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one hello everyone Welcome to our weekly webinar today we're going to be focusing on breaking into Tech and if folks have noticed we have a very special guest and actually a maybe a regular uh person our attendee is coach Mina who just recently joined Eagle loock so super excited to have her and so for today our topic is going to be about breaking into Tech and talking about what are the ways to be able to do that through your major and also through your career and so I'm going to share screen into our notes the things that we're going to first we're going to do a quick few quick introductions we're going to go into the college pathway versus career preparation and then we'll talk about three phases for entry level strategy uh as a quick housekeeping if you can uh don't mind sharing your high school graduation year in the chat so we know how to tailor our content you can drop your questions at the QA box and also the notes will be available later on as a quick introduction to myself if you you haven't met me already I'm Coach Victor with college Mission Secrets or Eagle loock that's our new name that we're trying to get used to now uh I used to work in the Admissions Office at UC Berkeley working as an Outreach coordinator where essentially my goal was to travel to a whole bunch of different high schools across California and to be able to share about how exactly admissions works so we went to uh took trips to high schools when presenting classrooms and pretty much gave people the strategy about how exactly to apply and to be able to maximize their chances into getting to any college and so all that knowledge is coming to hear even uh by way of background as well I used to also work in Tech as a product manager which is why I am so excited to talk about this particular subject fun fact I majored in social welfare and double minor public policy and education with a master's degree in public policy if you notice those things are not technical at all yet I still was able to work as a in the technical field as a product manager uh that being said I'll pass it on to coach Mina to be able to introduce herself hi all thank you for having me thank you Victor for inviting me here um so I uh was a senior software engineer most recently at a company it was a startup um but I have more than seven years experience working at a variety of different Tech um companies um I've also been on the interviewer end of hiring uh for you know software roles and also obviously to get to that point I've also been on the interviewing um as a candidate um so my background is actually well Victor and I are both from Cal did Cal so go Bears um I studied architecture I also double minored in city and Regional planning and education um again not technical so I think there's going to be quite a topic about that um yeah that's about it awesome and before we dive deep into the content too something I'm really excited to be able to do is introduce Mina to the community because uh if you're already a family or part of our community you'll be able to access myself you'll be able to access Mina and the great thing uh that I always mention to a lot of parents is talking to more folks that are not that you're not familiar with will help you learn the most right right uh because there's only so much you can learn from your actual community that you're talking to right now and so by being able to step out learn from other people and especially from coach Mina you'll be able to get a lot of uh experience and background in terms of uh what is it that you can do for yourself so I'm just GNA ask a few quick uh questions to coach Mina just so that we all have a better understanding of her so first uh coach Mina what brought you to Eagle loock yeah I mean you did Victor uh um I think the thing that really got me excited about uh working with eagle loock was the idea of supporting family and students at like a really crucial time in their lives I did a lot of reflecting about like what it was like to be a high school student who like my goal was to get into UC Berkeley uh and so like everything I did was centered around UC Berkeley um and I did that basically on my own I had other siblings um who had gone to University but you know the knowledge sharing there didn't quite happen um and so I was just making a lot of guesses and sort of burning myself out and I think when I was talking to you Victor about you know what Eagle loock does is it you had mentioned um helping students build agency and so I was just like oh my gosh like that would have been amazing to have as a high school student I would have loved it um and it would have just prepared me so much for like the DraStic change getting into college so yeah nice nice I love it I love how uh anyways being able to support students in the way that you like to be supported way back in the day is always like a really great like roundabout uh way of being in service and so out of curiosity like what like we're talking about breaking into Tech in this particular webinar uh how did you how did you find yourself in Tech given that you used to be an architecture major yeah uh a few life crisises I think so like uh I graduated architecture at a pretty difficult time in the like Construction and building space where basically nobody was hiring um and I think even towards the end of my architectural degree I was already realizing that it wasn't quite the fit for me um but but I had you know already devoted three years to it so sort of finished it out there um I think so basically right before I did anything Tech uh related I was actually a math tutor so I was working hand like in private sessions with uh a lot of um students who um needed like personalized support in math um and I'm also sort of a math geek myself so um I saw some students who were coding and I was just like whoa okay you're like making cool games uh and I'm somehow helping you in math but you're able to code a program and like I think that sort of just said okay well like you should try it out yourself Mina so I basically taught myself um how to uh code in Ruby which is like a very accessible language and when I started doing that I started building tools for math tutoring and yeah I it sort of just dawned on me that it could be a viable path because um I liked one doing it but I saw the value in like being able to build something that could you know impact a whole bunch of people um and so uh you know having not had any Technical Training I definitely felt like like I needed some of that and I enrolled myself into a coding boot camp which actually no longer exists in San Diego but uh it was like a four month kind of thing um and then yeah after like a very rigorous 4mon um program I started just applying to any and all companies um that would take me and found my first gig at a startup so yeah nice I love that I love how you yourself how to code and that was really kind of the Catalyst to everything uh because in ways it's like you never know what is that you can do until you give it a try right and I think with a lot of students uh who are interested in Tech some people some students here might be