I'm not afraid of development anymore. I feel more confident. - Seojeong Kim, IT Architect, KT

The second in our series of Elice Track alumni interviews is growth icon Seo-Jung Kim.

Seo-jung joined KT as an intern after completing the second year of the Elice AI Track, and as of the publication of this interview, she is now working full-time in IT design at KT.
In her first project, she was barely able to implement the web service she wanted, but with persistence, she gained enough confidence in development to feel like she could solve any problem!

Racer Seojeong Kim, KT IT Designer | Industrial Engineering Graduate

Q. I’m Seojeong Kim. Please give us a brief self-introduction.

A. My name is Seojeong Kim and I am 27 years old. My major is industrial engineering, and I studied computer science as a double major. I was preparing for a job with the Elice Track until the second half of last year, and right after completion, I was accepted as an IT designer at KT, and I am currently working as a recruitment transition type intern.

Q. What kind of work do you do at the company?

I’ve only been with the company for about a month, so I’m not in charge of any specific part of development, but I’m studying natural language processing while taking training so that I can adapt well to IT design work. I’m learning about the work over my shoulder, but I think IT designers work on designing traffic and databases, and upgrading and optimizing services.

Q. Congratulations on getting hired so quickly! When did you decide to pursue a career as a developer?

When I was a junior in college and was seriously thinking about my career, I thought about what I enjoyed the most. I loved solving math problems, and I thought that coding, which I learned a little bit in my major classes, was a way to solve math problems on a computer, so I enjoyed learning it. So I naturally decided to become a developer, and I thought it was a job that I could enjoy and be good at.

Q. How has it been to actually get a job as a developer, compared to when you were studying on the Elice Track?

It still hasn’t really sunk in that I’m a developer, and I still feel like I have a lot more to learn, but I’m excited to be doing what I’ve always wanted to do for a living, and I keep thinking it’s going to be fun!

Q. Out of all the bootcamps out there, what made you choose Elice?

The most important criterion for me when choosing a bootcamp was the curriculum. I had already decided that I wanted to be a developer, but I didn’t know what kind of developer I wanted to be. If you search the Internet, there are guides on what to study to become a front-end developer and what to study to become a back-end developer, but it’s hard to prepare for a job just by searching. I wanted to find a curriculum that would teach me a lot of things and give me a variety of experiences, and the curriculum of the Elice AI track was designed to teach me front-end and back-end web development, data analysis, and artificial intelligence, so I applied right away. In addition, even though it is a completely free course, the employment support program is solidly designed, and the employment cases of graduates are very diverse and good, so I thought I could get a job if I study here.

Q. What was the most helpful program during your 6 months in the Elice AI Track?

The most helpful program for me was implementing the service as a project, because I was able to utilize what I learned in the theoretical training and see where I was lacking.

Q. What did you particularly like about what the Elice Project had to offer?

First of all, I really liked the office hours (Q&A and code review time) with my coach. The office hours could be organized freely according to the schedule of my coach and racer, and it was great that my coach was available to answer questions even late at night and was very considerate of the speed at which I could complete the project.

I also liked the fact that I was able to experience web service projects three times at Elice. In the first project, I didn’t create as much as I wanted to because I didn’t really know how to do it, but I realized that it wasn’t enough to just follow the code labs in class, so I worked harder in the second project because I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before, and in the last project, I decided to use all the knowledge I had learned over the past six months to show my capabilities. If I didn’t know something, I’d go back to the Elice lectures I’d already taken and immerse myself in the project in order to build a complete service. I definitely felt like I had a lot more capabilities and a lot more tech stack that I could use, and I kept seeing my skills grow with each team project.

Q. That’s great that you’ve experienced growth. I’m curious about your project, Seojeong. What kind of service did you build?

For my last AI project, my team created a service that analyzes letters and recommends poetry books. Since it was our last project, we agreed that we should be able to express and utilize what we have learned as much as possible, so we decided to create a commerce-type site, so that we could use a lot of APIs on the backend and expand the possibilities of using the technology we have learned. The idea for such an emotional topic came from another racer who was the team leader, and we all deeply appreciated the value of using technology to comfort human emotions, so we were able to complete the project with the same mindset.

I mentioned earlier that you can feel your growth during a project, but that doesn’t mean that I was perfect during my last project. I still had some flaws and was compared to other people who were better at it. However, instead of getting discouraged, I think I looked at it positively, using it as an opportunity to figure out where my skills are and what I need to prepare more for in the future. As a result, I looked back and realized that I had grown a lot!

Flower Letter, a letter analysis poetry book recommendation service, was completed as a team project with Seojeong Kim in charge of front-end development.

Q. What do you think is the most significant development in Seojeong’s growth that you have achieved by completing the project?

I’m not afraid of development anymore, and I feel confident that I can solve problems. This is the biggest change I felt after completing the project. I can now adapt and utilize any new library or framework without fear. In my first project, I had no idea how to implement what I planned, and I didn’t even know what keywords to search for to find what I wanted. Whenever I came across something new, I would start with doubts like, ‘Can I do this?

But now, I realize that I can run into it right away and even if I don’t know, I can solve the problem by searching or studying. I think the biggest improvement is that I can design specific logic for the direction I planned and implement it by myself, even if it’s not perfect.

Q. I remember that you worked very hard to get to this point. How did you plan your daily routine?

First of all, I basically listened to the Elice Track live lectures on time and watched the video lectures within that week so that I didn’t fall behind. After I started preparing for the job, my habit was to solve at least one algorithmic problem a day, so instead of taking a break after class, I would solve at least one problem, even if it was really easy, and finish the day. Also, I was a bit greedy and wanted to be good at a lot of things, so instead of closing the door on a position because it wasn’t what I wanted to do, I tried to do front-end and back-end, and I even looked up YouTube tutorials to learn as much as I could.

Q. Looking back on your Elice track, what was the most helpful thing you learned that helped you land a job?

I think I got a lot of job search support from Elice. They gave me a lot of job skills lectures like resume lectures and interview lectures, which were really helpful. Afterwards, they gave me resume editing support, which directly helped me get a job. I really appreciated that Elice was there for me as a job seeker to make me feel like they were constantly trying to help me get a job.

Q. What kind of developer does Seojeong want to be in the future?

First, I want to be a ‘good at coding’ developer who can literally create the desired function right away. Second, I want to be a developer who can learn and utilize different development languages right away. I heard that the language I learned may be different from the language used by the company, and the language may be different for each project in the company, so I want to be a developer who is useful and plays my role in all projects.

Q. In a word, you want to be an ‘enabler’. I think it’s definitely possible! Finally, how would you recommend the Elice Track to prospective developers?

Worrying will only delay you from getting a job! Just sign up and listen. Elice will teach you about development and lead you to employment, so if you put in a little more effort, you will definitely get a job.😊 Before I started studying, I had no confidence and a lot of worries about getting a job, but as I listened to the Elice training, I gradually realized, "Oh, I’m actually going to get a job!".

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