This interview was conducted by Erica Freedman, Content Specialist at SwitchUp
Richard Heen has been working at Intel since 2004, but knew he needed to advance his skills to move into his desired department. After attending HyperionDev, Richard, located in Arizona, USA, was able to enter interviews with confidence and advance his skills to a point where day-to-day projects were challenging, interesting and most of all, rewarding. He is grateful to the HyperionDev team for enabling him to get a new career chapter started. Learn more about why he loved this program in our interview below:
How did you decide to attend HyperionDev as opposed to other bootcamp programs?
At my current job, all of our developers are JAVA based. If I had a quick question, I could get help from the HyperionDev team. I was also able to submit questions to my mentor.
What did you study at HyperionDev?
I studied Software Engineering.
How do you feel this course of study has helped your professional career?
Talking to the development manager at work and sharing my path in this boot camp has allowed me to open doors with him and other hiring managers. I left the HyperionDev program with projects to show potential jobs and was able to answer interview questions with confidence.
Did you attend HyperionDev to attempt to change your career path, or improve the path you were already on?
I picked HyperionDev to improve the path I was already working towards. I attended to gather more knowledge and develop a portfolio of projects to show hiring managers.
What are the courses like at HyperionDev?
The courses are aimed at people with no experience in coding. Because of this, the courses start with a basic foundation and then build on skills from there. You are required to complete the assignments in order, first finishing one project before continuing on to the next assignment. The workload was partially coding and partially short answer questions.
Would you recommend this program to other students? Why or why not?
Yes, I would recommend this course to other students, but I would also suggest that with any boot camp including HyperionDev, make sure you also have local support like friends, family or coworkers outside of the help from your mentor. HyperionDev gives you projects that keep you motivated to learn the next thing to continue building your skills.
What was the application and admission process like?
I submitted my information and then a few days later had a interview to go over their process and make sure I was a good fit. They wanted to make sure I was ready for the time commitment as well as the challenge!
Did you have mentors at HyperionDev?
Yes, I did have a mentor. He was there to check my assignments and answer any and all of my questions.
How about career services? What were those like?
They do have career services, though I have not personally used them.,They offer a resume review and keep your resume on file to submit for jobs with your approval as well. I also underwent interview question preparation as well as coding question preparation.
I see you currently work as an Information Security Specialist at Intel. What does this job title mean and what does a typical day look like?
Right now my typical day is included running the day-to-day operations to create cryptographic keys. I recently started to do development work, where I update existing programs, clean them up, streamline them and add new features. I also have another coding project to enable the automatic transfer of files when they appear in a folder. Without the help of HyperionDev’s boot camp, I would still be spinning my wheels and not moving forward.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I really liked the Software Engineering boot camp as it challenged me at the perfect speed. For those that are not into traditional school, coding bootcamps really are the answer. I wish these had been around for me when I graduated high school in the ’90s. I’m in my 40s and didn’t want to go to a traditional college again for computer science. This was a great answer for me.
Want to learn what other alumni have said about HyperionDev? Check out verified alumni reviews on SwitchUp.
