Advice Archives

At wcoding, we understand that switching careers into tech is definitely not an easy thing, and that’s why we are here to help. For students who completed our 12-week or 30-week Fullstack bootcamps, we provide an additional 4-week career support to help them navigate the industry, optimize the career search journey and maximize the chances of getting hired.

Personal Career Strategy Consultation

Our students come from different backgrounds. Some have English teaching experiences or speak different languages fluently, while some have years of working or research experience in diverse fields. Our approach is to guide each student to find the best strategy to land their first job in IT and start building a career where they can place their skills in the right company and right position.

Normally, we start with a few 1:1 meetings to know your personality, career interests, and industry preferences. Based on your situation, we can provide resources and tips to help you meet professional goals and land your first tech job as soon as possible.

Resume Review

A good resume will require at least 2~4 times of editing. Our HR consultants will check your grammar, structure, and contents based on their years of experience in tech consulting, HR and business operation. So you can get the insight and know-how to write an appealing resume to attract your future employers.

Job Search and Match

When your resume is ready, we can start applying for some potential hiring companies! Our employment partners include domestic headhunting companies, job platforms for IT specialists, international startups and SMEs. You will also work with your career consultant in the job searching and application process. When internship opportunities and developer positions from our network emerge, you will be the first to know and have priority to get interview chances.

Portfolio Building

To become a web developer, it’s better to have a portfolio to showcase your potential employers and clients your tech skills and achievements. Other than your tech degree and bootcamp certificates, a portfolio of your past development works is the best way to demonstrate your programming abilities.

A good portfolio should include:

1. A short paragraph to express yourself, your personality and motivation

2. Projects that show relevant skills and experiences related to the position you are applying

3. Professional social network profiles such as LinkedIn, Github and Stack Overflow that can speak for your specialities and coding skills.

Although providing a portfolio is not a requirement for most of the development job applications, it is never bad to let your employer know more about you and your skills. Nevertheless, to organize your works in a portfolio is always better than a few lines of bullet points on a resume.

Mock Interviews and Technical Support

wcoding will also provide different resources such as interview tips and negotiation strategies as you go through the job application process. If you need our assistance on coding tests and technical interviews preparation, we have experienced developers and specialists to help you practice and get ready!

Continuous Support After the Graduation

The greatest advantage of learning at wcoding is to really put yourself in the real atmosphere of working at a tech company. At wcoding, you can get chances to meet real clients and work as a team to accomplish a task assigned by our partner companies.

After the bootcamp, you can have an individual work space in wcoding, and receive direct guidance from our developers on either personal or group projects for maximum 4 weeks. Also, as an alumni, you get to connect with 300+ alumni from coding networks that are now working in different fields and leaders in various organizations both in and out of Korea.

We understand that your next step after the bootcamp isn’t always your final destination. So, always feel free to utilize our network, resources, and events to maintain your competitiveness even after your graduation from wcoding!

Things you must know to work in Korea as a foreigner!

One of the most frequently asked questions from our students and alumni is “how can foreigners find non-teaching jobs in Korea, and is that even possible for people who don’t speak Korean?” If you are planning to come to Korea and build your career, here are some tips you don’t want to miss!

Foreigner-Friendly Job Seeking Websites & Services

If you ask any Korean about job seeking websites, 90% of the chance you will receive answers like JobKorea and Saramin, which are the two most famous and largest platforms for Korean job seekers. However, as a foreigner, you may feel frustrated browsing these websites if you don’t understand Korean that well, and it is definitely a pain to complete all the application process in Korean. Also, you may find most of the job listings are asking for ‘Koreans only’ or they don’t sponsor working visas.

Even though these websites have many job opportunities, they are designed for Koreans or Korean-speaking people who don’t need a visa sponsorship, so it can be difficult for a foreigner to find and get help from these websites.

