This content was created by Girlboss in partnership with General Assembly.
Welcome to the age of the career pivot—where it’s never too late to consider a radically different career trajectory for yourself. Want to get into the tech field even though you have absolutely no experience? That’s where General Assembly can come in. Through its bootcamps, workshops and programming rooted in real-world skills, General Assembly has helped over 25,000 alumni successfully switch careers and find tech roles.
Their winning formula? Fast-paced tech skills learning via live online instructors who are experts in their fields paired with essential career-change coaching for those indispensable soft skills. Think: a job-ready portfolio of three to five projects, networking events, interview prep, writing a killer follow-up email and learning how to craft your career story.
Neha Bhole, a recent GA grad, spent a decade as a pediatric behavioral therapist. She was starting to feel burned out in her career, and always had an interest in web design and would even create websites for her friends’ businesses. She chose General Assembly’s Software Engineering Immersive Program. Neha highlights that when she was deciding between GA and another bootcamp program, GA’s option to finance her bootcamp was the deciding factor. “Another bootcamp program that I was considering did not offer financing, so that’s another reason why I went with General Assembly,” she says.
Neha is currently a software engineer at Healthie and credits both the up-to-date skills she learned during the bootcamp, as well as sessions with her GA career coach, for her successful career pivot into tech.
That career coach is Zoe McGhie, who works at General Assembly to support software engineering students during and after their bootcamp to set them up for real-world success. “During the bootcamp, I work with them on getting ready for the job search. After they graduate, I spend a lot of time with them to keep their engagement and motivation high, if they’re feeling imposter syndrome or just need a little support.”
After completing the bootcamp, Neha met with Zoe every two weeks. “We would discuss how to be authentic in interviews, she did a lot to help me figure out my career journey,” she says, adding that Zoe would urge her to network. “That’s something many students don’t realize the importance of,” says Zoe, “because if they’re coming from a field like healthcare, networking isn’t really as necessary.”
In August, Neha landed a job as a front-end developer at a healthcare SaaS company. “It’s a startup and I really love the pace of work and the people I work with. The leadership is quite young and it makes a huge difference in the culture of the company,” she says.
Overall, Neha describes the entire bootcamp experience as “foolproof,” adding that General Assembly offers a ton of resources, and much of the communication happens over Slack, “everything is super quick, it’s always easy to book an appointment with your career coach.”
As for their advice for anyone looking to switch into tech? Zoe advises to learn more about the courses and what they can do for you, and where the job market will lead you. “GA’s admissions specialists can help with that too,” she adds. GA also has free two-hour live workshops on each tech career: data, coding and UX design, where anyone can test-drive a tech career before making the move into a three-month bootcamp.
“Do it,” says Neha, adding that “if you have stars in your eyes when you mention software development, you’ll definitely learn a lot.”
Right now, General Assembly is running an amazing new financing offer for Bootcamp Students in the US with a Fully Deferred 0% interest and 12-month grace loan with a $500 USD deposit. That means no payments for 12 months from course start date, followed by 36 payments of $443 USD.
Plus, take advantage of General Assembly’s latest AI Workshop to get your skills in line with the future of work—and power up your communication, workflows and data processing.