enrolled in like their computer science course but some students don't even have access to a computer science course so for those who like don't have access to computer science course it's totally fine you could still be able to teach yourself and be able to uh work in Tech I mean especially given that Mina was able to learn herself and sought out the training herself and took initiative on that so I really love that and so uh any other thoughts there Mina no so that was pretty much it okay awesome love it and also uh the last question here is what can people come to you for uh so since you're new to the community uh I'm sure that you'll be able to interface with a lot of students uh soon enough so curious uh what would you say people should come to you for yeah I'm I'm super passionate about like sharing my experience in Tech I know know that there's a lot of navigating that people have to do um in the industry and so the more I could share that kind of knowledge the happier I am um and then also like you know if you've have any interest in like knowing what it's like to go to architecture school because that's its own experience like Starving Artists kind of experience uh definitely um reach out and um I'd be happy to just chat about that um and then you could also schedule me for a breakthrough call where we can you know talk about what you're looking to do what you're looking to study and um create an action plan um and I'd be happy to do that with you love it love it and those who are new to our uh uh Community uh the Breakthrough calls or assessment calls are free 15-minute assessment calls for those who are have never interacted with us in the past before and interested to uh understand the college ad missions process and then secondly to be able to get an action plan on what that you can do to raise your chances so um at the very end I'll talk about that again too but remember that you can always be able to learn more from us you can be able to work with Mina and to be able to maximize your chances uh all right I see that folks are trickling into our webinar welcome welcome out of curiosity if you have your high school uh year of graduation please throw in the chat so we know about how old everyone is or how old your kids are whichever and also if you're interested in Tech would love to be able to hear that too is there any particular uh occupations you're interested in working in is there any particular like companies that people want to work in just let us know so that way we can be able to react to it and be able to tailor that content for you so the next part what we're going to do is that we're going to go and talk about the college pathway versus career preparation and then uh later on we'll go into the three phases for the entry level strategy this is primarily for the high school students to be able to get their foot in the door so first I'm going to talk about the college pathway uh coach Mina do you mind just taking notes for me while I'm chatting because I have a hard time both at the same time abolutely so um the college pathway versus career preparation there's two types of ways that you could be able to enter into Tech okay the first is being able to study it through the college pathway right which we're about to talk about and also there's the alternative way which is what uh coach MAA and myself did but uh We've helped many students hundreds of students to be able to go through the college pathway as well so first off when it comes to the uh College pathway and admissions the way it works is that there's three particular Pathways to admissions the first pathway is computer science and engineering second pathway is stem and business and third is everything else so depending on which pathway that you decide to go into that will determine about how the admissions uh committee will review your application and put you uh and compare you against the other applicants so primarily for this part uh particular one you're either going to be in the first pathway which is computer science and engineering and second pathway is the stand in business okay so let's talk talk about the first pathway so the computer science and engineering pathway what they're really looking for or is uh your academics is really focused on uh one your uh your math courses and then second is your uh your physical science courses so particularly physics and also if you have any magnet courses or subject specific courses such as computer science or engineering and so let's first talk about math because math is actually one of the most important things for this particular pathway because uh think of this way when it comes to admissions We compare you to the average of the rest of your uh high school so the question to ask yourself is uh when uh when do students typically t uh take calculus AB or take Calculus BC what is the maximum limit that they typically offer because remember that you're going to be compared against two groups of people your high school and your geographical location so what they want to know is are you taking advantage of your academic opportunities in your area so what we do there right is that we're able to see what the typical math progression is at your high school and from based off of that we will determine right if you are taking the appropriate level of math in comparison to the average student population what we want to learn from this is can you handle the amount of college rigor at our University so the way that we typically determine that is through your AP courses and high levels amount of riger if you are a part of our families you already know that we always encourage dual enrollment dual enrollment is is where you take the community college classes at the uh while you're in high school and the reason why this is so important is because it is already at college level rigor think it take it this way if you to finish Calculus AB that's a full year course and you got to get a four or five by the end of the school year uh but when you go to Kim College you could just take it at calculus AB uh and within one semester so you're actually finishing in half the time and also you don't have to take an AP test which is amazing and so typically what we recommend especially if you're going down this technical pathway of computer science and uh engineering is that you should try to increase your Calculus uh and take that in the community college setting because there's actually another level of calculus that's offered right after BC so there's calculus one calculus 2 and then calculus 3 which you can take at the community college setting the numbers might be different right uh depending on what communic college that you actually go to but just generally speaking right there's a progression in calculus that is typically offered so for yourself right if there is uh usually only Calculus AB or BC offered at your school great you already know that that is the limit that is the threshold that you will have to beat so if uh students are typically taking Calculus BC then you would already know that if you just take the third level calculus in the uh particular uh Community College then you could be able to have