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How a 21-year-old waiter from Los Angeles got a job as a QA engineer after online courses at Careerist.com school

Success Story
Jan 10, 2020

David is 21 and he worked as a waiter. The work was physically tiring and the wage depended on tips, it was difficult to go away for a couple of minutes.

I came to the USA from Ukraine at the age of 9, I studied at Sacramento. After school I worked as a waiter, lately at Studio Movie Grill . 

Once I came across a Forbes list of the happiest jobs, and there was a Quality Assurance Engineer. I thought it was a good job .

My mates work as waiters at the clothes shops, and I didn’t how to get a work in office. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to study anything on YouTube, so I enrolled on the testing course at Careerist. 

I earn twice more and work three times less than when I worked as a waiter. 

A month after the course I started to get calls from recruiters. 

Of course, I prepared for the interview and applied for positions on my own. But I called Max concerning any questions and asked for some advice, and he always helped. 

When I got a call from my current employer, I got anxious at the interview, forgot what I learnt, though I had prepared. I thought I wouldn’t pass it. But then they arranged a meeting in the company. It lasted 2,5 hours in the office with different people. Every half an hour I was introduced to a new person.

Now I am a QA Analyst at a customer service company! I get 35$/h, it is a job with staff, I have insurance, deductions to pension funds and other stuff. I work in Los Angeles. 

It was the first face to face interview. I had got one more offer from Snapchat, where I could earn more, 40$/h, but I decided not to take a risk and agree on the first one. 

We have free tea and coffee at the company, today we have had a party with ice cream. By the way, the building is very beautiful.

I come at any time before 9:45 (we have a meeting and discuss plans for the day), then I have breakfast and start work. I have my own computer with two monitors. My colleague and I can go away for a couple of minutes at any moment. For example, today she had to pick up her children from the airport of Los Angeles, and nobody said anything to her. When I worked as a waiter, I could not do that kind of thing. 

Now I have 23 days of a paid vacation. If you got sick, you can stay at home and work there. 

My work includes me checking the updates on the websites and applications to be sure everything works properly and there are no mistakes.  

I often have to pretend to have more work than I really do. I could do all of it in 4 hours a day easily. For example, today I have played chess with developed for an hour. But if I do my job and I am nice to people, nobody will fire me. 

I feel that they trust me. At the meetings they inform me about the plans of the company and sales. It’s really pleasant. 

I am very happy so far and I even don’t think what will be in the future. maybe, in a few years I will be studying something more complicated, e.g. automation. My colleagues developers offer to teach me. It’s a perspective area, and if I want to move forward, all of them will help me.

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At Careerist, we tried to create a dream school that we ourselves once wanted to get into, but could not find such important and necessary knowledge. Based on our mistakes, we created a solution that will help to avoid wasting time and focus on what is really needed: going through an interview, getting a job and the work itself.

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