About Our Career Services Director

How she works with each individual student to motivate and help them achieve their goals

· Portland tech,bootcamp,code school,career change,alchemy code lab

It’s been a year since Shannon Wolcott joined the Alchemy team and took over career services for our future software developers. We met her at a PDX Women in Technology Event where we started a conversation over an index card that read “Career Services”. We were confident she’d be the right fit for our community when we hired her. Shannon jumped right in, and we never second guessed our decision to bring her into the Alchemy team. In addition to helping all of our graduates on their journey towards their first tech job, Shannon has also helped to decrease the time between graduation and a first position - all while making some amazing connections in the PDX tech community.

Since day one she’s been called the “friendly boxing instructor.” This is because her background teaching group fitness classes comes through when coaching students to do all the things necessary to get a job. She does it with such heart and motivation that students find themselves adopting the positive attitude necessary to take the steps needed. Shannon has a very direct way of delivering tough messages in a way that makes students feel valued and appreciated through their own growth. She really tries to help each person in our program discover their strengths and then highlight them.

Since joining Alchemy Shannon has ventured into doing some Lightning Talks around town, often on the topic of networking and authenticity. You may have seen her at the PDX Women in Tech April Happy Hour or the Technology Association of Oregon’s Tech Ignite v. 10 event in May. She'll also be speaking at the ACT-W conference in June put on by ChickTech. (Register here and use SPEAKER10 for a discount!) Her topic has been on “Keeping it Authentic” which is key to everything she does.

Shannon not only motivates everyone in the room to work hard at their craft and dial in their elevator pitches while being true to themselves, but she’s also asked everyone, regardless of their background or upbringing, and especially if they represent the majority in the workplace, to make it a safe place for everyone, everywhere to be vulnerable and genuine. Otherwise, as she says, authenticity can’t exist.

If you take our program here at Alchemy, you’ll get an opportunity to work with her directly. As Director of Career Services, Shannon leads students to hone in on all of their professional skills, to learn to grow their network, to dial in their resume, and to interview like a rockstar.

Interested in our program? Email info@alchemycodelab.com with any questions or read about our professional FullStack Javascript program. Each Thursday at 12:30PM we hold an Open House where you can learn more about us, see our program in action, and meet our staff. Check out our blog to learn more about our diverse and talented grads, and Course Report and SwitchUp for reviews. Finally, you can also apply today if you fill out our online application (will not commit you to attend, but it starts the process to do so!) We hope to meet you soon!