Although, formal education helps in creating opportunities for first job but it is not necessary to have a degree in computer science, math or other STEM fields to get a job at a tech company. In today’s fast-paced technology industry, most of the information of the world is never more than a few clicks away and where things change so fast, education must in fact be a life-long process and not the learn-once-use-forever one-off process. Therefore, relevance of a degree is easily compensated with relevant skills combined with business use-cases and projects. In this talk, we will discuss about the roles and opportunities in the tech industry and why skill-driven approach changes mindset of the recruiter. It will include how one can break barriers of academic limitations, tap into opportunities through soft skills and networking, choose to slip into the job they want rather than slip away. Concluding it with useful resources and hacks to network better to land into opportunities life-long.

1. Stuti Verma
Director,
WomenWhoCode-Delhi
stuti@womenwhocode.com
@StutiVerma284

2. Speaker Intro
Stuti Verma is working as a Software Engineer at Incedo in Java technologies
and currently involved in RPA (Workfusion, UiPath and Python) with Centre of
Excellence team. She is also working as Director at Women Who Code-Delhi, an
international organisation that helps and promotes women to excel in technology
careers. She organises meetups, manages partnerships and mentors team at
Women Who Code-Delhi.

3. Abstract
How to land your first job in tech without an engineering degree
Although, a formal education in tech is quite helpful in landing opportunities for your first job in tech
but with so many online resources, anyone without a formal education in tech can also switch careers
to tech easily and it is not necessary to have a degree in computer science, math or other STEM fields
anymore. In today’s fast-paced technology industry, most of the information of the world is never more
than a few clicks away and where things change so fast, education must in fact be a life-long process
and not the learn-once-use-forever process. Therefore, relevance of a degree is easily compensated
with relevant skills combined with business use-cases and projects.
In this talk, we will discuss the roles and opportunities in the tech industry and how to use a skill-
driven approach that changes mindset to approach job-hunt. We will further discuss how can one
break barriers of academic limitations or inadequate/irrelevant past work experience and tap into
opportunities in tech through soft skills and networking, choosing to slip into the job they want rather
than slipping away. We will finally conclude it with some useful resources and hacks to network better
to land into opportunities life-long.

4. How to land your first job
in tech without an
engineering degree

5. Is it possible?

9. 2. Work through a tutorial in your field.
3. If you can't get through a tutorial or the first few chapters of a book on the subject, don't give up.
4. Try doing a small-scale project or “tinkering” with the tools before you move onto a different tech skill or field.
5. Taking the time to be sure you really love the tech field you are pursuing will save you from
6. The tech career path & the hiring posts: see what the requirements are so you know how to prepare.
1. Whether you think you would like to be a programmer, a systems analyst, a designer,
Research and Pick Your Focus
an engineer or a security analyst, do a little research.
having to make another job change in a few years.

10. Just Do It!!
Don’t wait for the opportunity, create it!!
• Participate in hack-a-thons
• Take-up coding challenges - at a college near you or
online
• Competitive programming
• Coding bootcamps
• Instructor sessions
• Study Groups
• “Do-it-yourself”
• #100DaysOfCode
• Freelancing & side-projects
• Contract-based projects
• Befriend a master and work for him/her
• Apply for entry-level positions at companies that don't
require a bachelor's degree

11. 1. Professional Headshot
2. Summary:
1. which describes exactly who you are
2. what type of job you are looking for
3. talk about your experience
3. Oversell and promote yourself
4. Documented links of certificates
5. Share projects
6. Write well about your achievements
7. Recommendations
8. Volunteer causes
9. Keywords
10. Network, network, network!
Improving your profile

12. Let’s see how it looks like!
Meetup is the largest community of local groups.

13. How to build your network through
1. Find an interesting meetup
2. Attend it
3. Talk to the organisers
5. Start organising
In this process, you would have already met 10 new persons out of which you would be talking to 1-5 persons to organise.
13. Add this to your LinkedIn profile
14. Put it in your resume
15. Apply for jobs
At this point of time, you would have met at least 20-30 persons, run a community, people already know you for a subject.
6. Prepare a topic. Give a talk.
7. Take feedbacks. Work on it.
8. Go to other meet-ups
9. Find the organisers. Connect.
10. Give talks there
11. Establish your expertise and confidence
12. Publish your talks

14. 1. https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com
2. https://www.womenwhocode.com/resources
3. https://www.freecodecamp.org
4. YouTube channels
5. https://udacity.com
6. https://www.udemy.com
7. https://www.edx.org
8. https://www.coursera.org
9. https://codelabs.developers.google.com
10. https://www.topcoder.com
11. https://leetcode.com
12. https://www.interviewbit.com
13. https://www.kaggle.com
14. https://www.datacamp.com
15. https://www.dataquest.io
16. https://www.lynda.com
17. https://www.pluralsight.com
Resources

15. This presentation was created for a non-profit event.