What Employers Want From Bootcamp Grads

As the Employer Partnerships Manager at TripleTen, Jordan van Leesten spends every day talking to employers looking for entry-level tech talent. Having worked in recruiting as part of his varied career, he has seen the hiring process from both sides. We asked him to add some context to TripleTen’s latest employer report, Breaking into Tech: Employer Secrets for Success, and share his best tips to help bootcamp grads get hired.

About our expert

Jordan has held many different roles over the years, but he has always been clear about his “why”: he chooses work that “pays my wallet, but it's paying me in my heart too.” That feeling — of having made a difference in someone’s life — has always been his North Star as he worked in admissions, recruiting, and community relations before coming to TripleTen. Today, his role is all about serving the students at TripleTen by developing lasting employer partnerships with companies.

Jordan’s number one tip for standing out

Your biggest advantage as a bootcamp grad is a strong portfolio_{Secrets of a Stellar Portfolio: Guidelines and Checklist} of real-world projects. While some employers may hesitate when looking at a bootcamp grad’s resume, Jordan emphasizes that “stressing your real world experiences and real world projects is huge.” In the report, nearly 70% of people surveyed said that hard skills were the most important quality for candidates to have. For employers, real-world projects are key to assessing whether a candidate has those skills.

While working as a recruiter, Jordan says he looked for candidates who “were able to very clearly say exactly what [they] did in all their different portfolio projects. Those are the biggest pieces that I was always looking for.” Have the portfolio and project links updated and readily available on your resume and LinkedIn to make it easy for recruiters to see how your experience matches the job description.

Jordan elaborates that, beyond just completing the coursework, you need to show how you applied the skills you learned, whether in externships or even volunteer projects. In addition to showing off your skills, your projects reflect your self-motivation. As Jordan puts it, “A lot of employers love to see that hunger” to succeed and go above and beyond. 

The importance of soft skills

Hard skills are critical, but don’t overlook soft skills: 65% of respondents in the employer report listed soft skills_{The Soft Skills Software Engineers Need and Why} as among the most important qualities for successful candidates. If you’re a career switcher, demonstrating soft skills is just as important as showing off your tech stack.

Jordan’s biggest career pivot came early in his career, from community manager at a mayor’s office to admissions manager at YearUp, but his soft skills helped ease the transition. Jordan reflects, “At the end of the day, you have to be someone who is highly communicative, you have to be very organized, you have to be on top of your game.” No matter what role you switch into, there are core skills you can carry over from your previous career.

If you’re worried that your previous roles don’t have anything to do with tech, remember that bootcamp grads come from all sorts of backgrounds: nurses_{From Nursing to Coding: How to Transition from Healthcare to Tech}, teachers, customer service reps, and more. Your analytical and communication skills from nursing_{From Nursing to Data: How Long Does It Take to Become a Data Scientist?} can translate well into a career in data science. And your creative problem solving skills from teaching_{Alternative Careers for Teachers: Why Tech Is the Way to Go} are just as important when coding.

It’s not too late to switch careers

Jordan reminds career-changers to “give themselves some grace because it's tough to take a leap of faith and jump into a new industry.” The good news is that bootcamp grads are competitive candidates for tech roles, no matter their age or previous career. In 2023, 23% of TripleTen’s grads were over age 35, and 87% came from non-STEM backgrounds such as teaching, sales, or healthcare. Even so, 87% of grads found work in their new field within six months of graduation.

Having reinvented his own career multiple times, and helped many others onto new career paths, Jordan encourages career switchers to adopt a growth mindset: “The only way that we grow is when we really start to get outside of that comfort zone. I always think in a net positive mindset, saying, I can learn it. I can figure things out. And I can always point to the different experiences I've had in the past that will let me be able to do this job, even though it might seem completely different.”

Great news for bootcamp grads

TripleTen’s latest report offers encouraging news for career-switchers.

And nearly 80% of decision makers told TripleTen that they are already hiring candidates with nontraditional backgrounds.

Pick a bootcamp that invests in you

When picking a bootcamp_{Unveiling Legitimacy: How to Verify the Authenticity of a Bootcamp}, carefully review whether the program offers career support, and what outcomes grads achieve. TripleTen offers a money-back guarantee_{What You Need to Know about the TripleTen Money-Back Guarantee}, as well as career coaching to help you develop job search materials, network, and land that role.

Strong employer relationships are also key. That’s the focus of Jordan’s work at TripleTen. Beyond building employer relationships that can help lead to jobs for grads, Jordan has deeper conversations with employers about the changing job market and about what skills are becoming more highly in demand. Those insights go directly to TripleTen staff to fine-tune the curriculum to “make sure that we're equipping our students with the best toolkit.”

What do employers say about hiring TripleTen grads? Jordan says that “the overwhelming consensus from partners who have hired TripleTen grads is that they are incredibly devoted to constantly learning — and being adaptable. Many of our graduates have participated in externships with companies, and that real-world experience of being embedded within teams is immensely valuable.”

Our pitch to you

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