Life after Bootcamp: Getting a Coach

Audit your mentorship, free or, paid coaching programmes

As a career switcher, I realised the importance of community and accountability. No journey should be done alone full time. Especially when you are learning new things that is way beyond your experience. It is essential to build different support networks to cater to your own emotional, social, and professional growth. Sometimes, this comes in the form of a coach.

Three components receive hits when you switch careers — your confidence, status, and skills. Without your confidence in your own voice and skin, you may not be able to perceive the value of your skills. Therefore, you need to pay attention to all three components. A coach may help you with that.

In the previous article, I talked about the importance of self-awareness in two areas: how you learn and communicate directly with clarity. These two factors drive your success if you decide to pursue a mentorship, coaching program and or an online program. It is even more essential when you seek help and help is given for free.

The following stories chart the three stages of my evolving confidence and its relation to the kind of help I welcomed and were available to me. I first joined a program that assigned a skills-based coach. My second experience combined emotional and professional support. Finally, I enrolled in a specialist online programme. The biggest factor is NOT whether it is a free or paid service. Rather, it is how clear you are in your goals and expectations.

I anonymised the personal names of the mentors and but refer to the actual names of the programme I was involved and continue to be involved in.

Phase 1 Transition Stage: Low Confidence, Imposter Syndrome

My self-assessment: High in building confidence; low impact on my skills

Since I was at the first phase of my transition journey, my main challenges were my mindset limitations and imposter syndrome.

Context. I was lucky to be assigned a mentor after a three-day Code to Change (C2C) bootcamp/mentorship program. While the boot camp is almost free, we were asked to “commit” EUR 100 to help defray costs for the venue and lunches during the course. This was a smart move. Given the limited spaces, payment solidifies commitment from selected participants. It prevents cancellation, no-shows, and non-attendance. For those in much extreme economic conditions, the cost was most likely subsidised by the organisers and offered for free.

Working with a Mentor: At the end of the boot camp, we were asked to select a pathway. I chose the UX Research route, and I was assigned to a senior researcher from Booking.com. She was an excellent mentor who has a mission to help out other women in the industry. This was my first rodeo, so I had no idea how mentorship worked or what to expect. I was fortunate that Elise was a great leader and communicator. She structured our engagement and this translated to a structured working relationship.

How did we structure our relationship? Elise approached the mentorship as a project-based contract in which we worked on an objective.

1. My mindset: Looking back, much of our check-ins focused on confidence-building activities. I was still struggling with my transition decision so I set low goals for myself. Something easy to reach and keep me motivated for the month. My goal was low — landing an interview. I wanted to end my rejection drought at the end of the mentorship month.
2. Her mindset and approach: Be specific. She taught me to “be very specific,” like getting a job or finishing a case study. Compare this to my initial vague idea of “learning about user research.”

Her semi-structured approach worked well for my structured learning preference. I learned to assign specific tasks for the day that could easily be completed. For example, “section 1 of the case study,” or “write 2 cover letters for the week.” At the end of the week, these specific tasks and accomplishments gave me something to report at my weekly check-in.

Boundary-setting sets up personal commitment to everyday practice and the respect for our weekly check-in.

Our check-in set-up. We have a clear agenda on a daily and weekly basis. This emphasises respect for boundaries both for myself and especially for her. I knew that I was taking time away from her infant, her family, and rest! It also helps me get through my own healing journey from burnout. Early on, I learned that I had suffered from a type of PTSD what Dr. Gina Hiatt calls as Post Traumatic Scholar’s Disorder. It’s real.

At this stage, it was difficult navigating emotional recovery with learning new skills and requirements in UX. Combining my long-term goal with short-term tasks helped me schedule my day. It also made our hour and a half long weekly check-in efficient, productive, and output oriented.

Programme End: At the end of the month, the C2C boot camp held a closing ceremony. A good conclusion is equally important as a good start. One of the goals of the programme was to share tangible “results” to the group. For my presentation, I focused on my emotional growth but also reported my completion of my online portfolio. (I’ve since scuppered that version of my online portfolio! I learned later on that this type of website is pretty much useless for job applications. This is for another post.)