one leg up uh and uh furthermore if you were to take it earlier let's say before you actually finish your um you submit your application that's even better too because having a grade for your particular course is a lot better than uh having it like in the process of enrollment or process of being it completed so that was a lot for math but essentially that's a kind of the way to kind of tackle the math there and the next part is also physics okay physics is really important here because not sure if folks know but there are actually Four physics AP Physics courses most schools maybe only have one or two so in that case right you can actually take a AP Physics course actually that one of the websites we recommend is called UC scout.com in UC Scout you're actually able to take another level of AP Physics that is on that is offered online and you can take it at your own pace so something to take advantage of right is not just uh taking um math uh like higher level rigor but also taking levels of physics that are typically not offered at that particular uh school because again the goal is to diverse ify your academic rigor and show that your academics is a lot more diverse than your peers because it makes it hard for them to compare you against the peers if you have all these different courses that you've never um that they never had before so the goal here is to show that you're taking initiative you're taking initiative to learn more about this particular field or this particular subject that no other student can be able to do okay so that's a uh I mean that's why we're called College ad Mission secrets that's kind of the secret there that we're kind of like letting folks know that this is how you be able to stand out okay um the uh second part right is that you can also enter through the stem and business uh pathway as well so for the stem and business pathway right I know it's kind of uh weird to hear stem while like you know the E is engineering but we separate it out because uh the Cs and Engineering pathway has more specific rigor to it while stem in business math is still very much important all the things I talked about with math still apply but also the additional differen here is that it's actually more focused on the life sciences so the life sciences such as biology and also uh AP environmental science and also chemistry those are things that tend to matter a lot more within this particular pathway if you're trying to optimize for that because there's ways to get into Tech without working as an engineer right I'm a product manager and usually as a product manager we focus a lot on like the business aspect of uh Tech and so if you're trying to go for a business degree right focus on the math of course and then also you don't necessarily need to go too hard into like the physics uh kind of courses as as opposed to the Cs and Engineering pathway so uh again um in terms of the kind of technical Fields there's different ways to be able to do it but if you're going for any of these Pathways these are the classes that you want to optimize for okay uh some other uh questions generally too that people have uh asked in the past is like should I be taking engineering uh computer science or business business courses uh at the community college that's totally fine but one of the things that we also uh recommend or to consider is is the classes transferable at all to the uh to the university because yes you can take it and it'll look good for your major but also something else that we want to look out for is is it fulfilling an actual gender education requirement because sometimes people might say I want to take business finance at a community college uh and for most Parts business finance is not uh considered a general educ requirement and so the thing is like yes it might show you demonstrate your interest but the thing is we want it to count as like transferable college credit and that's really important at least for the admission setting because we want to show that you're taking uh qualified rigorous college courses okay uh all right I know that was a lot of information there um minina is there anything that you might want to add or any questions that you might have about that that I should have dug into um no that's seems pretty good uh okay yeah great all right we won't dig too much into alternative pathway because I want to make sure that we have time for everything else remember if you do have any questions or Q&A feel free to add it to the chat we'll get to it at the very end okay so I'm actually going to now pass it over to uh coach Mina who's going to talk a little bit more about the career side now for the market analysis of uh technical Fields yeah so I think you know a lot of people are trying to figure out if tech is even like a viable path given all of the news that we've heard about all these layoffs that have been happening and then also just you know competitive uh uh interests um you know with H1B visas and stuff like that so is is Tech still something that you should get into I think so I think there's still so many opportunities and you know I think the news is really good at scaring people but um there are so many problems that are being solved in the market that and you know companies are always struggling to find the right people and so um yes I think it's still a good time to um to to get into Tech um I do still see a lot of entry-level roles um and that's because companies uh even though they're not advertising it because they have their own different funnels of how to recruit Talent they know that they have to invest in new Talent if they are going to you know have a sustainable business so just know that like yes the market might be tough right now and it might be favoring experienced people I bet by the time you all are you know exiting College the market will be very different because Tech is um sort of volatile in that sense but um uh uh let's see um yeah so maybe to dig into this a bit more or maybe to help people explain like what what it means by volatile in this sense right uh what do how do you expect the market to look like uh differently like let's say four years from now or five years from now how do you imagine like what the tech economy is like favoring now in this case yeah you know I mean right right now I think a lot of people are sort of coming down from or coming actually coming up from like the slope I you know I'm not like an expert at market analysis but even three years ago the market was incredibly hot meaning they just wanted to hire everyone and it's it's flipped now and I think the like if we think about how long it takes for that market to flip in three years it could it could be in that market what it was like in 2020 where you know they just want everybody yeah and maybe something I want to add to is just like the market trends here which like I know like a huge big uh thing that a lot of people are going to probably consider as a necessity it's just like AI like technology and like experience with AI and also machine learning as well um I think generally folks a lot of high school students are already like playing with AI in some ways maybe you're doing it