I shared this experience in a closed Facebook group and it seemed to inspire a lot of people, so I decided to share it here and I hope it encourages more people to go through a similar experience.
It’s no news that being black is really difficult; it’s even harder to be black and a first-generation immigrant.
I went to Flatiron school and was so broke I didn’t even pay rent for two weeks in London. I started out living in hostels outside of London, while my school was in central London in a WeWork facility. That meant long hours on the bus in the morning and long hours on the bus back to the hostel.
That meant very short nights. To save money for the hostel, I would stay on campus to work during the night. If you know the WeWork facilities, they used to have phone booths; Sometimes he slept in telephone booths at night. I would get up early to freshen up and prepare for the day.
Since I was on a very low budget, I ate once a day. Coffee, chocolate, and cookies were always available on campus; That’s what I would have for breakfast. I bought lunch, part of which I ate during the day and the rest at night.
Before moving to the UK, I was working in technology in Nigeria. I have an International Diploma in Computing with Distinction, a BBA in IT Security, approximately 5 years of work experience in Nigeria, international scholarships and more. But all this was not enough to break into the UK tech ecosystem. As a new immigrant, you are cursed for having no experience in the UK.
I had heard a lot about how limiting this can be, and no matter how impressive your CV may be, not having experience in the UK can be a barrier between you and your first job offers.
I’ve tried everything I can to mitigate this, at least as far as I know. I volunteered for the British Red Cross and also joined Amnick Social Enterprise’s work experience programme. Then, I started applying for all positions in my skill line, even entry-level jobs. I even applied for the position of WordPress content manager, which is just a fancy name for publishing content to a WordPress site and data entry for e-commerce websites. I didn’t even get a call back.
After many requests, I started receiving some calls. Sometimes after calls they would ask me about my experience in the UK. There was one that was approved and I was invited to a physical interview for a WordPress developer position at an agency. It was a great interview and then they sent me a mockup to create a full WordPress theme. I did about 70% of the work within three days, coding everything from scratch. They said it wasn’t enough; I could have used Bootstrap.
In some interviews, I received comments such as that the company provides services to companies that turn over millions of pounds and that I had not worked on a project of that capacity, so they would not go ahead with me. “Million pound business coming from Nigeria” – that’s a nice way of telling you that you have no experience in the UK.
This is why I decided to go to Flatiron School because I had run out of options. In fact, I was working with Udacity as a technical mentor, but the salary was not stable and was highly dependent on student participation. I needed to get into this UK tech ecosystem and was wondering what I needed to do differently.
Flatiron School is a world-renowned school. From my experience in Nigeria, I know that people hire someone they feel connected to, whether through recommendations or connections. All my jobs in Nigeria had been through referrals. Maybe what I needed was to connect to an ecosystem where all these UK human resources could trust me. And that’s exactly what I did.
Flatiron School isn’t cheap, and even living in London for three months isn’t cheap. When I applied to Flatiron School, I was actually working at a company.