I Envisioned My Dream Job
When I was working as a burnt out ICU nurse and in code bootcamp, I had my dream software job in mind. I would peruse my dream job’s website, looking at their office space and imagining what it would be like to be there.
There was even a bird’s eye view photo of the employees, looking up at the camera smiling. Many were holding Nerf guns. Many were in sandals or flip flops. All looked so happy.
I imagined myself in that crowd, looking up at the camera.
At the time, my dream job only hired software engineers with Computer Science degrees. I had two Bachelor degrees: Psychology from UC Berkeley and Nursing from University of Florida. Sadly, neither one were in Computer Science.
After graduating code bootcamp, I found a really cool job at a small startup for my first software job.We made smart toys! Pregnant at the time with my daughter, I had a blast making toys! Although I loved this job, my heart still belonged to another.
That spring, my dream job hosted a Hackathon. Too uncomfortable to withstand Hackathon hours due to my pregnancy, I went to visit my friends who were competing. I walked around my dream job’s campus and no longer had to imagine what it was like to be there. I was there! I wasn’t working there, but being in their office space only solidified how in love I was with the place. It was still my dream job! My love endured!
Jump three years ahead, I’d moved around to different startups, but none of them were like my dream job. Like many startups, none of them offered healthcare and benefits. I was ready to leave the startup I’d been with. Now a mother, I wanted something with more stability and health insurance.
During that time, I’d started my attempts to lose all the weight I’d gained from overeating for comfort when my daughter was in and out of the hospital for her surgeries and procedures related to her heart defect. Wanting to try something new and meet other moms, I went to a stroller workout for moms and babies. There, I met a really nice woman. While we chatted, I found out that she worked for my dream job! She told me to send her my resume, and she would pass it along.
Did I have happen to earn a Computer Science degree in the last few years? Nope. But, I still sent her my resume anyway. Maybe something would come of it. Maybe not. I had to try.
A week later, my dream job called me for an interview. In the time since I graduated from code bootcamp, my dream job became an even bigger dream job, because it had been acquired by Booz Allen Hamilton, an information technology consulting firm, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, with 80 other offices around the globe. Booz Allen had no rigid engineering hiring requirements of having a Computer Science degree.
When I went in for my interview, the campus had changed a bit. It had expanded! They added a new building connecting the old one I had walked around during the Hackathon so many years before. As I sat in a conference room, answering questions and talking through the questions on my entrance engineering test I had missed, I felt in my bones I belonged there.
I left the office, feeling fantastic and trying to not think about it.
A few days later, they offered me a software engineer position!
I’m still with my dream job and still in love. The way Booz Allen Hamilton has handled the pandemic and treated its employees through a difficult time makes me grateful for not giving up on my dream.
How did I make this dream happen? How do you make your dream job happen for you?
- Envision your dream. Go the website. Visualize yourself there. Imagine yourself walking around. If there is a way to visit the company without breaking in or stalking the place, go! Walking around the Booz campus made my dream real to me.
- Don’t give up. If I had given up on my software career long ago when I bombed my first technical interview, I would have never been a software engineer and data scientist for this incredible company that values diversity and inclusion.
- Believe dreams come true. If you don’t believe great things will happen to you, they won’t.