Fortunately, there are more and more international talents in Korea nowadays and many Korean companies or younger startups are willing to hire English-speaking talents. For example, JobBridge and JobpassKorea are both Korea-based English Job matching platforms for international job seekers, and they also provide many job training courses and visa consultation for foreigners. Also, Rocket Punch and Wanted are useful platforms where most of the companies are more international or actively looking for global talents.

Choose the Right Ones

Many international job seekers have sent 100+ applications for jobs in Korea but receive no replies. What’s the issue? Have you thought that maybe you are aiming for the wrong industry or companies?

Although it’s generally a good idea to send out your resume and to knock on all doors possible, sometimes, you have to filter out the jobs that don’t fit you. As a foreigner who speaks limited Korean, a good way to go about this issue is to ‘transform your weakness into your strength’. For example, if you keep finding the companies that only develop their business in the Korean Market, you probably won’t be able to compete head-to-head with Koreans. However, if you find the companies that are growing and expanding their business to overseas markets, your international background will actually become a big plus.

It is important to combine your working skills with your international background, and choose the companies that need your specific talents. By doing some research on the hiring companies, you can save a lot of time in the job seeking process and increase your success rate as well.

Build Your Portfolio for the ‘Right’ Visa

Visas are another important factor for foreigners when trying to get a non-teaching job in Korea. The most common visa type is an E7 specialist working visa. In most cases, you need to have at least a bachelor’s degree + 1 year of working experience to apply for it. Also, there are requirements for the hosting companies as well. For example, the salary needs to be at least 80% of Korean GNI and the ratio of Korean nationals and foreign nationals in the company needs to be at least 5:1.

Depending on your situation, you may get exempted from certain criterias.

Preferential Requirements:

Condition	Education Requirement	Working Experience Requirement
Worked in Fortune Global 500 company	x	x
Bachelor’s degree from QS world university ranking 200	o	x
Graduate from local community colleges	o	x
Bachelor’s degree or higher from local universities	The occupation you are applying for should relate to your major study	x
Advanced science and tech sector & get recommendation from relevant ministries	x	x

Once you find the right company that can sponsor your visa, you can start preparing for your E7 visa application. In this step, your sponsor (the hiring company) should help you with the applications since there are piles of documents required from the company to the immigration office. Also, the process can take up to weeks or even months, so it is recommended to apply for it as early as possible.

If you have any questions about the visa, you can always call the Korean Immigration Contact Center (1345) for details.

Korean Language Abilities

Although Korean language abilities are not an absolute necessity when landing a job in Korea, knowing some Korean will definitely broaden your options of company and job positions. Even if you can’t speak fluent Korean, just by showing your employer your motivation in learning Korean can also be a good sign during the interview.

One of the easiest ways to learn Korean is to sign up for a Korean Language Program in Korea. Most of the Korean universities provide language programs for foreigners, and they have a good teaching system for different levels of Korean learners. The tuition is around 1.2~2 million KRW per semester. Although they are slightly more expensive than other private Korean schools, the Korean universities can provide a student visa for you and most of them allow students to do part-time jobs after the second semester. Also, you can apply for a campus dormitory so you don’t have to worry about where to stay when you first arrive in Korea.

At wcoding, we also provide Career Plus Package for people who want to learn IT and Korean at the same time.

Join Communities

If you find it difficult to get clear answers you need on the internet by yourself, why not join a community where people share their experiences and useful information together? Online communities such as Reddit (r/korea) and Facebook (Every Expat in Korea, Non-Teaching Job Seekers Korea) are good resources for any expats in Korea.

At wcoding, we are also dedicated to building a community for foreigners, international students, and tech lovers in Korea. We also host free seminars, open classes and social events for international people in Korea, and you can find us on Meetup.

For people who are serious about launching careers in Korea, getting a non-teaching job in Korea, or interested in changing jobs into the IT industry, please feel free to contact us! We are more than happy to have a talk and give you some advice!

