Coding Bootcamps Also Teach You How to Get Rejected 10 Times a Day

"Sorry, but we‘ve decided to move forward with other candidates who are a better fit for this role at the moment. We encourage you to keep applying to other positions and wish you the best of luck in your job search."

I stared at the all-too-familiar rejection email, my stomach sinking as I processed the news. It was the third rejection I‘d received that day, and it wasn‘t even lunchtime yet.

After three intense months in a coding bootcamp learning web development, I had naively expected the job offers to come pouring in as soon as I graduated. But the reality was far different. Instead of celebrating a new career, I found myself sending out dozens of applications a week, doing endless technical interviews, and facing daily rejection.

What I didn‘t realize when I signed up for bootcamp was that I was signing up not just to learn to code, but to be thrust into one of the most challenging and demoralizing job searches imaginable. It turns out that coding bootcamps don‘t just teach you how to build websites and debug code – they also teach you how to weather constant rejection and keep forging ahead.

Bootcamp: Drinking from the Firehose

For the uninitiated, coding bootcamps are short-term, intensive programs that aim to turn coding newbies into job-ready developers in a matter of months. Aspiring career-changers flock to these programs hoping to gain valuable tech skills and break into a lucrative new field without spending years back in school.

The bootcamp experience itself is a whirlwind – most last 12-15 weeks, during which you‘re in class for 40-80 hours per week poring over code, building projects, and soaking up new programming concepts. It‘s an overwhelming amount of information squeezed into a short timeframe. One bootcamp instructor described it to me as "like drinking from a firehose."

But as crazy as the learning experience can be, it bonds bootcamp cohorts together in a special way. "We were all in the trenches together," a classmate reminisced. "The highs were high and the lows were low, but we kept each other going." Along with new technical know-how, bootcamps instill the importance of teamwork, communication, and perseverance – skills that would prove essential to surviving the impending job search.

"You learn very quickly in bootcamp that if you‘re struggling with a bug or a tough concept, you can‘t just raise your hand and expect the teacher to swoop in and help you," a graduate named Jamie told me. "A lot of the experience is learning how to struggle through challenging problems and find the solution yourself. That‘s a muscle you have to build up, and it comes in handy when you‘re dealing with technical interviews later on."

Ready, Aim, Apply

As graduation approached, bootcamps shifted gears from teaching us to code to teaching us to market ourselves to employers. We dutifully polished our resumes, linked our GitHub profiles full of coding projects, and set up professional online presences.

Bootcamps often bring in hiring partners and host "demo days" where students can show off their work, so at first it seems like the path to employment will be smoothly paved. But the reality is more of an uphill climb. "I remember thinking my projects were so impressive, employers would be dying to scoop me up," a bootcamp grad named Chris said. "I had no idea how crowded and competitive the entry-level market was. Getting that first interview was hard, let alone an offer."

Most bootcamps subscribe to the belief that getting a job is a "numbers game" – the more you apply to, the better your odds. They encourage grads to treat the job search like a full-time job and put in 40-hour weeks sending out applications, attending networking events, and setting up informational interviews. It‘s common for bootcamp grads to apply to hundreds of jobs in their quest for that first elusive offer.

"My record was applying to 10 jobs before 9am," Chris told me. "The bootcamp had a leaderboard tracking how many applications we each sent out. It was like a competition to see who could get rejected the most."

This approach is a far cry from a typical early career job search, where you might apply to a handful of interesting positions and hope to get a couple interviews. In the world of coding bootcamps, you‘re more likely to adopt a "spray and pray" tactic of blasting your resume out to anything remotely relevant in hopes that something will stick. While it can feel scattershot and dehumanizing, this strategy is an unfortunate necessity for most new developers trying to get their foot in the door.

Rejection, Rejection, and More Rejection

Once your applications are out there, the interview requests will hopefully start to trickle in. But be prepared – for every interview you land, you‘ll likely face many more rejections, often without ever speaking to a human.

"I did the math once and realized I had about a 5% success rate in getting any response to my applications," Jamie said. "That includes all the automated rejections. When it came to getting an actual interview, it was more like a 1-2% success rate. The vast majority of my applications just disappeared into a black hole."

The emotional toll of this much rejection is real, and it‘s something bootcamps try to prepare students for. "We had a whole unit on coping with imposter syndrome and staying motivated in the job search," a grad named Sumaya told me. "They brought in a therapist to talk to us about self-care. At the time I was like, ‘Why are we spending so much time on touchy-feely stuff when I just want to learn to code?‘ But once I was in my job search and dealing with rejection every day, I realized how essential those skills were."

