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📓 Journal #14

You were asked to keep a journal while going through the program. Each weekend you'll receive a brief journaling assignment in addition to your coding homework.

Journal #14 Prompt​

Think critically about the following questions, and record brief yet honest responses. Include a date or timestamp and quick summary of the prompt to refer to later.

The last few journal prompts have explored developing personal narratives by reflecting upon past and present experiences, future career goals, values, and more. This section we'll practice how to make these narratives more dynamically flexible, to best highlight your skills and values in a variety of different circumstances, to many different types of teams.

  • 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.

    • To clarify, we're not suggesting you present yourself dishonestly. Just to rework your narrative to best highlight your own pre-existing values that may help emphasize how you could fit on this team. For instance, perhaps you identified Community, Altruism, and Imagination as your values. But a job posting you're reviewing emphasizes a team's goal to foster and support diverse communities. In this instance, you might reframe your narrative to highlight your own community-minded values a bit more, while letting values like imagination take a slightly smaller role.

Discussion​

We'll discuss our responses at our next class session. Make sure your responses are recorded before then!