through your own kind of applications you're using on your phone but something that people uh tend to always want uh like students to know is like what are the foundations on how AI models are created what is machine learning how uh what makes a good machine learning model uh what is bias what is like kind of like uh kind of fundamental things to help understand like um how technology can be used for good because uh there's a lot of cases where uh technology can actually be used for bad and it could be unintentional like for example uh sometimes if you use AI technology uh it's it's it's one of those things where people say uh the model is only as good as how the data is uh inputed meaning that if you give a model bad data or AI technology bad data it will produce bad like outcomes and so that being said right uh a lot of people tend to just say oh ai ai ai as like a kind of a buzzword um and they might think that it might like make them look good but if they don't understand the fundamentals of AI then like it might not necessarily um matter as much to be that impressive yeah I I want to underline exactly like um something that as like a candidate who has interviewed at like probably over like 50 to 70 companies the the thing that they want to know is how you talk about technology um and specifically how you've like approached it for yourself um and so knowing the foundation is always going to be like quickly uncovered in those questions or I guess in those conversations yeah and can you talk a little bit more about like I know there's this uh case about like do I specialize in a particular uh like particular domain or do I um do I be a generalist like as in like knowing just the craft like being really good at Ruby being like a master coder versus like being really good at a particular domain um what have you seen from your experiences about like what is like kind of more preferred uh nowadays yeah so as somebody who for a majority of my software career I've branded myself as a generalist and that's because I really like uh knowing the full like all the way in the front end for the UI and all the way in the back end with the systems um that worked for me basically right up until a year ago when uh those layoffs are happening and so specializing is basically like what companies are looking for right now because they um are they have like a lot of competition um you know you you could sort of create these companies really quick and the product could be learned from really quickly uh through just like you know experimentation so um yeah I would say right now specialization is sort of the thing to be mindful of um when you're picking um up some you know tools or coding languages you don't need to know 50 languages you actually really just need to know one and be able to talk about how like in depth you know it I like how you put that example particularly about like the specialization of just like being really good at one language what are some other examples of specialization that like uh that you can think of um I'm imagining high school students probably don't know too much about what that exactly means so maybe put into like concrete examples of what they can learn about or like be able to focus on yeah I mean I've primarily focused so like I get asked like oh um what my specialization is right and um it it could be like how much do you know about web technology or how much do you know about like Amazon's cloud services or um or like literally how much do you know about this one language Ruby because sometimes or actually a lot of times um they need like an expert um so uh does that clarify it yeah yeah most definitely and so when it comes to these uh and it's great that you've like actually been on an interviewer end as well and so a common question right that a lot of people tend to get do you need a science computer science degree to like kind of get a job like yours or anything of that sort I think I'm a testament for uh the answer being no um most of my peers actually uh have found their way into Tech through the non-traditional path so either being self-taught or um being boot camp graduates um you know there's a and once you get into the field it's it's not so much of like a hierarchy like oh you went to a boot camp or oh you got a degree um people bring different strengths and so the biggest strength with folks who don't go the traditional route is that they often um have a lot of experience in some other domain and so that like translates really well through things like you know how how do you rally your teammates up in uh in your work environment um or just you know do you know like a specific industry really well um so yeah I I would say it's not necessarily uh required um I know a lot of companies are also loosening the requirement on that some companies still are like well we're not going to look at your resume because it doesn't have a degree or a degree in computer science and that's unfortunate but um I will say that having a degree in computer science would probably obviously give you a lot of confidence in your uh you know foundational knowledge I also do know a lot of people who um did the boot camp route and then you know having been in the industry for 2 to three years have decided to actually go back and get their uh Bachelors of Science in compai just so that they could have like a very structured understanding of all the stuff that they're um working with yeah I love that and also maybe for myself to share a bit too I definitely did not study computer science but I was able to still uh work in Tech uh at least for me I've always been working education and education was my specialization or my domain and so what was helpful for me is that I worked for an education technology company and they needed that specialization of uh of the industry specific information because you can't build technology for something if you don't understand the problem okay the way I see it is that there's two types of knowledges right uh two types of knowledges which is one the actual uh domain and domain could be like education Transportation Health uh a lot of other things right or like finances right and then there's actually the tech technical knowledge right which is like the skills such as the uh coding and also for me I actually did boot camp too on product management so boot camps have been pretty popular uh it's it's very specialized in terms of being able to learn a specific skill though like taking a retrospective back right I mean if I were to go back in time where I'm not regretting uh anything that I'm doing uh maybe slightly slightly but one of the things I do like Miss uh that I could have done in in uh College was I kind of wish I did a computer science degree because a computer science degree would have actually expedited my career into Tech but I didn't know that I didn't know that I was interested in Tech and so that's one of the things too that within the uh one of the things that could have been helpful for me to understand that was having more conversations of learning more about tech like for example I'm like first generation college educated so I didn't really know what was actually available