While Elise remains open to any future contact, I needed to know what I wanted out of her skills and experience. This was a much more difficult question for me.

Key takeaways:

1. Mentor for emotional support. At this early stage in my transition journey, I actually needed a mentor for emotional and mental support more than skills. However, by learning to do my initial portfolio/case studies, I was coming to terms with my past.
2. Blind to opportunities. Because I needed more emotional support, I was not able to tap Elise’s expertise on advanced topics about building and presenting portfolios, research + product development teams, and working with product managers, among other things. I could not yet deal with those issues yet.
3. Personal Accountability. I recommend a structured program for those in burnout to help provide you with a “deadline” and avoid wallowing too long in your emotional world. Getting tasks done gave me small daily accomplishments.
4. What do you want? At this point, I had not been able to maximise what was on offer. I did not know what to ask from my mentor. A mentorship requires that you become proactive with what you want and what she can do to help — not the other way around. It is essential to check how you learn and then ask what you want to learn from this person. His or her expertise would help push back your lofty expectations to more reasonable accomplishments. Treat your mentor as a sounding board for what you want to achieve.
5. Inspiration vs. Skills. At the time, I benefitted from her astonishing transition from no research background to doing UX research! I was in need of role models—of seeing possibilities. That was her impact to me. I needed to see what a confident and skillful woman looks like.

Phase 2 Transition Stage: “I don’t know what I want (yet)!”

My self-assessment: Higher self-confidence and increasing skill levels

At this stage, I was looking for more specific help with my job hunting but also interviewing skills. I was also concurrently doing my portfolio.

Context. I was not on a specific lookout for a coach and my initial goals were simple, to land interviews to maintain my confidence. Serendipity led me to a remarkable source in my neighbourhood, I was fortunate to find out that my friend Faith, was also transitioning to a new career — an accountability coach. She had always been helpful and one fateful day asked what I was doing and when I mentioned I was applying for jobs, she was immediately interested.

Having learned what my learning preferences are and the tasks that I needed to do on a daily basis enabled me to maintain direction with or without a coach. However, having an accountability coach gives you an extra push and an independent critical view of your work is what makes getting one valuable.

Working with a Coach/Friend. In her former life, Faith won a sustainability award for a beverage company working as an analyst and supply chain logistics expert. She left her job to focus on family and become a mother. Now she is crafting a new career as an entrepreneur and as a career and productivity coach. She wanted to help women who took time off and thinking of returning back to work.

Coaching is focusing on you as a person, your development of skills to reach
your goal and making sure that that it is right for you. It is about recognising yourself as a capable person and see the evidence of it, align your action with what you want, knowing your working style — what works or what not, articulate your own message / your own story.

How did we structure our relationship? Navigating a working relationship with a friend makes relational expectations doubly tricky. We had never worked before or interacted at a sustained rate. However, we both informally checked up with each other weekly and have an open door policy with feedback on what we were working (i.e. editing applications and texts). So while we do not have a clear cut program, I offered myself as a guinea pig to test her program and training specifically to my job application.

1. My mindset. Tactical. I was focused on getting my portfolio in place for second stage interviews. So in my head, I was laser focused on crafting my cover letters and interview practice. I wanted to achieve something concrete.
2. Her mindset. Strategic. Her approach is less about portfolio and writing letters. At that time, she was trying to communicate the following:

a. Vision Setting. She was asking me to take a step back and ask myself for every application that I am doing: What do I want from the role? It is not about trying to fit into the role but asking myself, why am I doing this? What is in it for you? She was correct to say that your vision is like your destination — your inner GPS system. For her, it should be one of the first things one must know even before penning the application. This will enable you to save time by choosing to select which companies I want to work with and not just apply to every shiny company you come across! Without any interest, it will definitely show in the interview.