It‘s common for bootcamp students to experience "imposter syndrome," or feeling like you‘re not truly qualified for the developer jobs you‘re applying for. This can be exacerbated by the fact that many employers are still skeptical of bootcamps and prefer candidates with traditional computer science degrees.

"When I was interviewing, I definitely got some dismissive vibes from hiring managers once they realized my background was a 12-week bootcamp and not a 4-year CS degree," Sumaya said. "There‘s still a bias against bootcamps in some corners of the tech world. We have to work twice as hard to prove ourselves."

This bias, combined with the increased competition from a glut of bootcamp grads entering the field, can make for an especially brutal entry-level job search. Bootcamp grads are often held to higher standards than their CS-degreed counterparts, expected to have polished resumes and extensive project portfolios right out of the gate.

Many grads struggle with technical interviews involving whiteboarding and solve coding challenges on the spot under pressure. "In bootcamp, most of the coding you do is on your own computer, with access to Google and Stack Overflow if you get stuck," Jamie said. "Coding on a whiteboard with someone watching you and asking pointed questions is a whole different ballgame. I bombed so many technical interviews before I got the hang of it."

And even once you make it past the technical portions, cultural fit and soft skills come into play. "I can‘t tell you how many times I made it to a final round interview and then got rejected because I ‘wasn‘t the right fit for the team,‘" Chris said. "At a certain point it stops feeling like an assessment of your skills and more like a popularity contest."

Playing the Long Game

So how do bootcamp grads persevere in the face of so much rejection? For most, it‘s about playing the long game and trusting that if they put in the work, the right opportunity will eventually come along.

Success stories can be hard-earned – it‘s not uncommon for a bootcamp grad‘s job search to last six months or even a year before they lock down that coveted first developer role. But the bootcamp mindset is that every "no" is one step closer to the eventual "yes."

"My bootcamp had this saying: ‘Fall down seven times, stand up eight,‘" Sumaya remembered. "I had it taped above my desk during my job search. Every rejection email I got, I‘d pick myself back up and send out another batch of applications. It was exhausting, but I refused to quit."

And when they do land that first job, all the blood, sweat and tears of the search suddenly feels worth it. "When I got my first offer, I literally jumped up and down screaming," Jamie said. "I ran to call my mom and I just started sobbing. All those months of hard work and rejection had finally paid off. I was a real developer."

But even after they‘ve broken into the industry, the hustle often continues. Many bootcamp grads find themselves having to "level up" their skills on the job to keep pace with their colleagues. "I spent my first year as a developer basically re-learning everything I thought I knew," Chris said. "Bootcamp gave me a foundation, but there was still so much I needed to pick up to be effective in my role."

And as they progress in their careers, some find that the stigma around their bootcamp background follows them. "Even now that I‘ve been a developer for a few years, I still get questions about why I don‘t have a CS degree," Sumaya said. "I have to keep proving myself in a way that I don‘t think a CS grad would. But in a way, I‘m grateful for that chip on my shoulder. It keeps me motivated to keep growing and learning."

The Grit Factor

For all the challenges and rejections involved, most bootcamp grads I spoke to said they‘d do it all over again. The experience of bootcamp – the intense learning, the camaraderie with classmates, the trial-by-fire of the job search – had a profound impact on their lives.

"I came out of bootcamp a totally different person," Jamie told me. "The confidence I gained, the work ethic I developed, the determination I had to find within myself…those are skills that serve you no matter what career path you take."

Grit, resilience, the ability to persistently push past failure – these are all highly valued traits in the working world, in tech and beyond. And they‘re traits that can‘t be taught in a lecture, but that are forged through lived experience and adversity.

In a strange way, the rejection and struggle of the bootcamp experience is a feature, not a bug. It‘s a crucible that molds students into tested, tenacious professionals, ready to take on challenges and naysayers alike. Sumaya had a great metaphor for this:

"In bootcamp, you learn that coding is all about debugging – taking a broken system and figuring out how to make it work. The job search is just one big debugging process. Every rejection is an error message, pointing you to what you need to fix or improve. It‘s frustrating as hell when you‘re in the thick of it. But when you finally crack the code and get that job, it‘s the most exhilarating feeling. You know you‘ve earned it."

So to all the bootcamp students and grads out there facing rejection after rejection: keep debugging. Keep pushing past the error messages. Keep showing up, even after you‘ve been knocked down over and over. With grit, resilience, and a sprinkle of luck, you‘ll crack the code – and all those rejections will have just been stepping stones on the path to the career you‘ve worked so hard to build.