I didn't know what was actually out there and so in ways I didn't realize that product man agement was an actual career in Tech because I didn't talk to people so this is where one of the major encouragements is for high school students especially is talk to as many different people in the career field as much as you can because that's going to be able to help you understand if this is something that you really want to do or not because if I did talk to people then I would have known that maybe computer science would have been a really great chance for me and also I didn't have a computer science High School class either so I didn't know that that was a thing I didn't never I it's kind of crazy how like High School's now there's always like a computer science course now and like back in the day there was none no computer science courses offered for me at all um so that's just one of the things that's just like now that just shows you how fast tech is growing as a particular field uh great uh anything else you want to add to that Mina yeah I just want to second that like also first generation here um and I also did not know anybody in Tech so I think um the advice to just reach out to people um who actually have experience in the industry would be so valuable asking them like why they like it and also just like the logistical things like oh how how much time how many hours a week do you spend uh at work you know that varies between that varies a lot from industry to Industry and also company to company so yep for sure for sure uh so that's the thing that I always encourage youall make sure that y'all talk and be able to learn from a lot of different people that's why you have uh myself and Coach Mina here and that's why we're so excited to have Coach MAA because she gives a perspective and one of the most important things about having a really great College admissions company is that you have people from different expertise and backgrounds um hence why we have other coaches we've had Premed uh webinars as well well I'm sure that some folks might have attended if you were interested and so I guess you can say that we are the techies of of eagle loock or college Miss Secrets right now um okay so going now into occupations so we're going to talk about uh there's three types of occupations that are really uh like kind of General uh like General groups okay there's a technical there's the non-technical and then there's also management and so we're going to go into each one about like what does that actually look like we're not going to go to the N Grey about like uh uh what does each individual thing do but like what are some kind of examples of it and what do you generally need to understand and know so let's start with technical Mina uh what would you say are the uh General kinds of examples of maybe let's start off with titles what are some titles of like technical uh roles yeah I mean engineering is pretty broad so you've you basically got your engineer it could be mechanical engineer electrical engineer um software engineer um even data engineer which is like one of the newer ones um and so for all of those like you're definitely going to need to be familiar with foundational compai uh Basics um and be familiar with the tools or at least like what kinds of tools are out there that uh you'll be working with great and I think there's also another uh kind of technical field that uh is merging more so is data science Fields so data science like for example data analytics uh there's also uh uh like what do you call them uh data modeling data uh architect architect there's a data scence there's data AR out there yeah so I I guess like going higher up you you could have like soft uh system system administrator or um yeah soft uh software architect um those are more specific to understanding the general system and also making proposals about how system should be built um yeah yeah and also like researching as well researching um any particular uh like Trends or or data to help like uh build the product so for example um I used to work with a lot of data scientists in a lot of my roles as a product manager back then which I'll talk about in a bit which essentially like you look at product analytics like uh let's think of uh what do what do students use nowadays Instagram Tik Tok something of that sort there's a lot of people that are using likes or or engagement there's views there's comments and then the question becomes how do you make things more engaging how do you like what trends do you see with the likes what trends do you see with the views and also what tends to bring the most like kind of Engagement overall because the most social media companies what they're really trying to optimize for is the most attention Capital they want you to be on their application as much as possible and so that's what they're looking for in terms of like that data okay any other technical roles that we might have uh forgotten here um yeah I I think we sort of covered it there's also like the uh AIML side of it where you know you could be like a model trainer um or just like an AI engineer who does a whole bunch of that refining like the algorithm yeah and this is like kind of similar to what we mentioned about like just understanding the uh basics of uh machine learning and how uh models are cre are created and generated y yeah all right uh and let's go into the uh actually and one last question how how would someone know if they're good uh fit for like these technical kind of roles what would you say or how did you know Mina that you like wanted to be in these particular roles yeah um well I mean I think it was sort of easy for me because I liked programming and I I just wanted to continue uh coding specifically doing stuff in with web technology um but I think like you know anytime anybody is in the interviewer seat or in VI seat like the candidate seat and they're trying to understand whether or not um the company is a good fit for them you know you could always ask like how how is my growth as an engineer uh going to be prioritized or supported um and I think that's actually a good question that anybody could ask in anything that they are thinking about engaging in because it gives you an idea of uh really like what is the community that you're sort of stepping into love that yeah and also something too is like uh I think a common trend for a lot of like Engineers data scientists or AI folks is like they love getting into the weeds of like in their midst of coding like let's just say like doing like a math problem let's say you don't even have coding class but if you get into a math problem or a coding issue or maybe you're maybe you're like the uh the tech support at home and you love doing that stuff right that's also another kind of sign that you could be a really great like engineer data scientist or AI person is because you're always helping people technically so that's always uh tends to be a thing as well um and uh maybe you might find maybe if you're a parent you might find that in your child and it could be the case that they could be a good fit for that too all right let's talk about non-technical roles now really uh