I shared this experience in a closed Facebook group and it seemed to inspire a lot of people, so I decided to share it here and I hope it encourages more people to go through a similar experience.<\/p>\n
It’s no news that being black is really difficult; it’s even harder to be black and a first-generation immigrant.<\/p>\n
I went to Flatiron school and was so broke I didn’t even pay rent for two weeks in London. I started out living in hostels outside of London, while my school was in central London in a WeWork facility. That meant long hours on the bus in the morning and long hours on the bus back to the hostel.<\/p>\n
That meant very short nights. To save money for the hostel, I would stay on campus to work during the night. If you know the WeWork facilities, they used to have phone booths; Sometimes he slept in telephone booths at night. I would get up early to freshen up and prepare for the day.<\/p>\n
Since I was on a very low budget, I ate once a day. Coffee, chocolate, and cookies were always available on campus; That’s what I would have for breakfast. I bought lunch, part of which I ate during the day and the rest at night.<\/p>\n
Before moving to the UK, I was working in technology in Nigeria. I have an International Diploma in Computing with Distinction, a BBA in IT Security, approximately 5 years of work experience in Nigeria, international scholarships and more. But all this was not enough to break into the UK tech ecosystem. As a new immigrant, you are cursed for having no experience in the UK.<\/p>\n
I had heard a lot about how limiting this can be, and no matter how impressive your CV may be, not having experience in the UK can be a barrier between you and your first job offers.<\/p>\n
I’ve tried everything I can to mitigate this, at least as far as I know. I volunteered for the British Red Cross and also joined Amnick Social Enterprise’s work experience programme. Then, I started applying for all positions in my skill line, even entry-level jobs. I even applied for the position of WordPress content manager, which is just a fancy name for publishing content to a WordPress site and data entry for e-commerce websites. I didn’t even get a call back.<\/p>\n
After many requests, I started receiving some calls. Sometimes after calls they would ask me about my experience in the UK. There was one that was approved and I was invited to a physical interview for a WordPress developer position at an agency. It was a great interview and then they sent me a mockup to create a full WordPress theme. I did about 70% of the work within three days, coding everything from scratch. They said it wasn’t enough; I could have used Bootstrap.<\/p>\n
In some interviews, I received comments such as that the company provides services to companies that turn over millions of pounds and that I had not worked on a project of that capacity, so they would not go ahead with me. “Million pound business coming from Nigeria” – that’s a nice way of telling you that you have no experience in the UK.<\/p>\n
This is why I decided to go to Flatiron School because I had run out of options. In fact, I was working with Udacity as a technical mentor, but the salary was not stable and was highly dependent on student participation. I needed to get into this UK tech ecosystem and was wondering what I needed to do differently.<\/p>\n
Flatiron School is a world-renowned school. From my experience in Nigeria, I know that people hire someone they feel connected to, whether through recommendations or connections. All my jobs in Nigeria had been through referrals. Maybe what I needed was to connect to an ecosystem where all these UK human resources could trust me. And that’s exactly what I did.<\/p>\n
Flatiron School isn’t cheap, and even living in London for three months isn’t cheap. When I applied to Flatiron School, I was actually working at a company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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