, to actual professional grade skills. Okay, like you're going from being a casual street cricket or ball player to a professional grade athlete.
[00:05:43] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Okay, there's a big jump involved in that. Now, after that you have the get interviews and opportunity generation section, which unfortunately a lot of people just skip this because they don't know how to do it, and it's too scary, and it's too uncomfortable, too unpredictable, and they go straight to step six, which is interview preparation, and they spend all DSA data [00:06:00] structures and algorithm stuff.
[00:06:01] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: When in fact you may not even need it for most interviews now I've counted personally when I coach my students I teach them on the six to nine different types of coding interviews because there are many types of coding interviews and Not all of them will require dsa. So you need to know how to prepare for it But guys, there's no point skipping step five on getting interviews and going straight to step six, which is interview preparation When you don't know how to get interviews, what's the point of preparing for something you don't know how to get?
[00:06:27] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: It's a bit like buying expensive clothes and renting a really fancy car to go for a party you've never been invited to. It makes no sense. The skill here is first learn how to generate interviews and get interviews, and then you want to prepare to do well in the interviews depending on the kind of interview it is.
[00:06:42] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: So that's five and six, right? Opportunity generation and six is interview prep. Now, the last stage is offer negotiation, offer selection and offer negotiation. And that's really important because as I keep telling my students, you don't want to be in a dead end job. You don't want to leave a career you don't like and find yourself in a new job you hated just as much.
[00:06:59] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Okay. [00:07:00] You don't want old patterns to repeat. So you want to always choose a job that sets you up for the next two jobs. This is how you build a career. Don't just focus on the job, focus on the career that gives you the time, the freedom. The capacity, the working environment, the learning, the growth, and the money you want.
[00:07:16] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Okay, so all of this goes into offer selection and offer negotiation. The key here is you can't select if you have only one. If you have one, you're getting the default option. That's why I train my students on how to generate opportunities so that they have at least two offers to select from.
[00:07:30] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: That's the goal that we want to select. Ideally more, ideally four plus offers. That's then then you can do really good offer selection and negotiation. Okay, and this is how you start to do it as you get through your career. It may not happen that easily at the start. Things are always harder at the beginning, but once you learn these skills, you'll use it for the rest of your career.
[00:07:47] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: And that's why I teach my students so much about career skills, not just the transition to the first job, which obviously is the short term goal and that's important, but I teach them for how to build a full career past that point, right? That's why that's why I do the 12 months of [00:08:00] coaching that I do.
[00:08:01] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: These are the seven steps okay to any career change not just for code, but definitely for code as well. Now I want you to notice something i've already covered the fact that each of these steps has sub skills and sub plans required But here's the interesting thing and this is what made me get into the coaching thing .
[00:08:17] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: A lot of people say, why do you do the kind of coaching you do?
[00:08:20] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: It's longer than boot camps. It's cheaper than boot camps. It's harder than boot camps for you. For me, that is because it takes a lot of time and so on and so forth. But why do you do this? And the reason I do it is because there are multiple industries feeding off people on each of these parts. Okay. And I don't mean it in a bad sense.
[00:08:37] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: You know, it's perfectly legitimate. There's a marketplace and there's needs being met, but I realized that most of these services only choose one of the steps Because it's much easier to grow a big business if you focus and niche down in the one step. Okay? There was very little to help People in my stage of life because I was in my late 30s when I learned to code and you know Became an engineer and then eventually went to be a google [00:09:00] engineer and all of that... at my stage in life there was almost not there was pretty much nothing out there And I realized the reason for that is people like me have you know other circumstances once you're past your 20s in your early 30s onwards you may have more money to spend on things, you know to invest in yourself Or to get yourself an education or whatever Maybe, but you don't have a lot of life circumstances. People have kids or relationships or other things in life that take up time or they have mortgages and stuff. And so it's hard, right?
[00:09:25] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: And the reason why a lot of companies focus on these smaller niches is because it's easier to target people who are in high paid jobs for each of these smaller niches. And then you get to sell them different products. There was no product until I came along that does All seven stages because it takes a lot of time and it's not scalable to do all seven stages because it needs to be customized to each person.
[00:09:46] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: That means I can't create a factory process out of it. So I do the personalized coaching with a few people for a fairly long period, you know 6 to 12 months at a time and I cover all of these seven for a reason. Most people tend to focus on only [00:10:00] one or two of the things and then they lose their way and that's why most people fail Remember for every one success story you see out there.
[00:10:05] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: There are thousands who never made it Okay, that's got to change and that's that's what i'm trying to do. So notice there are separate industries for each of these for example clear goals Right? These are typically done by performance and career coaches, etc. Life coaches will help you do clear goal setting.
[00:10:20] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: That's an entire industry, right? Designing study plans. Well, this is what colleges do when they create your standardized curriculum. This is what boot camps do when they say this is the learning pathway you're going to have. They've already designed your study plan for you, right? When I work with my students I design a custom one, not only based on their goals and their starting point but also based on their lifestyle and circumstances and how much time they have.
