Before joining Hackbright, Rachel Cleak worked in real estate acquisitions. There, she was exposed to many opportunities for innovation in the finance sector. This motivated her to want to innovate, and after teaching herself coding basics, she enrolled in our Software Engineering Bootcamp. She shares her experience and advice for future Hackbrighters below.

What were you doing before Hackbright?

Prior to Hackbright I was working in Real Estate Acquisitions at Invesco where I led large commercial and residential transactions on behalf of our institutional clients and funds. I have also previously worked as an analyst at a Texas pension fund making investment allocations to various real estate and real assets private equity funds.

Why'd you decide to join a coding bootcamp and what was your experience like?

I decided to go to Hackbright because I started to teach myself to code during 2020 and was having a lot of fun with it. I had also seen a lot of ways there were inefficiencies in the finance sector that I wanted to be able to help innovate. My experience at Hackbright was amazing.

What's your advice for current and future software engineering students?

I strongly recommend learning React. It was my biggest weakness going into interviews and the job search. Especially since front-end roles make up a large portion of the open opportunities. Try to get as many interviews as you can and keep an open mind to all opportunities. Take all interviews seriously and make sure to practice for them as much as you can. I highly recommend building a new project after Hackbright or completing a YouTube class on a new technology. It will help you practice coding and give you more insight and interesting things to talk about while interviewing. And most importantly, believe in yourself. Everything we learned at bootcamp is directly applicable to most software engineering jobs, you know how to code, you are smart and you can do it!

Want to learn more?

Want to make a career change like Rachel? Learn more about Hackbright Academy’s Full-Time Software Engineering course today.