Faith always emphasised and asked me why I was doing UX, or spending inordinate effort in writing, or choosing this company. In my head, it was simply, ‘oh, land that job,’ ‘it’s in my to-do list,’ or ‘closure.’ Typical of job applicant mindsets. What she was asking me, actually provoking me, is to allow this time to think about who I want to be at the next stage in my transition (regardless of job title or position or industry). The job applications and portfolio creations are the motions, but was I aware of what I truly want? Can I enunciate it? What do I get from UX or from another industry? How does this lead to my goals? What are my life goals?

b. Portfolio. Don’t wait to be perfect. To get into the front door, you don’t have to have a completed portfolio. (Faith and I disagreed to some extent about this. This is ultimately depending on the company. Those that require portfolios at the starting gate are more influenced by American companies or American companies based in the EU. It is a bit more relaxed with EU companies but a lot are starting to adopt this practice. Needless to say, Jared M. Spool spoke against using portfolio as a sole requirement. You will probably need some form of case study in the advanced stages of the interview. Perhaps a topic for another post).

c. Own your narrative. I still have a lot to learn about storytelling and what it entails. (It is much harder to see real-life examples. It is one of the hardest things I needed to do. Think, singing publicly on stage!) She required me to start filling up a capability chart as a way to audit my skills, recognise them, and see what I have actually achieved.

Personally, it was tough for me. I flinched. I procrastinated. I remembered the bad things. I saw failures. Faith gave me a different perspective. She herself experienced the same things in her old workplaces. She saw in me a very capable woman, outspoken if given a chance, and a person who achieved a lot. This is the reason you get a coach because they don’t see you the way you do. That is a good thing.

Faith also gave me a different perspective into myself. We both empathised with each other’s workplace trauma but also how we help each other. This exercise remains ongoing. It is essential to find your own narrative and stick to it.

d. Assessing Job Applications. I saw Faith as someone who was pretty incisive, skilled in getting into what recruiters wanted and needed. She’s a pro with preparing for interviews and offered me tips and tricks to get through the first gate.

How was she able to do this? She read job ads critically. She essentially, taught me how to critically read them and write cover letters. What I missed was her point. As a career switcher, “I want to match your skills and see what is transferable” to the position. This is her basis to writing the cover letter.

The formula: Your capability + job ad requirements = cover letter

Her point was that when you read the job description, you will know if “the job is not what you want” (don’t waste time on it) or “jump into the application race knowing where your strong selling point and skills gaps are.” By the time you start that application, with her guidance, I should have learned:

1. To know what I want (my values and needs)
2. To know what I have accomplished and who I am (values and capability)
3. To articulate what I can offer and what I can do.

Not the exact capability chart but similar in essence. Image from Macquarie University training.

I asked for her feedback about our experience. You can see that our mindsets differed. I can see that we were looking at the forest at different levels. I was stuck examining the bark and leaf while she was above the canopy surveying the whole field. It must be frustrating for a coach sometimes. Looking at her list, I now have some distance to let all the lessons that I have learned to sink in. This is why a time away from a coach or a structured program means an opportunity to cement what you’ve learned.

Our check-in set-up. We tailored our task list using her programme structure. We established a common Google folder and file to check out each other’s progress during the start of the week. I set out my daily and task goals. More importantly, I identified what kind of help I needed from her. This is sometimes the most difficult of all to enunciate. I had to think closely whether I needed emotional support, technical assistance, or just dealing with imposter syndrome or needed kind words to myself. If I could not enunciate it, we would discuss it on an appointed time ranging from an hour or two.

This was the system that worked for us and for myself since I loved structure to my day. Faith helped me tame my expectations when I overwhelmed myself. I tended to overcommit myself creating too many to-do tasks. I am still learning to keep things manageable and achievable.

Programme End. It was inevitable that there would be changes in the routine and structure we both organised. Life happens — a long vacation, a sick child, sudden busyness, and juggling tasks, home renovations, or quarantine. Those happened.

The changes in our month-long set-up worked in our favour as we both had activities that kept us from keeping a structured routine. One thing that is important, if you are working with friends, your coaching relationship is separate from your friendship and you are, ultimately, your own person and responsible for your own journey. Our friendship meant that we maintain an open-door policy including giving and receiving feedback as they come up. This unspoken arrangement hasn’t changed prior to testing her pilot program. I am so lucky to have her around me to check up on me regularly. This is the advantage when you are friends.

