Approaching a Career Change with a Growth Mindset
Approaching a Career Change with a Growth Mindset
One of Lambda School’s most unique value-adds is our Career Services. At traditional educational institutions, you’ll often find career support is opt-in and ends around the time you graduate. At Lambda School, we understand that career preparation isn’t something that can be accomplished at the last minute. To ensure that they’re ready to hit the ground running in their new fields, all Lambda School students complete a career readiness program in tandem with their technical learning experience, and we ramp up, not down, our support when you begin the job search post-graduation. After all, we believe that preparing for the job search doesn’t start when you finish the technical curriculum – it starts on your first day of class.
It’s important to remember that career development starts long before the job search, and there are certain tasks, like networking, that take time! With this in mind, our career readiness curriculum focuses on preparing students on three main topics, with the first two topics being skills that need practice over time versus all at once during the job search. They are:
As you go through our technical curriculum, you’ll have dedicated hours for career lessons that emphasize certain skills and prepare you to grow as a professional. Even if you’re entering Lambda School with professional experience, the lessons are of benefit as we help you level -up your skills and apply them to a tech-focused career.
Career development is a lifelong process and looks different for every individual student, so these lessons are meant to meet you where you are and allow you to apply what is of the most benefit to you at the moment. For any students needing additional support after lessons, we have a team of career coaches available to offer one-on-one help with everything from interview prep to resume writing.
Many students feel apprehensive about having to do career lessons parallel to their technical work, but they consistently report that each lesson was worth their attention and engagement. The hours students dedicate to career development are far fewer than those dedicated to mastering technical concepts, as we carve out time between technical modules for career readiness. However, these few hours have a high impact and shouldn’t be underestimated or skipped.
After each Career lesson, students complete a project or challenge that allows them to practice the skills they learned. After all, lecturing about networking and how to do it is far less effective than attending a networking event (virtual or not) or making a new connection on LinkedIn.
Your Lambda School networking project could be as simple as reaching out to your warm network to update them on what you’re doing at Lambda School. This is a low-lift networking activity that helps keep you top-of-mind for people you already know. If this is a task you’ve already been doing, you might instead be asked to do cold outreach to begin to grow a network more specific to your track and industry (if you don’t yet have one).
To support your career development learning, our Learning Leadership Program collaborates with the Career Development Curriculum team to design prompts and activities that reinforce what you’re learning, when you’re learning it. Career readiness doesn’t have to happen independently! We encourage students to work on career projects together and to share their applied learning within their track teams, ask for resume feedback from their career coach and mentors, and share their outreach strategies with fellow students to help everyone improve.
You are the driver of your career development – Lambda is just here to help you figure out what to focus on and support you in that development so you’re prepared for the job search and to start contributing right away at your new job.
Ready to start your new career at Lambda School? Learn more about how our curriculum is designed to get you hired or start your application now.
