The path to your dream job is missing one thing: success partners

Growing up, Hayat always attributed her successes to her close-knit family. They were supportive in everything she pursued and were always rooting for her.

“Education is very important to us. When I was young I always wanted to be a computer engineer, and I found my family support my choices and help me with them, and I’m grateful for that.”

But living in Palestine comes with its own challenges and ones a family might not necessarily be able to always help with.

Upon graduating from her Computer Engineering degree at An-Najah National University, Hayat realized that growing up meant that her responsibilities were growing too and that she would have to start navigating the world on her own.

During this, I will go up and down but I have to remember that I’m growing up and I have to grow up by myself.

Growing into her own path

As she's grown, Hayat has discovered that her endless curiosity to try new things has been an asset to helping her find her way.

"I hate routines, so keep trying new things in life helps me to break them. Always believe on each day you have the opportunity to achieve your goals and build a new good version of yourself.”

So when Hayat graduated from her computer engineering degree, she was quick to find her first job as a backend developer. But as she considered her next steps, frontend development was a core skill she couldn't ignore.

Finding the right support

As she investigated learning frontend development on her own, it became overwhelming. It was hard to figure out where to start and what skills to develop first. Hayat didn't have the right support to balance learning frontend development on her own and working a full-time job.

One day, Hayat stumbled across a Re:Coded bootcamp announcement while browsing Facebook. She immediately applied.

​​The main things that encouraged me to apply are the well-organized plan and how the path goes from git to basic HTML & Javascript to React, also the process of acceptance gives me the enthusiasm to try new challenges.

Hayat found a supportive community of likeminded-learners that guided her learning experience.

"The type of exercises and projects we did, it’s really amazing and it prepared us in a way we can recap what we learned. Also, the opportunity to demo our work was the amazing and best practice for me to present any code to other people."

The support extended to building her future career as well. Hayat took advantage of the Careers Service and quickly learned that technical skills are only one side of the equation. In other words, to be a developer, it’s easy but to be a good successful developer means you have the important skills of time management and teamwork."

Looking to the future

Hayat is excited to graduate from the Frontend Bootcamp. With a lot of positive feedback and support from her peers and trainers, Hayat is prepared to follow her dreams. She wanted to become a role model for others in the Palestinian tech space and to build a software called Picat.

What is Picat and what is Hayat’s brilliant idea behind it? Hayat explains with sparkling eyes: “Picat is a web platform for photographers in Palestine to search for photographers and book an appointment for a photo session. The main idea is to allow beginner photographers to start their businesses and share their photos, even if someone starts with mobile photography."

Hayat hopes to make this her full-time focus after the bootcamp.

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