Watch out! Longread!
There are dozens of success stories in this world, captured by technologies. As “from zero to hero”, as an anthem to hard-working and perfectionism. If you open any respectable printed or electronic edition, you will find various articles about new or leading tech industry startups and companies. And the most interesting is that some successful projects appear on the market as a response to catastrophic changes in the economy and society. One of those projects is the mentorship platform careeraid.co. But that project will appear only in March 2022, while the time of our narrative begins in January 2022.
After a heavy celebration of the most beloved holiday in Ukraine – the New Year, two former classmates and best friends Sasha and Yulia go back to their regular life. Sasha was a Java developer with solid expertise and his friends, including Yulia were always poking him, that he is living the lifestyle from Windows wallpapers – sitting with a laptop on the beach, fixing bugs, and enjoying the sunset. Actually, he really used to spend a few months a year on the tropical islands, working remotely, which became much easier within the past few years with all this COVID fever.
Yulia was a barista in a very famous and cozy cafe, with all this hipster life. She really enjoyed her job though her earnings were not enough to classify herself as well-doing in life. Sasha kept nagging, that Yulia is a gifted girl and could build a career in tech which would significantly increase her income. Yulia liked all these tech talks among common friends but was sure that she is definitely not a suitable person to work in it. Everything related to tech seemed to be too complicated for her though she never gave herself a chance to try it out. She also was convincing herself, that tech education costs money and she is not ready to invest them right now.
This life position of hers made Sasha a little sad, as he wanted the best for his old friend, and also tech guys and girls are known as people who love to inspire others to enter hi-tech. But of course, he couldn’t force Yulia as everyone is responsible only for their own decisions.
So both of these good friends continued their regular lives in the new 2022 year, hoping for new achievements and good times. Sasha was planning to obtain a position as a Team Lead and Yulia was into working on becoming a manager at her job. They both had great plans for the year which, actually, were not supposed to come true and we all know why.
The world that was not existing anymore
24th of February 2022 they both woke up in the morning from the continuous ringing of their phones, though each of them was in his own home. Sasha in Odesa, Yulia in Kyiv. Previous stable and predictable life was over. That world was not existing anymore, it crumbled like a sand castle.
After digesting panic and anxiety, our friends started to think about what to do with their lives in such circumstances. Yulia’s cafe surprisingly survived this war madness, but the only thing Yulia could think about – was to escape the country as soon as possible, because she started to face panic attacks. But Yulia understood that it is not possible to move to a country with a different language without a relevant profession. So she was desperately searching for a solution, which made her recall advice of Sasha about becoming a QA Engineer or Project Manager or so.
Sasha’s project got closed as it was an outsourcing company and their clients started to refuse to work with Ukrainian teams due to the instability of their life situation. That was a very unpleasant feeling to lose a job in times of rapid growth of inflation and the dramatic difference between the number of open positions on the Ukrainian market and the number of job seekers, most of those lost jobs for the same reason as Sasha.
As always happens in times of crisis, many tried to make money out of the situation in Ukraine. When Yulia and Sasha were scrolling feeds on social media, they saw a bunch of ads, dedicated to “helping” experienced tech specialists and newcomers to obtain a good tech job or new hard skills.
But with time another tendency appeared. A few non-profit projects appeared in the tech social environment, helping tech job candidates on a charity basis, funded by friendly Ukraine countries. One of them was careeraid.co – a platform, which helps Ukrainians to become tech specialists and to develop their careers in Europe.
Choosing the direction
The project careeraid.co is based on mentorship. Each candidate, who applied on the website of this project, gets a mentor, who helps to choose the direction of his or her professional development and the desired outcome. Based on this, a mentor will find out which additional actions the candidate should do before obtaining his dream job. After completing this stage a mentor trains his mentee for a job search, including CV review and interview preparation. A mentor also advises about finding relevant vacancies and getting a job offer. In the final stage, a mentor participates in the mentee’s onboarding and helps pass the probationary period.
Surprisingly, Yulia was the first person who found careeraid.co and dragged Sasha into it, despite his skeptical viewpoint regarding such projects, as he deeply believed, that he knows better, how to find a perfect new job for himself.
At the first session with an assigned mentor, Yulia found out, that her mindset is more technical, than she thinks, so she can try to become a QA Engineer, though she was thinking of Project Management or Recruitment/HR. A mentor guided her, on which free technical courses she should complete to proceed to the next process stage – preparation for a job search.
With Sasha everything was quite fast: with his experience, he just needed to polish his communication skills, to look more wanted by European interviewers, compared to other candidates.
After completing that preparatory studying stage, both, Sasha and Yulia, proceeded to a job search, got CV and interview tips from their mentors, as long as a list of relevant job search resources and internal careeraid.co database of potential employers, which naturally led to job offers for both of them, as they took the process very seriously, unlike some of the people who think that mentorship is something related to doing actions by a mentor only instead of the candidate. A mentor – is someone who only gives you helpful tools for lifting up your career, the main action the candidate has to do self.
Sasha now lives in western part of Ukraine, working at his new job remotely, hoping for the fast victory of Ukraine.
Yulia became QA Trainee and stays in Romania, finding some fragile peace in her life.
When they make video calls to each other, they make plans for 2023.
Dreams come true faster when they are converted to plans.
Careeraid.co helps with it.
Try it now.
