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— Tell me, what did you do before the courses?
— I taught at the Institute of Foreign Languages for 5 years, and worked as a translator at the same time. That's how we lived.
— Did you teach where you studied?
— I studied at the Faculty of English Language and taught at the Faculty of International Communications.
— You worked for five whole years! Why did you decide to change everything?
— Students are great! If it weren't for the situation in the country, I would have continued teaching there. The guys who are getting higher education are conscious people, I still communicate with some social media marketing service of them, many work in IT, and we help each other. The Institute of Foreign Languages is not a university, but rather a community. I not only taught students, but also learned a lot thanks to my work. It was great.
— What was the critical point?
— In 2020, I decided to quit, and in 2021 I quit for good. I decided for myself - the day when I get up in the morning for work and feel that I don’t want to go there anymore, I won’t go there anymore. But I couldn’t leave that same day - the graduates asked me to stay and work until the end of the semester.
Almost the next day after leaving, I signed up for the courses. But at the same time, I continued working as a translator, so it was easier financially.
- Why did you choose the Project Manager in IT course ?
- I always thought that all humanities students go into testing or business analytics, that’s the stereotype. I honestly read books on testing, but I found it boring, so I chose project manager. Why TMS - I’ve been following you on Instagram for a long time and I liked everything so visually that I was sure that I would go to study here someday! Excellent marketing.
— So you became a victim of marketing ?
— You could say that. Even when they asked me at graduation why I came here to study, I immediately said that when you go to study for something related to IT, you focus on the finished product. TMS has a beautiful website and I thought then that if they have such a beautiful website, it means they can teach you something.
— How was the course ?
— Great, because our teacher constantly brought interesting assignments and I thought: finally, I have the teacher I deserve! At the university, I also tried to use an individual approach, to come up with something interesting. Moreover, during the courses we studied until 10 pm - they didn’t let us fall asleep. We studied twice a week, and we still communicate with the teacher and the group, celebrate holidays. We look through photos from graduation - it’s like graduation at school, only for adults and they brought you champagne.
— Tell us about your diploma project.
— It was a task to create a package of project management documents - I got the TMS website! It was much more difficult to defend it, because the person who developed it was defending it. The dialogue was something like this:
- "Why did you have 120 thousand dollars in the budget, are you going to launder the money?"
- "No, we were just given such numbers!"
But the experience was very cool. We pumped up such skills that are important in any IT profession. And we also had a lot of work with planning and prioritizing our time - this is useful in everyday life.
- What was difficult ?
- We had to read a lot and do a lot of homework, but this was not noticed. We were constantly given feedback and we received answers to all questions. - How quickly did you find a job after the courses ? - I was looking for a job in parallel with the courses and I still monitor the market. I was warned that IT is difficult for beginners, all employers need minimal and real experience. But after the project manager courses, you can be almost anyone - we learned a lot about the IT sphere during the courses. At the very least, you know where to dig - after three months, I received an offer for the position I work in now. - What do they ask for at the interview? - They asked basic things - how to calculate the budget, methodologies, most often they give real cases. For example: you have three people on the team, tomorrow you need to release something, and someone got sick. What will you do? The longest interview I had was two hours - that's too much, in my opinion. Adequately, when the interview is around 40 minutes. But they asked everything that we learned at the courses - and I think we learned everything. - Do you work in IT now?
— Yes, I am a technical writer - English came in handy. And almost all the knowledge from the project manager course came in handy, although I took a separate course on technical writing. Besides everything else, the guys and I do translations, I have a small team and I have to manage the entire translation process and how the guys do it. And there are also developers who need to clarify something - this is where all the acquired soft skills come into play! After all, people are different, even those who do not want to communicate. Planning is a plus - now I can easily prioritize tasks. And when the guys talk about iterations, bugs, servers, etc. during calls, everything is clear to me, thanks to this, it is much easier to work. Anyone who does not know which course to choose can go to project manager - this knowledge is relevant for any position, it is like a foundation for starting to enter IT.
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