Key Takeaways

1. Every job application is a step towards your life clarity — what do you want to do and how does this reflect in writing your cover letter and sharing during interviews.
2. Questions related to clarity brought discomfort on several levels. It seems easier to be ‘doing’ something than ‘reflecting.’ This requires self-work. Hard but necessary.
3. A coach is trained from a particular school of thought, curriculum, and has attained some form of certification. Their vocation is to help another person achieve their goals and see them successful. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to you, the student. Trust in the process that you will eventually meet in the middle.

Phase 3 Transition Stage: “I know what I want (slowly)!”

My self-assessment: High skills development but flagging self-confidence

Context. My tactical approach is a result of my self-imposed three-pronged pressure—to transition into a non-academic job, to find out what I wanted to do, and to upskill into the new UX industry.

First off, I needed to find out what I wanted to do and to understand how I personally learned. Having been used to in-person lectures, I was sceptical about remote learning and its limits. I enlisted into so many free programs to test myself. I enlisted in three types of programmes:

1. Coding. It was a natural outcome of my bootcamp so I tried freecodecamp (the most popular and free). HTML is pretty good exercise but I was not fully satisfied without a project to work on.
2. Data Science. I once considered becoming a (big) data scientist and learning Python. I paid for a couple of months in Datacamp when it was on promo. Again, it was a great exercise to enlist and see the curriculum. I later assessed that actual data science would take me longer to learn.
3. Coding + Design. A friend referred me to the beautiful coding and design learning platform called SuperHi. It really hit the notes for me because it appealed to my design sensibility, project-based approached, and un-intimidating approach to learning.

I treated these exercises as learning to listen to myself, identify what I liked and crossing off what I don’t want to do.

Working with a Paid Programme vs. a Human Coach. Without a personal coach, I needed a structured paid programme for accountability and milestones. Enrolling doesn’t mean automatic success. Once you enrol, the challenge is to fit the program into your daily routine. That is something people don’t consider upon enrollment. Set a daily routine that will allow you to include this in your workflow. This is not as easy as it sounds. But once you do, you will feel good and supported.

Choosing a programme. I needed to review and prioritise my objectives. I dropped those other courses because my priority was to build my portfolio to land a job. The SuperHi course was great for future upskilling but it didn’t fit into my current needs.

I hit a knowledge and network ceiling in my job application process and portfolio creation. I was all over the place! I started PowerPoint presentations. I started creating an online portfolio (I’m looking at you Wix and Strikingly) without having a clear outline. I wasted too much time and failed in too many interviews to find that my version of case study was NOT very helpful for recruiters.

A graphic design friend referred me to Sarah Doody who has a ton of free information stuff (both print and YouTube) to get you started about the basics and frequent questions on UX Research and portfolio. I bit the bullet and enrolled in a very expensive course, even with some form of discount. I needed help in portfolio creation and mainly communicating my research findings for industry people. That was my main decision to invest in the course program.

The UX Portfolio Formula was useful for its live office hours in which Sarah gives feedback to submitted work. She has since eliminated this and now there is only video archives which remain useful, but you can no longer receive feedback from her directly. Alternatively, I follow Nikki Anderson of User Research Academy that has cheaper and more interaction if that is what you need. I have never used her, but I can see that her courses and help are more intimate, targeted, and affordable for starters.

Without the live office hours, it is much harder to have a weekly or monthly milestone. However, I was able to recruit teammates or designers for my own case study. Sarah’s online community and possibly any course’s community board is a good source of help and accountability. The problem with a clear programme end, I experienced procrastination and lack of motivation. So, I made sure I had human interaction or partners for accountability.

Key Takeaways.

1. Align your objectives. Given the numerous available courses and free information out there, don’t forget to ask yourself what you need and what you want. How do these programs help you?
2. You will make mistakes in choosing a programme. Note them and refine your career objectives. Document when possible.
3. Find your multiple accountability partners. I supplemented my paid programmes or projects with a human partner. Have different humans for your different needs. I have specific friends that I seek emotional support and skill support. You may or may not find them in one individual so distribute your needs and don’t expect one person to supply you with everything. This will greatly relieve you of disappointment, false expectation, and frustration.

I have lost my momentum several times for multiple reasons including time management and over commitment of activities during the daytime. You’ll splutter in fits and starts, sometimes on the down, sometimes on the up, but picking yourself up is what learning is.