It's been 6 months (it's really been 9 because I was lazy and forgot to post this 3 months ago!) since I completed General Assembly's WDI program and I've been successfully employed as a UI Developer for 4 months now. I've been primarily working on AngularJS projects.
How Did I Get an Internship/Job?
After the WDI program I figured that I would continue studying on my own and also attend any job fair that came my way. Luckily for me I managed to meet a few folks at General Assembly's meet and greet fair. After that I was off to do a free 2-week internship. While it was great to be doing some work, I wasn't so thrilled at the lack of mentorship due to the great distance between me and the developer team. One week into the 2-week internship someone got in contact with me about doing some Front-End/UI developing. At first I wasn't sure if the reach-out was a generic email blast. So, I replied with an honest statement with my skill level (super-ultra-junior-maybe-not-even-junior-but-equivalent-to-a-pre-mature-baby-level), my previous background, and my interests in learning more. Surprisingly enough, I received a response and so we set up an interview to meet.
The Interview
The interview was 5 hours long. The minute I got to the office I met 2 of the UI developers. We chit-chatted about how I ended up switching careers and then they threw a test at me. It was a few pages of questions on HTML, CSS, jQuery, and JavaScript. After that, I was whisked away to talk to the Head of UI. He ended up critiquing my portfolio (I ended up fixing my portfolio later that night) and then I was again off to meet some more people... I ended up accepting!