what happens here is that there's actually like product management which is tends to be uh actually one of the more most competitive roles actually within the uh tech industry and the reason for that is because the way that companies are kind of structured and run is that they would have a few engineers and a designer working with one product manager so for each team of like three to six even sometimes like up to eight or 10 Engineers there's one product manager and uh and one designer and the product manager really what their goal is is to validate what is it that we should build what is it that we should create for our users and essentially they're like the business oriented people they're the ones that help create the strategy and also have the most actually um empathy for uh the users that are trying to uh use the product and So within product management uh if you like some basic knowledge is like understanding your business skills uh like understanding like your market like econ economics right taking econ class understanding supply and demand and also generally about how do you uh make profit um based off your existing cost so that's like a business course um the other kinds of roles that you might see to are designers designers are like the ones who create user interfaces user experience es or something of that sort they're like the ones that create the like actual buttons on the screen uh so for example like you know like for someone had to create these uh particular toolbars at the top and they thought about like how to make this more accessible and so the designers are the ones thinking about how do we help users get to their uh goal faster and as accessible as possible so if you uh tend to be like someone that likes like design like let's just say you're aesthetic kind of person you love uh fixing up your home screen on your phone yeah you love being like an artsy craftsy person what a lot of people don't realize too if you're an artist you might be a really great designer for Tech uh not a lot of people realize that and that's just because you think that you need to understand coding which actually you don't really need to fully understand coding what you do need to understand is um shoot I'm trying to what's that word the design models what is it uh mean I'm what's up the mockups or mockups diagramming wire framing yeah what's it called when you have like certain uh elements and that you're using all the time uh components components there we go so uh so like components okay this is going a little bit too technical In The Weeds now but like you just need to understand these like kind of basic concepts about like like how uh things are designed um in a modular way where you can reuse it multiple times in different areas of like the platform uh I know this s not sounds like jargon but trust me the more you get exposed to this type of jargon the easier it'll be once you actually transition into Tech um and also some other non-technical roles is client experience okay uh I think this is the last kind of big area the client experienced people are the people who really care about the relationships there is a lot of companies that um uh it's not just building an application or building some type of platform and giving it to users but it's about the user experience and how do they need to be walked through it so for example there's always going to be people who are going to be helping consult with users on how to best utilize their platform they're the ones who actually really generally love to teach generally love to coach and they're the types of people that like to walk people through the steps of like um hey like what this is how you can utilize our product this is how uh you can be able to solve for your goals all these different things so the client experienced people are the ones who are really great at relationship building uh anything you want to add to any of those Mina or did I miss any of them um no I I will say like for you like the designers's portion um sorry this is like sort of backtracking um but there's a lot of like um questions around accessibility as well so you know like if somebody uh has like Vision impairment and stuff they also consider those things and it's not always actually things that are um on a screen it's also like uh think about medical devices like where where do where do those buttons go so um I just wanted to put out there that it wasn't just like just web UI right right that's very true like think like this mouse right here right there was a designer a product designer that had to figure out like oh you need something for your thumb right there to make sure it is like in a good place and also the way that your your fingers are sculpt it needs to be in a perfect like amount there so it's pretty cool this is the magic of tech in a way where like you have product managers designers and Engineers working together to try to solve and build for a particular problem all right the last bit is management okay management is a little bit of a broader term but essentially you can be a manager in technical or non-technical ways okay so you can be a manager for engineers you could be a manager for product managers and essentially they they kind of fall in a more non-technical kind of land because uh your main goal is how do you coach how do you manage how do you like prepare your team to do their best and so in ways you might not actually be doing the technical work that you would expect as an engineer and these are for people who like um really love the technology really love to be able to know the nuances of like how to code how to do all these things but they what they love more is how does you support people how do you coach people so being like a supervisor being a manager is someone who really cares about the growth and development of their team members and so it doesn't really matter about which particular uh role you go into but the way into management usually is you go into one particular field you gain a lot of expertise in there so like say for example you're an engineer you get really good at it but then also you kind of take a pivot and then you start learning how to manage the the other Engineers uh so that's an example of like kind of that trajectory uh anything you would want to add there Mina um no I think that about covers it oh actually I do want to add something there yeah so um I've worked with like managers who you know uh actually didn't have much technical experience but they were managing software teams so that's also a thing and like um they they could be really good people leaders in that sense like guiding and coaching people without actually having to know how to code yep yep that's definitely the case and also like for example as a product manager that's what I said as my title technically management is in there as well and in ways I would have to manage team of Engineers and uh designers when I didn't know how to do their job at all so uh that was one of the yeah you managed me I want to say I manag you we were on the same team I managed the team all right the last particular area that we're going to go into is the three phases for entry level strategy