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Nowadays, coding bootcamps are becoming a comparatively economic and realistic option for people looking for better opportunities to work in tech. Becoming a developer means you are more likely to work flexibly, get a higher salary and other benefits than you can imagine. So how can it not be attractive, especially if you can make your ‘dreams’ come true in just 3 to 6 months?

However, knowing what to expect and what to prepare before taking action is essential before investing thousands of dollars in any bootcamp.

Below are some tips that can help you get the right expectation from a coding bootcamp and ensure you get a great experience and result from the program.

1. Set Up Your Goals

Figure out your goals before signing up for a bootcamp is obviously a good idea. For example, some people take the course for self-development, and some want to re-skill themselves towards a more ‘digital’ profession. However, most people who come to join a coding bootcamp are pretty serious about changing their careers. If your goal is to be a job-ready developer after the bootcamp, you should definitely prepare yourself to accept the challenges ahead and dedicate a lot of time and effort to practicing your skills. When you meet obstacles on your coding journey, always remind yourself of your goals and why you are doing this! Your purpose of joining a bootcamp should be a solid motivation to support you overcome the day-to-day difficulties and frustration you probably will encounter during the course.

There are also various possibilities for you after graduation from a bootcamp. For example, you can become a front-end, back-end, full-stack programmer, a web developer, or an app developer. Even if you don’t have outstanding tech skills, you can also potentially apply the knowledge that you gained with your previous professional background to other related fields such as project management, digital marketing, product management, UX/UI design, and DevOps. Therefore, setting up your goals and discovering your potential career path before joining a bootcamp can help you and save you time in the job transitioning process.

2. Check Your Schedules

Joining a bootcamp means you will technically become a full-time student and will have to learn lots of things in a relatively short time. As it is the same with most things in life, nothing comes for free, and with ‘gain’ there usually is ‘pain’, so make sure that you are ready to dedicate time to it!

Also, having time for review and practice is crucial. For sure, participating in every class is an essential factor in your success, but so is the time you spend outside of the course, especially on coding exercises and projects. Don’t think coding is easy, and you can learn everything in one day. Instead of just sitting for the lectures or watching tutorials, it’s better to take some quality time to self digest the course materials, practice it, and become confident in your skills.

3. Learn by Doing

If you think learning to code is just sitting down and listening to lectures, best you think again. The goal of most coding bootcamps is to train and prepare programmers to get their hands dirty and actually ‘build’ websites, apps, and software and get paid for their work in IT companies. However, becoming skilled in programming is not just about memorizing lines of codes and phrases. It requires a lot of practice and trying, so you should prepare yourself to ‘learn by doing’ before taking the course.

Writing codes and testing them, doing code reviews with your peers, and building projects are things you will do most of your time in a bootcamp.

4. Test the Waters

It is always a good idea to start with something lighter to really make sure that you actually like what you are potentially getting into. If you are not ready to make such a big commitment to a coding bootcamp, but want to start somewhere, you can try some introductory coding courses online as your first step. There are many accessible sources that you can use, so feel free to take some of them to test if you are suitable to go deeper with a coding bootcamp.

Plus, it’s always a plus if you have some basic knowledge about coding before the bootcamp starts. You can easily pick up the concepts later in the course and even uplevel your skills since you are more familiar with what you have learned.

5. Find Additional Values

Most coding bootcamps provide career services for their graduates, such as CV polishing, mock interviews, and portfolio building. In addition, they usually have in-house experienced developers who can help you become literally an ‘outstanding’ candidate from the crowd when sending out job applications.

Another advantage is that coding bootcamps usually or should have a strong network within the IT community that helps you connect with alumni, tech companies, and potential hiring partners from different industries. So, when you look for coding bootcamps, remember to check the additional values that they can bring to you since their network would indeed come in handy when applying for your first IT job!

Be sure to check out the coding bootcamps currently offered by wcoding!

When you imagine your typical ‘programmer’, it’ll most likely be a tech dude (nerd/geek) that works all day in front of computers. The stereotype about coders has shaped them as antisocial ‘guys’ who probably only work in tech companies looking at their monitors all day.

