Amsterdam is a great place to live. You’ve probably bought a bike, visited Foam and the Rijksmuseum, and enjoyed your fair share of bitterballen after a night out at Paradiso. Everything’s going great, except for one minor detail… your job, or perhaps a lack of one.
This might be because you’re in the wrong sector. Amsterdam is full of employment opportunities, many of which can be found within the city’s world-class startup ecosystem. In fact, in 2016, a record 157 international companies established offices in Amsterdam, with many companies coming from the United States, Asia, and the United Kingdom, most in the IT and tech, business and finance, and marketing and sales sectors.
If you do a quick online job search, you will find thousands of job listings in IT and tech, mainly focused in the realm of programming, digital marketing, data science, and software engineering. This is great news!
Learn how to code at Ubiqum Code Academy. No previous experience required!
“But I have no experience or technical background”, you say? The great thing about tech is that anyone can learn the necessary skills and launch their career in this opportunity-rich pool!
Unlike in fields such as Law, you don’t have to study for a minimum of three years at a university and then pass a set of strict exams. Instead, the world of tech is highly accessible, with many people teaching themselves to code online.
Teaching yourself how to code online is one way, and there are tons of free and paid online resources to help you (Codecademy, Udemy, Coursera, to name a few). If you’re someone who needs to be pushed and guided in your learning, you should look into the relatively new concept of coding bootcamps and data science bootcamps.
Coding bootcamps made their debut in 2011 in the United States and have since been popping up all over the world. The length of these courses typically ranges from 8 to 36 weeks, depending on the amount of material covered and in what depth. Not limited to programming, you can find courses in web design, UX / UI, and data analytics, as well as front and back-end web development.
Here in Amsterdam, Ubiqum Code Academy launched their coding bootcamp last May, offering two career programmes: Full Stack Java Development and Data Analytics & Machine Learning. Consisting of 20 highly immersive weeks of practical training, they work with a new and disruptive methodology which barely resembles the activities of the traditional classroom.
Aimed at absolute beginners with no technical background, Ubiqum's programmes equip students with the hard (technical) and soft skills demanded in the current job market and even helps them with the entire job searching process!
What’s more, they are so confident that you’ll have no trouble finding a job upon completion of their programmes that students have the option of paying 50% up front and the rest when they get hired.