My hackajob story: How going back to BASIC(s) landed me my dream job

After working at a top telecommunications company for around 10 years, Andy Porritt was ready for something new. He needed a challenge, something to bite his teeth into. In a nutshell, he was looking for his dream job. Deciding to become a software engineer, Andy enrolled in a coding bootcamp and just 11 months later, was offered his dream role via hackajob. Here, he tells us in his own words why he decided to trust in us to help him pursue his dreams…

I had worked in my previous role for around 10 years and was beginning to feel a bit stifled in my career. I enjoyed my role, but it wasn’t particularly taxing and I felt like I needed a new challenge. I decided to enrol on a coding bootcamp because I figured, what did I have to lose?

It was definitely a risk, but I signed up for my 12 month course and decided to give it a good go. I was really enjoying it and learnt so much. With the end of my course in sight, I decided to put some feelers out with recruiters and if I’m being completely honest; the response wasn’t great. I’d end up speaking to recruiters who would tell me that I didn’t have enough experience or others who would ask me to sign up to things like ‘pounds per hour’ in order to gain more experience. It left me feeling a bit disheartened because I’d obviously ploughed a lot of time and money into changing my career.

I wasn’t prepared to give up so easily and so I decided to have a look at some of the job sites, which is how I came across hackajob. I then received an email from someone on the hackajob team and was immediately intrigued. The email mentioned that hackajob help to hire based on skills, not CVs and the team had seen my CV (via a job site) so I decided to sign up.

I felt really positive about hackajob compared to my previous experiences, and the reason I like it so much is that it’s not your typical job platform. I found that it actually provides so much more in terms of overall experience. It was particularly useful for me because after taking some the technical tests available, it showed me the areas that I’m not so strong in and essentially where I need to improve. This allowed me to look at where I was lagging slightly and concentrate on building up my other skillsets - it’s really good.

To me, hackajob seemed to be the perfect solution for those who have the skills but don’t necessarily have the experience. I’ll be honest, I messed up the first coding challenge I did on hackajob. In fact, I don’t even think I finished it properly, but out of the blue a top consultancy got in touch with me (via the hackajob platform) and asked me if I’d be interested in completing one of their coding challenges. They mentioned that depending on how it goes, they might want to talk to me in more depth.

I took their technical coding challenge and seemed to do well at it, so I then progressed to a phone interview and after that, a face-to-face. That was on a Wednesday and on the following Monday they called and told me that I had the job. The best part? I haven’t even finished my coding course yet. I’ve actually still got a month or so to go, but there was never any pressure from my new company for me to finish my qualification or anything. It’s really clear that they have got complete trust in me and honestly it’s just spurred me on either further to finish my qualification.

The job that I found via hackajob is absolutely my dream job. I’ll be working at a top consultancy (one of the best digital agencies in the UK) as a Software Developer and I honestly can’t wait to start. I’m so glad that I decided to go with hackajob. I also want to say a massive thank you to my talent manager, Jack. He was absolutely fantastic and I found his help instrumental in getting my new career off the ground. He always took the time to check in with me and prep me for interviews; essentially managing my experience on the hackajob platform. He was great!

I do think that there is a touch of bias against those like myself who went down the coding bootcamp route instead of getting a traditional university degree. In some ways, I understand it. It’s obviously a different experience for me, doing a few hours of coding in between working than it is for someone who chose to go down the university path. Ultimately, I think that if we’re all doing the same work and the results are comparable, it shouldn’t matter which route you choose when it comes to your education - you just have to choose what’s right for you.