[00:10:42] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Okay. Three learning the fundamentals. Well, that's what courses and tutorials and bootcamps and college, et cetera, help you do. Right. So that's an entire industry right there, just on the fundamentals. In fact, most of the learning to code resources online are fundamentals. The vast majority of them, like 99. 9 percent of them do not teach you [00:11:00] professional level skills because that's really hard to do. And it's not a particularly easy thing to sell because people get frustrated. They want the easy sugary hit. Right. But the reality is to actually get a job. You can't stop at learning the fundamentals .You need to upgrade to that harder bit around professional skills And that's hard to teach and hard to do in the right way when people are busy. Okay ?Now the people who do help you upgrade to professional level skills are colleges and some of the advanced boot camps Which are very rare.
[00:11:25] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: I want to note Yeah, very clearly for those of you can see this on the screen. Certifications are an anti signal. Okay. I've linked here to some really interesting data led research on why you shouldn't list certifications on things like LinkedIn, because it's an anti signal for people without a background.
[00:11:40] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: If you have a background, if you already are in the industry, certifications are fine. But if you're new to the industry and you think certifications are going to help you get a job, do not think so. The data is quite clear. It actually has a negative impact on your chances. Okay. According to this article, take a look at it.
[00:11:54] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: So you want to upgrade a professional level skills? Fine. There, there's an entire industry around that. Colleges and advanced bootcamps, [00:12:00] right? So, so far I've covered four out of the Seven and I've showed you how each of them has its own separate industry. Just focus on that one step. Some of them like colleges focus on two or three steps, but not more.
[00:12:10] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Step number five, getting interviews and opportunity generation, right? Career coaches do that. And some specialist networking training programs do that. Okay. Entire industry around networking and, and, and career coaching. Okay. Then six interview preparation. Well, there are two types, right? You have the technical and then you have the behavioral interviews, right?
[00:12:27] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: So technical interviews, you have tons of interview prep courses, just tons of them. Interview Cake, Algo Expert, interviewing.io, there are so many of them just on technical interviews. And there are a few, not many, on behavioral because that's much harder to teach behavioral and non technical interviews.
[00:12:42] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: There are a few of them, but they're typically career coaches and maybe one or two courses here and there, right? Just on the interview prep stuff. And then finally, for office selection and negotiation, It's typically coaches who teach you how to negotiate and communicate. That's usually where that's done or career coaches who have the expertise will teach you that.
[00:12:59] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: But notice [00:13:00] that each of these seven steps that I talk about in career change have their own industry.
[00:13:04] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: There is no one umbrella thing that teaches you all seven of the steps and stages, right? That's what I try to do. And that's what I do do with my coaching students. But it takes a lot of time. When I say a lot of time, it's not possible to do this in two months or three months, which, as you know, I think is total BS.
[00:13:19] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Career change takes 6 to 12 months at least, and that's just the kind of time it's going to commit. You're going to have to commit unless you're doing it full time. But I don't encourage you to do it full time because it's a bad idea to lose your current income, put yourself at financial risk, which is just going to cause anxiety and fear.
[00:13:33] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: And that's only going to make things worse for you because you cannot learn when you're afraid.
[00:13:37] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: You cannot learn when you're anxious. You cannot learn when you've got financial stress and woes. Okay, so that's why I tell people hold on to your job It's going to take a bit more time and that's okay. But at least you're not losing money. You still get your income. Let your income fund your career change Okay, if you for example quit your job, you lose your annual income. Okay? Because it's going to take you at least 12 months to get back into the job market.
[00:13:58] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: If you're doing a boot camp or [00:14:00] college or whatever it is, you're going to be out of action for six to 12 months minimum, right? So you've got lost the entire year salary, got living expenses, rent, food, bills, all of that stuff to do. If you've got family, you've got all of that and you've got to pay the program fee for your boot camp or college or whatever it is, right?
[00:14:13] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: Makes no sense. Hold on to all that. Keep that income coming in. Take an extra six months to 12 months. If it takes that long and work with me or someone like me, then not many, unfortunately, but work with someone who can get you Hold your hand every step of the way through all the seven stages and get you there But whether you work with me or not doesn't matter.
[00:14:30] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: My life is set. It's entirely up to you. That's fine What what's really important is that you understand these seven stages. Okay, it's not about learning the fundamentals. Please please please please please Do NOT think learning some coding language is going to get you jobs. It is not never has never will okay What's really important is that you do all of the seven stages build a plan for each of them correctly And follow the sequence properly and intelligently and systematically. And you have to have confidence in your plan If you don't have confidence in your plan, you're not going to stick to it just obvious common sense, right?
[00:14:59] #9 The SEVEN Steps to Career Change (To Code Or Anything Else)__RAW: So you need to have a good [00:15:00] plan for each of the seven stages and then just relentlessly execute on it and give it the time it takes. Okay? Hope that helps guys All the documents that i've talked about here are going to be linked in the show notes and i'll see you in the next episode. Cheers
