Over the past two months around a hundred Careerist graduates have found jobs in tech! Careerist keeps growing stronger every single day, more potential career coaches want to join this evolving team each week, and Careerist gets better results than other courses.
So, it’s with great pleasure that I can announce that Max, the co-founder of Careerist, will share the backstory of Careerist with us today.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself…
I was finishing my BA in Business in Israel, when all of a sudden I got a Green Card and I was able to move to the US. So, I started planning to move to California, mainly the Bay Area. This was the place I wanted to start my new life.
When I got to the US I Kept up to date with friends and people in a similar situation to myself via forums. One day there was an interview with someone about QA mentioned on a forum. During the interview the interviewee was talking about a chance to learn something simple via their course, and they discussed how the QA profession was considered to be one of the happiest jobs in the US, according to Forbes. And I was intrigued.
I guess that was the moment I decided to take up a career in QA. The opportunity to earn around $70,000 a year, after completing the course they were discussing, was also very tempting.
The course was around 3-4 months long and then I had to go through several months of job hunting. During this time I did manage to get an internship, and I was paid $10 per hour. I was really happy with this as it gave me the necessary experience I’d need to find work in the industry.
However, after a few months of sending job applications off, I got a strong feeling that I was wasting my time. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything groundbreaking, and I felt that I was just pressing buttons and not challenging myself.
I wanted to change things for the better, but fears and thoughts of ‘I don’t know anything’ made me doubt myself a lot. I was held back by these worries.
After a few weeks of actively applying for more jobs, I received a phone call from a company. I was pretty positive that I was answering their interview questions wrong, but it was more about curiosity and gaining real world interview experience that mattered at that point.
To cut a long story short, after answering some straightforward and simple questions I got a call back from the recruiter to say I’d got the job. I was going to be paid $30 an hour and I’d be working in a brand new office in the financial district of San Francisco.
I checked out the company's information on their website and the job was so interesting. In the end I negotiated my salary to $35 an hour, and I was pretty happy with the job.
Do you agree with the statement that ‘QA is one of the happiest jobs’?
Of course! Working in QA is like taking a shortcut into the tech world. QA work can be done from home too, and we are really used to remote jobs now, and that’s great! QA work is also fundamental to our world today, so working in such a job is highly rewarding.
When did the idea of creating a QA bootcamp come to your mind?
I was working for Apple when I first thought about setting up the bootcamp. A friend of mine came to me one day with an idea of creating a startup and I supported him. I was driven by the desire to share my information and my experiences with people. I genuinely wanted to, and still want to, help people find jobs that they really do enjoy. And I want to see people living their dreams!
What was your main worry about starting a new business?
Leaving my comfort zone.
I had a stable job at a great company when the bootcamp first started out, so it was a huge commitment. My place of work was not far from my home, just a 15 minutes drive, so I would go to work and rush home to teach students.
Everything was very fast-paced at the beginning. We launched the website and the name before we had any course material, a curriculum or other teachers.
As a person who’s worked at a big-named company, can you share some tips with us on how an individual can find work in such an organization?
It’s not too complicated to get into Apple, Facebook, Intel or Google as a Quality Assurance worker in the US. That’s why we have a lot of graduates working there right now. It’s a dream job for any tech worker because the job is always interesting.
I don’t know much about the company itself. We weren’t shown a lot of information, it was rather secretive. We were asked to keep an eye out for problems and to report the issues if we saw any.
Large companies usually want to see that you can follow instructions, you’re a nice person to work with, you have a good personality and that you’re able to keep secrets. That’s the standard most businesses want these days.
Be confident and show the recruitment team that you’re a nice and a good person.
What character traits have helped you to achieve your goals?
Self-confidence, passion and dedication to the mission. My mission is to help people get better jobs. I’m grateful I attended my course all those years ago, because I was able to see how the course could be improved. I gave a lot to the course I took but in the end I decided to make my own bootcamp.
What does the future hold for Careerist?
More and more people are getting jobs after completing our courses, so we want to continue on this path.
Our team grew from five to sixty people, and we want to maintain this growth.
Getting up and doing what we do best and reaching the stars is really what it’s all about. We see ourselves better than our opponents, because we feel that we have a more transparent process, our material is relevant and all our students have access to career coaches, who are there to support them at every stage. We highlight what’s important on the course and it makes our students feel more confident and less stressed out.
We’ve also partnered up with a large Silicon Valley company. Doing so will allow students to undertake more varied internships, and more opportunities will be present to students that will help them in many different ways. For now, I can’t tell you too much, just keep an eye out for our updates.
What is your advice to current and future students?
Follow our guidelines and you will have your dream job very soon! If done correctly, your job search will take you 1-4 months.
Thanks a lot for sharing Careerist’s inspiring backstory with us today!