Ideally, there’s something redeeming about a job. Maybe the salary’s less than you’d like, but you don’t mind because you’re working on projects you truly care about. Or maybe, inversely, you’re not too inspired by your work, but hey, it pays the bills.
Ideally. But Evan Rorie got the worst of both: dreary work and a paycheck that didn’t cover the basics. So if you find yourself in a similar situation to his, what should you do? Well, you can follow his lead and pivot to tech.
Here’s how he learned new skills at TripleTen and landed the better-paid, meaningful role that’s finally allowing him to plan out a better future.
A career without prospect
After getting his degree in public relations and marketing, Evan went through a few positions before landing in technical recruitment. While there, the jobs he was recruiting for planted a seed. “I remember enjoying just learning about what tech roles offered and what it entailed,” he said. “It piqued my interest as far as I could see myself potentially doing these types of things.”
But the full fruition of that idea was yet to come, and he moved to real estate recruitment. He was there for over two years, but it wasn’t an upgrade. “The job itself wasn't challenging for me. It was very repetitive. I felt like every day was the same thing. You just picked up the phone and called this list of people,” he said.
It was more than dreary. The salary didn’t cover his bills.
The pay that I was getting was very low, so I had to take a second job on the weekends. Evan Rorie, TripleTen grad
During the week, he was trudging through uninspiring work, and during the weekend, he had to go to a warehouse and bag up supplies so he could simply afford to live. It led to an inevitable realization: “There just wasn't anything that I saw from that role that made me feel like I can do this for five more years.”
But what next? Scrolling through Instagram, an ad popped up showing a TripleTen grad who had gone through the bootcamp and reinvented his career. Without a clear sense of the path for him, Evan reached out to a TripleTen career advisor. Over the conversation, the advisor directed him to Business Intelligence Analytics based on his background. “They pinpointed the things that I did and what I would do as an analytics person in the tech world. And it made perfect sense for me,” he said.
He was sold: “For me, it was just the right opportunity at the right time, and I just said, ‘Okay, why not?’”
Losing the ego, gaining the skills
The learning format was right for Evan: “[TripleTen] gave you a setup where you're going to learn it, you're going to see it, you're going to see how it's applied, and then you're going to apply it to some sort of project. And that made it easier for me.”
He could see himself putting his new know-how into practice, and along with his dedication to maintaining a tight schedule, that visible growth kept him going through his studies. But more than that, he was finding the new expertise intriguing in a way his day job never matched. “My main day was so automated and so just mind numbing that when I was doing the two hours of studying, that's what really started firing in my head,” he said.
I was like, ‘Okay, when I get home, that's when the real 9 to 5 starts.’ Evan Rorie, TripleTen grad
He started out tackling the material solo, but as he got deeper into more technical subjects, he realized he’d need to reach out to someone: “I wanted to do it on my own because I didn't want to rely on anyone else. But I had to give up that ego and say, ‘Okay there's other people that can help you. You just have to ask and get out of your comfort zone.’”
Specifically, SQL was difficult for him, but once he understood just how much support TripleTen was offering, he made use of it: “It was one of those subjects that I remember I was really trying to make sure that I didn't just do on my own. I wanted to rely on as many resources as possible to figure it out.”
He mastered it, and finishing his program left him feeling exhilarated: “When I finished the program, I was on such a high that I knew that I was so prepared to start working in tech.”
A recruiter is recruited
That was just the halfway mark. Evan had the skills, but he’d have to stay committed to land the role he was looking for. Some days, he found himself getting discouraged, but the career coaches had his back.
“[The coaches] were like, ‘Okay, we're in it. We already know what's going to happen. We already know it's going to take some time. You just have to stay focused and not get too discouraged.’ And they mentally reset me from that dialogue that I had with my own self saying, ‘I don't think this is going to work.’”
In addition to the coaches, the tutors were there to help him when he wanted to brush up on some tech. “When I had my interviews I was able to reach out to them and say, ‘Hey I really want to make sure I'm catching up with or refreshing my memory of this topic. Can you assist me?’ And they would send me some interview prep.”
Still, it was taking time to find the right role. In a moment of lost hope, he interviewed for a role back in recruiting. “They gave me the job, but I wasn't too sold on the compensation,” he said. So, based on the negotiation prep he got from his career coach, he wanted to see if it could be a bit higher. “I tried to say, ‘Is there any wiggle room?’ and long story short, they said, ‘Yeah we'll give you a call back to see if we can,’ and they never called back.”
But soon enough, he had another interview. In fact, he ended up having six, all of which were 30-minute calls with people throughout the company. A key element that got the company interested in him were his skills in VLOOKUPs, skills he’d gained at TripleTen. “I remember when I mentioned it in the interview, that resonated a lot with the manager because they were like, ‘Okay, this is pretty much what we're going to be doing all the time.’”
With the know-how from his program and the personability honed through his previous roles, he landed the job. Now, he’s a Data Quality Analyst at a company building software for the trades, and he’s crucial to the company’s growth. “I have different accounts and clients that I work with where they're migrating their data from whatever competitors that are out there, and it's my job to help them get their data migrated, making sure the mapping for their data is done correctly and fixing any issues along the journey,” he said.
There’s a bit of a coda to the company that ghosted him, too: “The original team that rejected me? They utilize the software that I work on.”
Now, not only is he not struggling to pay the bills; the higher paycheck is also allowing him to dream beyond precarity.
This job is giving me an opportunity not just to survive but actually to thrive. I had so many things that I wanted to do for myself. I wanted to have better savings. I wanted to pay off all the debts that I've accrued…I have the ability to do all of those things, not just one or two. Evan Rorie, TripleTen grad
It goes beyond the money, too. His coworkers have welcomed him eagerly: “I like the team that I'm with. I love my manager. I just feel like there's a lot of camaraderie.”
But most of all, this new job has unlocked an ability to finally imagine a future: “I visualize this being the actual career that I'm doing five years later. And that was something that I never said before.”
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