I started the course I think January and I got an offer March 20 something I finished the course I took time to like work on my GitHub projects which took about like a month and a half but all all that time I was already applying I applied about 220 according to my tracker and then I got the offer near my birthday actually which I remember like March 20 something today I'll be interviewing Kirk he went from working in Chipotle to having his first it job in under 4 months he had a lot of really good
EX ution and he prepared really well for his interview and his like resume and portfolio and everything he has a lot of really good advice so if you're interested in getting into it definitely watch this all the way through I think it's going to help you a lot on to the interview hey everybody Josh here I'm a YouTuber in the it course instructor for course careers and then we have Kirk here who went through the it course and he ended up getting a few job offers and he agreed to come on and do an interview
with us so thank you so much for joining us today well thank thank you you for having me yeah really appreciate it um can you do you want to do like a a brief introduction about yourself and maybe talk about what you were doing before you decided to get into it okay so uh yeah my name is Kirk I didn't really have any it experience before this in fact before this I actually worked at Chipotle so uh I did go to college but I didn't graduate so that's yeah so no it experience only work experience
is working in a kitchen and I finally got my first it job because of the course very cool congrats on that um I didn't I saw your long Post in Discord but I don't remember seeing like your job title or anything like that can you tell us like what your job title is and um if you started working at okay I started working already and it's actually I work at the service desk of the electric company here in SoCal and yeah I start already I'm about a month in and I'm still training okay okay cool
cool so is your your day today is like um is it just basically training are you doing like some ticket shadowing or like what does your day look like these days oh recently actually I've been doing uh I've been doing shadowing and I've been do I was doing like uh chats the chat support and I've been resolving like the simple tickets and then I think next week I'm starting to take calls okay well that's cool um do you when you first started working did did you feel nervous about like oh what if I don't know
something and or I guess did you have any worries and like how did that end up how did you end up feeling like after you started actually going to work and training yeah I was obviously I was nervous it's going to be my first day and everything but I think what actually got me the job was when I was interviewing with like the third final interview I think I said something like I'm the first person to admit that I don't know everything but I'll figure it out and I'll learn and I don't know I feel
like when I said that the guy was really like he liked my attitude about it and so yeah I was nervous for my first day but when I got there everyone was really nice and everyone taught me well and I was just there observing so I got over it pretty quick that's nice that's good to hear cool so like after you I guess you didn't fully get into the swing of things yet but um do you notice like uh much of a change in like stress levels or anything like this or do you has do
you feel like your life has changed any or are you still in that transition period like where you're getting used to stuff uh I'm kind of used to it already the the main thing I I'm getting used to honestly is not even the stress levels it's mainly the sitting down I sit down a lot now compared to before so that's what I'm like having a hard time getting used to but more or less stress levels there's a lot less stress gotta got to get that standing desk eventually I know we do have standing Des of
work and but we're only there three times a week so okay cool and from like the time that you started the course to the time you like accepted your offer do you remember about how long that was I started the course I think January and I got an offer March 20 something so I finished the course I think in about a month so Feb something and then I took I took time to like work on my GitHub projects which took about like a month and a half but all all that time I was already applying
I applied about 220 according to my tracker and then I got the offer near my birthday actually which I remember was like March 20 something yeah oh wow oh that's pretty fast it's less than less than four months huh to change career yeah that's pretty good essentially but I went pretty crazy I went hard with the applications I was working on my projects almost every day and the course cuz the course wasn't that hard for me cuz I already took my A+ it was mainly the like the Practical stuff that you were teaching that I
had to really get into but the theoretical stuff was relatively easy already so I was able to re through that you have like you have really nice portfolio too I remember I remember looking at your projects yeah yeah cuz I was I was looking at everyone else's portfolio to like see how to stand out and I just you know I used chat CH to help me think of ideas and I pick the best ones and I just started working on them it's very very resourceful and then can I ask like why did you decide to
actually get the course like like what made you like decide to go through it and and buy it and all that well your videos so I was watching your videos and I'm getting older I'm like I'm 28 and then I can't be working at Chipotle forever you know so I thought about something that I can do without a college degree where it's still and it's still a career and I've been seeing your videos in the background a lot and then you know I see a lot of random Tech YouTubers talking about career transitions too and
