Meet Career Services

What The Career Services Team Does

The whole job search process is a conversation between students, employers, and our team. Just like any job search, this is hard, time-consuming, and requires commitment. We provide students with support and, where applicable and possible, even with connections to companies — but we do expect quite a bit from them, too. So far our students have risen to the challenge. When you’re introduced to your career coach, you will start having more in-depth conversations about these expectations. In the meantime, remember: we are on your team - this works best if we’re working together.

WE HELP RECENT GRADS PREPARE FOR THE JOB SEARCH

We do everything we can to help our students find jobs. This includes practice conducting technical and cultural interviews and helping students make connections. The Career Services Team includes employer liaisons, who work hard to evangelize for our graduates with employers. Graduates can also count on us to help them leverage their own personal and professional networks, manage job offers, develop a strong set of job-search collateral like a resume and LinkedIn profile, and provide them with resources and support for the scenarios they’ll encounter during their job search. Job-seeking graduates who initiate a job search within a specified time following graduation will have access to these services for their first 180 days of job-seeking, or until they find a job - whichever happens first.

WE HELP FLATIRON ALUMNI NAVIGATE THE NEXT STEPS IN THEIR CAREERS

Our team wants alumni to have great careers. So however we can help make that happen, we'll do it. If one of our alums needs a new job or some help navigating their current one, we're happy—excited, even—to help out again. Usually, that means setting up a series of three structured meetings with a career coach to help sort out your pitch, resume, and new job-search collateral. Just get back in touch ([email protected]), and we’ll help talk you through your next step.

Expectations

We, the Career Services Team, are here to support you as you begin your programming career. As we start working together, it’s important that you understand our expectations of you—and below is what you can expect of us. In order to support our graduates - and make it absolutely clear what students need to do to land a job - we’ve developed a Career Services Commitment.

Career Services Commitment and Money-Back Guarantee

Because we are committed to helping you meet your goals and earn a job offer in software development, Flatiron School gives graduates the opportunity to participate in our Money-Back Guarantee program: If you meet all the requirements for graduation from your program, and you comply fully with the job search requirements specified below and you do not receive a full-time job offer in the field within 180 days of your job search start date, you will be eligible for a full tuition refund.

If you intend to job-seek when you graduate, we’ll ask that you agree to our Career Services Commitment and choose a job search start date, after which we’ll both hold you accountable for meeting the requirements of the Commitment, and will in turn be available to coach and guide you through the process.

Please refer to the Terms of Service​that you acknowledged upon enrollment to see the full Career Services Commitment.

What Students Can Expect From The Career Services Team

AT ~5 WEEKS PRIOR TO GRADUATION

• Access to the Career Prep course about the job search process
• Help creating your resume and presence on LinkedIn
• Mock cultural and technical interviews
• Assignment of a Career Coach, and 1:1 job-search and career coaching conversations before you start your job search
• Access: Ask us questions on anything jobs-related, from how to dress for an interview, to how to negotiate a job offer, to what to say in an e-mail. We love questions

AFTER GRADUATION

Guidance on how to execute and navigate the Career Services Commitment​- individualized to you and your needs - and more detail on best practices that we know work from experience. Including:

• Advice on how to tap your existing personal and professional networks to help you build relationships and connect to potential career opportunities
• Guidance on how to contact and follow up with employers
• Suggestions for how to get creative and make yourself a “no-brainer hire” - that might mean writing a blog post to catch an employer’s eye, building a specific project, or giving a presentation at a meetup that’s relevant to the skills you want to develop
• Help managing job offers and negotiating packages
• Job search support and coaching for the first 180 days after you start your job search, until you’re employed, or until you stop responding to your coach
  • whichever happens first. (Though we hope it’s not the third one!)
• We also work extraordinarily hard to find and create opportunities for graduates to network with employers, and evangelize for Flatiron School grads to companies all over the country. It’s important to note that we don’t have the final say in what employers do, who they speak to, or how their interview processes work. We’ll do our best to help you connect with professionals who are relevant to your job search, but we cannot guarantee connections, interviews, or jobs at any specific company or for any specific student. Employers ultimately choose who they contact and interview - so it’s up to our students to stand out throughout the entire interview process.

What We Expect Of Flatiron Students

DURING THE PROGRAM

If you’re not looking for a job, let us know

• Have deliverables — like your resume and elevator pitch — completed by the deadlines you’re given
• Show up on time to appointments —with the Career Services Team, mock interviewers, and instructors
• Be attentive and focused during Career Services meetings — just like you are while you’re studying
• If you are job-seeking and plan to work with us during your job search, review the Career Services Commitment closely, and understand what’s expected during the job search

AFTER GRADUATION

As you wrap up the program, you’ll hear from us directly about the why, when and how of the requirements to fulfill your job-search commitment. Here’s the gist:

• Log every job-related contact and activity via the job-search tracking tool you discuss with your Career Coach
• Continue to code — a lot — after graduation
• Write blog posts about what you learn, to communicate that you’re still learning, and to build your online presence
• Be responsive to your Career Coach
• Network frequently and thoughtfully to build your job-search pipeline. Don’t apply to jobs online indiscriminately
• If you negotiate an offer and get what you asked for, accept the offer
• Accept or reject offers within five business days (unless another deadline is set by the employer)

In general, we expect graduates to be thoughtful about how you engage the community: Be nice, be respectful, and do the right thing — just like you would on our campus or in our online community — and to be transparent and conduct yourself professionally