However, none of these images could truly reflect IT specialists anymore. Actually, there are lots of people who know how to code who don’t put their job titles as ‘programmer’ or ‘developer’. In a fast-changing and competitive world, even understanding the basics of programming can help you improve your work and benefit your career across different industries.

Here are seven reasons why learning coding will advance your career:

1. Land a better job

This is definitely one of the biggest motivations for many people to jump into the coding world. The salary potential and career growth gives much attention to coding-related jobs and attracts many people to join a coding bootcamp to pursue a full-time career in web development or software engineering.

2. More opportunities out there

The increasing demand for tech talents has continued in 2020 by strong industry growth, more companies are especially looking for online business solutions as a result of the pandemic. The job listings for IT roles will continue to grow in the future.

More and more people have reinvented or changed their careers through coding education. Even last year, in the midst of the pandemic, many Wcoders successfully landed their first jobs in IT. If knowing how to code could open more doors for you, why not give it a try?

3. Be more flexible in your work

The current job market is so dynamic that only a few professionals are trained to do only one thing. Instead, most of the new job positions require multiple skills. The knowledge of programming not only shows you are a person who is willing to learn new things, but it also proves your ability to adapt and #overcome obstacles, which definitely helps you stand out from other candidates.

4. Become more independent at work

The best thing about learning how to code is that you can be more independent when you meet technical problems! No more delay on your work in waiting for the tech team’s help because now you can read the code and try to solve problems by yourself!

5. Make an impact to others

Try to incorporate what you have learned into your current career! Make yourself a valuable person to your organization and colleagues by writing simple programs or making small projects on apps or webs to increase productivity and even help your company to solve business problems.

6. Bring your ideas into life

The coding ability can make your brilliant ideas become reality. You are no longer struggling with finding an expensive developer to make products, because now you can build it on your own! Except for side projects, there are also many entrepreneurs who apply their coding skills to start their own company and realize their business ideas.

7. Get more control of your life

Looking for a work-life balance? Or try to get more control of your personal schedule? Freelancing with programming projects allows you to work from everywhere around the world, and work whenever you want!

A lot of people think that the benefits about programming are limited in increasing technological knowledge, and gaining computer skills, but the truth is that you can definitely get more than that! It’s a life-changing experience and it always gets no harm in trying to learn new things.

Ready to give programming a shot? start your first step at wcoding?

The IT industry is an open community. There’s no security guard checking your computer science degree before letting you in. Nor do you have to be a self-taught programming wizard like Bill Gates or Elon Musk to be successful. To get started in this growing industry, all you need — no matter your background or current career — is curiosity, resilience, and the foundations of coding.

Foundations are the keys that grant access to IT. The better you know the fundamentals, the easier it is to learn other programming languages and more advanced concepts. Or to use a string of metaphors: you have to walk before you run; float before you swim; and boil water before attempting grandmother’s beef stew.

But where can you learn these fundamentals? Sifting through unfiltered information online is inefficient. And returning to university is an incredible time and monetary investment. How can you be sure you’re receiving a worthwhile education that will prepare you for a career in IT?

The answer to these rhetorical questions is coding bootcamps. Coding bootcamps provide several months of intense, practical, project-based training. Instructors are industry professionals with years of experience.

They teach the most essential, practical basics — scalable skills applicable to the job market. You won’t be copying or pasting lines of code or passively listening to droning lectures on theory. Instead, you’ll be encouraged to apply the fundamentals to real projects and to think like a developer to solve issues you will face on the job.

A career change is only a bootcamp away. With a solid grasp of the fundamentals, professionals from bakers to educators have changed their careers and their lives. You can too. If you’re still on the fence, just remember:

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”

If you’re ready to get started, wcoding can help. Our 12-week fullstack intensive bootcamp makes programmers. And our career counseling will sharpen your spear for the job hunt.