TJ Kinion
Program Manager
LearningFuze
Irvine, CA USA
“Too often people look at passions and jobs as needing to line up perfectly. Instead, try to find roles or companies that might incorporate your passion, but not be obvious.”
Milestones
My road in life took a while to figure out.
Graduated from Boston College with a degree in Marketing and Finance, but moved to Denver to help run a music venue.
Looking for a change, I moved to Nashville without a job and didn't realize how tough the job search process would be.
While in Nashville, I was asked by my company to move up to Toronto and help open the first international office for a billion-dollar company.
After realizing that I was no longer happy in my role, being challenged, nor aligned with the company values, I quit with plans to travel instead of jumping into another job.
While traveling, a friend and I had an app idea that ended up leading me to take programming classes at LearningFuze and fall in love with coding.
After finishing the LearningFuze program I was asked to help with their Career Services which was not something that had even crossed my mind.
Keep following my journey
Education
High School
St Francis CCCHS
St Francis CCCHS
Career
Program Manager
I help people prepare for our coding bootcamp as well as coach them through the job search process afterwards.
Career Roadmap
My work combines:
My work combines:
Technology
Education
Teaching / Mentoring
Day to Day
My day is mixed between speaking with people interested in our program, helping students with their job search process, and helping the program grow. For people interested in a coding bootcamp like LearningFuze, it's important that they know that they are getting into before diving in. When it comes to helping people through the job process there are so many factors that come into play; resume building, LinkedIn profile optimization, mock interviews, and even helping them to negotiate.
Advice for Getting Started
Here's the first step for everyone
If getting into Career Services and Programming, I would first make sure you've been through both of them yourself. Hopefully you've been through a few job searches and seen a few interviews to know what to tell people. With coding, it's something that everyone can do but it is not easy. Before diving into it, why not try out some online tutorials before committing to classes. Once you've got some experience under your belt, it will be much easier to help others.
Recommended Education
My career is related to what I studied. I'd recommend the path I took:
Hurdles
The Noise I Shed
From Friends:
"That I should chase the money, stay close to home or where you went to school, and that computer programming was for engineering-types. Luckily much of the discouragement didn't go so far as to say, "You can't do it", but was, "Are you sure about this?""