so I just de to bite the bullet like this is the time I should learn and I've been like I got my A+ last year too December so it's been a long time coming so yeah since you got your just this is like a random question um after you got your A+ did you apply to jobs or you just kind of are we just like putting it off or um no uh not yet I started applying when I took your course because I had like a year long plan which was get my A+ then take
your course and then apply so that was my yeah that was a rough idea of my plan gotcha gotcha it ended up being less than a year though sounds like yeah I mean the A+ I it took me like I think like four months two months for each half yeah gotcha gotcha and then I I I think in the Discord you said that you you had you end up getting two job offers yeah actually I got two job can you talk about like uh you don't have to like tell who they were but um can
you like tell me like about those a bit and like why you decided to go with one over the other yeah uh I decided to go with the other one they're both like similar they're both service de one was for like a security company and one's for like an electric company I just decided to go with the other one because of I think better name recognition and more pay and it was also closer so all the all the pros are for that but I got the other one first so I had to turn it down
which was such a weird feeling you know to be wanted like that like really like I don't know how to I was asking my wife how do I turn down a job offer I feel bad yeah I know I know exactly how you feel so you said you applied to like around 220 jobs or something like this um how many did you have to I guess how many different interviews did you end up doing that whole time okay so I I got four interviews and then I didn't go to one cuz I got it too
late I already accepted the last offer and they weren't offering that the offer wasn't that high and the other one I actually got through the last interview but then I got I didn't pass and then yeah there's the other two so four I total I got four interviews from the 220 jobs that I applied to and then for the job that you actually got hired from was that interview process like you don't have to tell me what the questions are but were they like mostly technical or Behavioral or did you find it hard or I
guess how was that whole experience going into it uh so what I did before interviews I would warm up like aside from the practice that you do like the night before maybe a few days before I would warm up because I knew that even if I did practice it would take some time for me to get in the zone you know so like maybe an hour or two hours before the interview I'd be doing this exact same thing I'd be in front of the camera talking already practicing how I say words and stuff while I
had like on my other monitor I would have my questions and then I would try to like say it as best as I can and then like after that I'd go straight into the call so I was already warmed up and yeah so it was a mix of both Technical and like customer service based questions so I think yeah like knowing uh all the stuff I learned in the course the ad stuff especially that's like the most like everyone almost everyone uses ad yeah and basic customer service like how you would treat a customer if
they did this or why and I already work in a kitchen so I know you know customer service and everything so yeah those those were the main things that they asked that's a a really good point uh working in the kitchen because like almost almost any prior job you have will probably have at least some transferable skill that you can use especially like entry level it so that's cool mhm yeah and when I was actually learning the chat support like a few days ago so the difference between the chat support and like the call support
with calls you're solving problems one at a time with chat support you're solving like five problems at the same time and I realized like oh like the stress of working in a kitchen multitasking and like you know having to do all these things at the same time it kind of applies to like doing the chat support like I can I'm able to handle the pressure because is I'm used to doing like multitasking all the time in my old job so yeah they always there's always something that will transfer I think cool I think that's good
for anyone listening um cuz I know a lot of people worry about cuz it's it's like unknown or whatever but it's it's almost it's almost like especially like help desk it's just like computer flavored customer service essentially so you once you get used to it it won't be like it's not that bad mhm yeah and then did you did you have to negotiate your salary at all or was their offer like pretty good or can you talk about the range if you can't that's completely fine the offer was like my my goal the offer was
my goal so I was fine with it I didn't even negotiate and I knew that like okay it's my first job it's still like nearly double what I make at chipot L so I was happy with it yeah damn that's pretty good MH cool congrats on that thank you thank you for and for anyone watching is there any like like who's considering doing the course is there any particular part of the course that you would recommend them to like really pay attention to or focus on mhm uh I think it would depend on what they
already know in it but like okay knowing the fundamentals like the theory like the stuff the way you taught it was really good because you use like analogies that anyone can understand so like really understand that and like supplement it with other videos and then the Practical knowledge that you taught like the active directory stuff the command line stuff that's very important too so like if you already obviously know the fundamentals the Practical stuff for me was like the most important stuff and I I I use it at work like the command line stuff a
