This Scrimba Student Learned Job Interviewing Skills from Podcasts (and Made a Killer Portfolio, Too)

🎙 About the episode

Meet Mislav Markušić 🇭🇷! Mislav is a new developer from Croatia who has changed careers at the age of 40. After attending law school and realizing it wasn't a good fit for him, he spent 14 years working in a record store! Now, he's a junior developer.

In this episode, Mislav shares how he decided to pursue coding, how long it took, and how he managed to do it alongside a full-time job and a family. Mislav and Alex discuss taking breaks, knowing you're ready to apply for jobs, and whether or not a junior should learn TypeScript. Mislav also talks about his portfolio, how having a well-thought-out portfolio can help you stand out in a sea of candidates, and how you can prepare for your job interview by listening to podcasts!

🔗 Connect with Mislav

• 👨‍💼Linkedin
• 🌐 Portfolio
• 🌐 Blog
• 🐦Twitter

⏰ Timestamps

• How Mislav started coding after dropping out of law school and working in a record store for 14 years (01:22)
• How Mislav knew which technologies to focus on (05:07)
• How Mislav approached learning to code (06:54)
• Hurry up, but slowly (08:33)
• Ad break! Check out our video where Alex is reenacting a day in a life as a learner. Next week on the podcast, it's Don Hansen! (10:55)
• Mislav wasn't ready too apply for jobs, but a friend of his thought otherwise (13:22)
• The hiring manager loved how Mislav presented himself. Here's what he did, and how he picked his portfolio projects! (14:55)
• Podcasts were the single best resource for Mislav when it comes to nailing the interview. Here's why (18:20)
• Mislav's interview process (20:22)
• Mislav's new job! (23:13)
• What's the first week of his first developer job been like for Mislav? (23:47)
• How fast do you learn coding at home, and how fast do you learn on the job? (26:55)
• How you feel about your abilities can change within a month (28:04)
• What would Mislav do differently, and why is that - learning TypeScript? (29:03)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Blog: Mislav's Roadmap to Getting Hired as a Frontent Dev
• Mislav's portfolio
• YouTube video: A day in the life of a self-taught React developer in London
• Scrimba's Discord server!

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You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so they can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