okay so uh I know that we're talking a lot about career we're talking a lot about like all this industry stuff and it might sound confusing it might seem a little bit overwhelming but that's just to give you an idea these these are like the conversations that you should be having or your kid should be having with people to understand more about the field because again if you don't have these conversations how the heck is your are you going to know about what is it that you want to work towards right you got to backwards map it we're always talking about strategy within our uh within our company and this is one of them okay so first off there's three phases to entry level and when I talk about these phases it's like you can't just expect that you're going to get an internship all of a sudden within the computer science field and be an engineer engineering intern okay so you got to work your way towards there so the first level is uh shadowing with shadowing which is basically what it like what it sounds like is you just I don't want to say shadow you just Shadow you just watch somebody uh do their job uh essentially like shadowing is all about information gathering right to observe somebody is really powerful because you have a better understanding of what they do on a day-to-day basis and by learning that there's a few benefits one you get to understand like do you actually like to do this is this something that you can imagine yourself doing uh because you shouldn't be doing something you don't like uh personally okay sure there might be a lot of money in there like as a engineer for example but you should be like you're going to be doing this on a day-to-day basis like uh like when you wake up go to work work 9 to5 and you're doing something and you don't want to like you don't want to dislike something that you're doing right and so that's really important to Shadow the second part is that you can understand what are the challenges or the issues that the company is experiencing so if you're able to Shadow for any particular company and uh for those who don't uh for those who don't realize it you probably have friends or family that are working in the particular industry so aim for the startups aim for the small companies because they're likely to be able to say yes to you and the goal is what are the specific issues that they are working on and what are the particular skill sets they're looking for to be able to have on their team uh and this is going to help you for phase two and phase three when you look into it a bit more um before I go on to the next one Mina anything you want to add for shadowing here yeah um this is like probably a minute detail but I think with shadowing um take that opportunity to ask anybody and everyone at company to just like have a chat about again what they like is that the thing that you would like um uh and just explore the different roles because you might be shadowing one person but you know there's opportunity to just uh you know build your network and Shadow other people at the same company nice nice Yep this is the perfect time to be able to start your network if you are in high school it's never too early to start a LinkedIn okay uh we oh yeah that was one of the things that we talked about uh a while back in a few webinars if you want a LinkedIn uh webinar let us know in the chat or the Q&A and then we'll know that that's there's a demand for that and then we'll be able to like prep that in the future uh phase two is Project based learning so now that you have a better understanding of like what uh the job is like the next part is to develop the skills sets that they would expect or need at the company okay this is how you get your foot in the door you learn a skill that they are particularly looking for okay I was actually talking to somebody earlier today they're asking for me for career advice right and they're like uh what's the best way to be able to like get a job and like this is someone who's already graduated and trying to break into Tech and I mentioned like well what are you doing right now and she's like well I'm just trying to get really better at Ruby and I was like okay that's understandable but also how do you know if that's what they're exactly looking for at the company because you can be learning a skill you can take a lot of classes on Ruby or whatever uh skill set but how do you know that's what they're actually looking for at the company that you want to work at so really this is really that's why it's called Project based learning because you are building something yourself using that particular skill if you can create that you create your portfolio when you get that portfolio you are marketable okay and that shows that is proof that you can be able to work for that company there's probably a few parents on this call realizing like oh my God I could actually do that for myself too yes this is not just like a high school kind of strategy but this is also like a career strategy for anybody that wants to work in any field okay uh I've been I've been like you know hiring people uh Mina has hired people in the past and really the way that we hire is looking can you actually do the job right that's the main thing that we want to understand and just by being able to have that experience you're able to show or having that Project based learning you're able to show that you are competent uh coach Mina anything you want to add here yeah um again I get into the nigr so pardon me but a lot of times as like a software engineer or I guess any kind of like individual contributor kind of engineer you might be asked to uh build a project given some kind of assignment so they'll give you some kind of requirements um and you'll probably spend a good amount of time developing that on your own um don't be afraid to ask for help to review the those kinds of projects um like one of the best things I've seen in interviews is somebody comes in with a project and uh I will ask them how did you improve this project and they'll be like oh I actually got feedback from somebody else and that by itself sort of demonstrates that you're always looking to improve your skills and that's like a very desirable quality as an engineer nice I love that yeah a lot of times uh what I love is that people sometimes think asking for help is a weakness when in reality that's such a strength like asking for help is one of the most crucial things within Tech because if you think about tech right the whole kind of spirit is continuous Improvement how are you always constantly building how are you constantly experimenting how are you trying out new things and the best way to experiment is to get feedback right the whole uh everything about your applications the things that you use in technno field it's all based off user uh feedback everything is based off of what is it that the client what is it the customer has said that they experiened an issue with the same thing goes here imagine that you are the customer yourself or uh and then you are trying to be able to get feedback from yourself on what is it that you can improve on all right the last phase is internships before we go into Q&A so