I we use ad at work so it's it's all very important and VPN we have like the VPN and everything oh do you have to configure like the users VPN on their laptop and stuff like this we have like first level support for the VPN so just like we have like a few Solutions like just removing the portal and restarting it yeah stuff like that cool cool that's cool and then so you you said you had A+ um did you do anything else like I mean outside of the course to kind of help you get
the job that you got like A+ and the course and any anything um just like always learn something on YouTube I'm always like learning something if I'm not like studying like my YouTube algorithm is just full of tech stuff now so like passively I learned something yeah a lot of LTT lus detectives oh on my feed mhm yeah that's cool cool and then so this this last question is is not necessarily related to the course but as somebody who did a career change like kind of quickly and did a really good job at it um
do you have any advice for the viewers watching who might want to kind of follow in your footsteps uh my advice is it's possible like it really is possible you just have to aside from like listen to like what the course is like just try to think for yourself what else can I do like try to figure out what else can I do to stand out because you know eventually there's going to be a bunch of people doing the same thing you got to figure out how you can stand out and what I did to
stand out was I knew how to make different projects I knew I had the A+ and I knew that I would be applying to more jobs than people like people would probably give up at like the five I was going crazy I was doing like 20 every day and every like 30 rejections I would go back at the drawing board and like what's wrong with my resume is it the way I worded something like I'm not going to give up I'm going to change something if it's not working change it so I must have changed
my resume maybe like four times in the whole 200 something applications yeah so that's it like just learn as much as you can and like if it's not working change it that's really good advice I think that's applicable to a lot of places too cuz I you see on Reddit people are like I applied like 600 jobs and I didn't get an interview it's it's probably their resume they probably didn't change and something's probably wrong with it um so it's it's good what you're doing is in my opinion it's like really good practice um and
also the other thing you said disting oh my God my laptop the other thing you said like distinguishing yourself from your peers is is also I think that's really smart too and I that's like the whole the whole name of the game like distinguish yourself from your peers convince them to give you an interview convince them to hire you and then like you're good after that yeah thank you specific more specific advice I would look at the jobs like the job descriptions and if there's something I don't know I'll learn it and I'll make a
project about it so like so there was different ticketing systems there I didn't know what Juro was I Googled it I downloaded it and I use it for a few days then I made a project about it I didn't know what spice Works was I did the same thing and I made a project about it so like I think about it like you want to hit the keywords so learn the keywords you know and it's free that's that's so smart yes do that everybody MH it takes like time and energy but that's how you distinguish
yourself you know yeah but that's how you change your life you know that's how you get find a new career you got to put the effort in it's going to be hard but it's possible yeah I think that's uh that's yeah that's really impressive good job on all that you like did great cool yeah any any uh final thoughts or anything no I just want to thank you cuz like like I said I used to watch these videos and they inspired me to start working on it and now here I am so it's full circle
yeah that's that's crazy so funny we'll have to do like a followup in like six months or something and see like how things are going it's exciting oh okay I I have one last question do you have like a any plans yet like do you plan to go to like cyber security or networking or you just kind of see how things are and then make up your mind right now I'm studying for the CCNA because yeah I want to really like learn networking because like even if I don't get into networking it's like a strong
fundamental for like cyber security right so I think that's like the next the felt like feels like the natural next step for me to learn more networking so yeah I'm on like day five of studying for CCNA oh nice I I will say like CCNA is like the most useful sht I got out of like every everything it's even better than like cissp CS is like so good so I think that's good really better than cissp yeah cuz cssp is just like whole bunch of like really shallow Theory and after I got it I was
like okay like now what but after I got CCNA I was like damn I can like set up a whole network and configure like OSF and do all this stuff and it was like kind of more tangible for me yeah mhm yeah I got Packa Tracer and I thought it would just be like okay very theoretical but no you can like put the switches there and then you can see how to configure it what why you're going to use it's crazy yeah I was like damn I can I can actually do something after having this
sh so I think that's really good yeah thank you so much um yeah we'll like email and chat I'm sure which cat again in the future sometime [Music]
