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✏️ Journal #14 Discussion

As discussed in the Journaling at Epicodus lesson, each weekend you'll receive a journaling assignment in addition to your coding homework. You'll then discuss your responses with a partner at the beginning of the next class session.

Journal Response Discussion​

This section's Prompt​

You were asked to write responses to the following in your journal over the weekend, as detailed in the Journal #14 prompt:

  • Revisit the narrative you drafted in your response to the Journal #12 prompt. Is this still the narrative you'd like to work with? If not, make any changes and record the updated version.

  • Locate a job posting to use as a reference for this exercise. Browse postings on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and/or Indeed. Locate a position that looks similar to the type of work you may later pursue.

  • Read this posting carefully. Outside of technical skills, what are they looking for? What can you determine about the company's culture and values? Jot down anything you notice. Does the posting lack this information? Google the company. Browse their site for any info about their values (do they have a mission statement? A blog with posts about their goals?).

  • Look at this list and your narrative side-by-side. Where are there similarities? How can you tweak your narrative to better depict how well you could fit on this team? Record any ideas and an updated narrative summary.

Discussion Questions​

Discuss what you recorded in your journal with your partner. Repeat the following steps for each partner:

  • Share the current working draft of your personal narratives. Essentially, in a few sentences, what do you want a company to know about you besides your technical experience?

  • Then, share the job posting you used as reference for this section's journal. (Or you may locate a new posting on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and/or Indeed. Just make sure it's similar to the type of work you may pursue after graduation).

  • Discuss what you can discern about the team's values based on this posting. Outside of technical skills, what are they looking for in candidates? What traits might they desire?

  • Brainstorm together how your personal narrative can be curated, tweaked, edited, reformated, etc. to best highlight how your existing values, personality, experiences, etc., fulfill the non-technical needs of this team. How will your narrative change to highlight these traits?

  • If time allows, look at more job postings within the general realm of work you'd like to pursue and repeat this process. How would you further tweak your narrative for these other companies? How does this differ from the first company? Why?