internships right here right once once you've developed the project once you've been able to show that you actually like understand what is that they're working on the next is to develop and create your own internship which is uh so a lot of people right the typical thing is that they will apply to internships on like a job posting or maybe those national federal like kind of internships that like thousands of other students are applying to the exact same thing and you got to compete against all of them well the thing is like you don't need to do that you don't need to apply against everybody you can if you really wanted to and you're really competitive but the most important thing here is like if you showed enough value to a company you understand what is it that they uh need you can actually create your own internship right as a high school student one of the best perks and also kind of a controversial perk too is that you don't need get paid as an intern because you get you're trying to get experience right anything can be an internship and so really you're just talking to the employer asking to uh and asking them like hey I uh I heard I saw from my shadowing experience that I saw that you are experiencing this issue and also I saw that there's a need here and I developed this project to practice that skill that you're looking for and I'm wondering is there a way that I can help you out because I shown evidence through my project and this is how you get an internship and not a lot of people realize that this is like a really strong strategy that not a lot of people realize because they just want they just think that they have to apply to a job like posting when in reality this is how I got a lot of my internships I'm sure that for those who have uh went to my internship training before they've seen like my proof of the different internships I've gain using this particular skill so that being said like you don't have to apply you can apply regularly if you want to but the main goal is as an intern right you want to demonstrate that you can do the job and that's why it's so important to go through these phases first okay uh any last words that you have here Mina um no I think it's just uh also something like providing your product Pro uh and having already done all of that research to know specifically what a company needs um and wants demonstrates like hunger and it also demonstrates like the UN unsaid part which is like you're prepared already to like do the research on your end um to support their business so all right all right I know we're almost at our time so let's get into the questions that people have been waiting to be able to get answered so thank you all for your patience so uh let's uh do some quick rapid fire um uh questions I see if AP Calculus BC is the last track offered at high school what math class do you recommend at College calculus 3 yeah so calculus is technically would be like considered a multivariable calculus so that's what's offered at the community college so take a look for multivariable calculus that's the course that you want to take uh my son's High School only offers AP Physics one and two he's taking AP Physics now in junior year and wants to take mechanical engineering college is okay to finish science with physics 2 or do you recommend to take physics C at UC Scout or Cc or take AP Physics 2 or AP Chemistry in senior year oh that is a very uh loaded uh question because it it kind of depends because we also want to see the rest of the transcript generally speaking the more that you accomplish uh before you even apply it's always going to be better right so it's one of those things like uh yes you can like it's not like as if if you don't take physics 2 by the end of senior year you're not going to get in but it's still going to look better if you were to take physics one and two ahead of time before you apply and then take physics C or something of that sort so maybe the way I would go about this is if physics 2 is already offered at the uh high school I'd probably take physics uh C uh during the um on UC Scout or Community College prior to AP physics 2 because the thing is you're already showing that you finished the AP uh the physics C that no one else has before you apply so that's part of the strategy there so try to take the courses again that are not offered at your school have it on your transcript and then that way it shows that okay no one else is going to have this done either and but you have it done so that's the kind of cool part about like strategizing for admissions um lastly can you give an example of boot camp is it like a certification yes uh there's a lot of boot camps out there there's countless of them uh the one I did was called the product School Mina what was yours called I know it was no longer existing but yeah learn academy.org I think uh the website stole up so you could get a sense of what the offering was but they're closed yeah and generally speaking um the thing about certification that people want to be careful about certifications help you accomplish jobs in a particular occupation or domain it's very specific a degree a bachelor's degree is kind of open it lets you do kind of different types of of jobs so this is like vocational versus like a actual Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science typically speaking a bachelor's degree is what opens up more opportunities generally while a certification helps you be able to specialize in one job only so that's just something to consider as you're trying to choose you can always do uh both you can always just do one uh but of course within this we're recommending uh to go get that bachelor's degree within Eagle Lock all right uh we're at our last minute uh so one last thing I'll mention out is if you found this uh helpful at all and you really liked what you uh like saw text notes or replay to 949 298 6234 for the notes and the recording of This webinar and also if you want to chat with Coach Mina and uh get a free 15minute assessment call assessment call on your college admissions process you can text Mina to 949 298 6234 and uh if you're new to our community I highly encourage you to chat with Coach Mina to be be able to give you that introduction uh to this whole entire process and learn more about our community as well uh and also if you want to if you're already part of our families uh you can join us for office hours I think Mina you can join my office hours next time right so we we're still working on her office hours you know she wants to have her own but if you want to join uh for mine which you'll probably be able to see her as well is on Thursdays from 4 to 5: p.m. so uh Pacific so if you want to chat with us about technology feel free to do so again one of the major perks and advantages of being able to be a part of our family and our uh coaching families is that you have access to people like us to learn more about the technical field or whatever so uh that being said uh take advantage of our resources take advantage of our notes tech text notes text replay and text Mina and to be able to get all the support that you need and everyone have a good rest of the night take care