Go ahead and tell me everything.
I followed Andre’s advice, and started connecting with different recruiters on LinkedIn. One of them reached out and said, “Hey, I’ve got this position at Deloitte. I’m a Deloitte recruiter.”
He reviewed my resume and came back saying, “For this position, you don’t have enough experience.” I took the feedback in stride and thought, “Well, we’ll see what happens.”
About a week later, he emailed me and said, “Be on the lookout for an email from a recruiter named KT. They looked at your resume, and may be reaching out to you.” Sure enough, KT reached out.
I went through two rounds of interviews, a behavioral interview and a technical interview. Shortly after, they called me back and offered me the position.
What is your official title going to be?
When do you start, like in two weeks?
They told me I’d be moving forward, and then there would be a background check. That whole process brings us to around March 11th. The interesting part is that the position is available in three different locations.
One’s in Phoenix, and one’s in Orlando. Between the two, my wife and I would definitely prefer Orlando. I asked the recruiter, “What does the process look like for choosing a location?”
She got back to me and made it sound simple, just filling out a couple of forms. We could end up in Orlando, or we might stay in Phoenix. Either way, we’re thrilled and excited. We just don’t know where we’ll be yet.
Tell me a little bit about the interviews. Did you feel like Yellow Tail Tech got you good and prepared for what they asked?
The first interview was the behavioral one. I used all the questions we practiced in our mock interviews and continued refining my responses.
Your feedback really helped, especially the advice to lean into my military background and show how that experience taught me to figure things out. I tied that into my time at Procore Plus as well, just like you suggested.
Before the interview, I did a little research. The interviewer didn’t have much on LinkedIn. I checked Facebook and noticed he had a small white dog. I also have a little fluffy dog, she’s about eight pounds. That gave us something personal to connect over during the conversation.
And then the second round interview, the tech interview, was with an Air Force vet and a Marine vet. I felt like I had made a really good impression.
I felt like the Air Force vet was ready to hire me on the spot, but the Marine? I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t think he was really feeling me.
Those kinds of interviews are tough. I wasn’t picking up many good vibes at first. Before the interview officially started, we were just chatting casually. I didn’t even know what his role was in the hiring process. I asked where we were located, and we ended up bonding over something simple. We both enjoy spending time at the beach.
By the end, I started to feel like maybe things were going better than I thought. I answered all the questions honestly and as best as I could. Looking back, I’d say he warmed up a bit.
How much has your LinkedIn contacts grown since you started the job search?
I started probably right around 200, maybe 210 max, and right now I’m at like 550.
The cool thing about that, and this is the other thing that a lot of people are very shortsighted when they think about developing their connections and their network on LinkedIn, it’s kind of like, “OK, I got a job, don’t have to deal with it anymore.”
No, You keep continuing to do that. That’s what they call managing your career, not just getting a job, but managing your career. That stuff will come back and pay off in huge dividends in the long run.
I haven’t started on this game plan yet, but I set a goal for the end of the year to increase to about 4000 connections. That way, when I need a job later on, I’ll have that network ready to go.
Tell us a little bit about your experience at Yellow Tail Tech and going through the curriculum.
Before coming to Yellow Tail Tech, I had either zero technical experience or maybe just a month on the help desk. And even that was basic—someone would say, “Hey, my computer’s not working,” and I’d reply, “Let’s try restarting it.”
Everything I knew was through a graphical interface. I had no clue what Linux was and had never used the command line.
I started with the AWS class, which begins with Linux. That’s when I met my Linux instructor, David. He was enthusiastic and did such a great job teaching that when we had the opportunity to switch over to the Linux side, I thought, “This would be terrific.”
I genuinely enjoyed the Linux class. You all allowed me to make the switch, and I completed my certification in David’s class. I earned my Red Hat certification, then went on to the internship at Procore Plus.
That was a complete culture shock. I went from being in a classroom where I was taught step-by-step—“Here’s how you do X, Y, and Z”, to being in a real-world environment where it was simply, “Go do.”
The first few weeks were really frustrating and overwhelming. But things started to shift when the Kickstart task came up.
I had no idea how to do it, and for some reason, even ChatGPT wasn’t much help. So I reached out to a couple of others who were also struggling. Mr. Roel, Danny, and I worked through it together.
We figured it out. And once we did, I was able to take a step back and remind myself: I have training in figuring things out—even when I don’t have all the answers right away.
For the rest of the internship, you were able to kind of keep that momentum going?
I was able to take that step back and say, “Hey, I know how to figure things out,” that helped so much. Just going back to the basics, looking through my notes, checking documentation, and asking questions to other interns, that helped a lot. The internship ended up being a really good experience.
How long did the internship last?
It lasted about two months.
During that time, did you feel like it really brought everything together for you?
The internship is where everything came together. It was like the missing link, because you can go through class and learn something, but if you don’t apply it, you forget it. Being able to apply what we learned in class and actually using it in a real-world environment was the key.
Now, when I go into an interview, I can say, “ I’ve done that.” I’ve been in the trenches, and I’ve had to figure things out when I didn’t have the answers right in front of me.
If you could go back and tell yourself something before you started this journey, what would it be?
That it’s OK to not know everything at the start. It’s OK to be overwhelmed. Just keep showing up, keep pushing forward, and trust the process. Everything is figureoutable.
Just thinking back to when I started and didn’t know anything about Linux, it’s wild. And now here I am, about to start as a Linux administrator.
Honestly, the support I got from Yellow Tail Tech, from the people I met along the way, that made a huge difference. I couldn’t have done it alone.
Thank you. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m definitely not done growing. This is just the beginning.
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