A New Mom Applied to 1,500 Jobs a Week. She's Now an Automation Engineer.

The baby was crying in the next room. Ivette was on her computer, in the middle of a class about test automation, and she could hear him through the wall. She got up, left the class, figured out what was wrong, came back, and watched the recording later to catch what she missed.

Her husband was deployed overseas. She was mom and dad at the same time. And she was trying to learn an entirely new career with a one-year-old who did not care about her class schedule.

She called her friend that night and cried.

It was not the first time. It would not be the last.

A Family of Teachers

Ivette was born in the Caribbean. French is her first language. She has been in Florida for almost twenty years. She has a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in psychology. She never worked a single day in psychology.

Instead, she taught. It was in her blood. Her grandmother was a lifelong teacher. Her mother taught. Her brother teaches -- he actually ended up going through CYDEO himself after watching Ivette's career change. Teaching was not something Ivette chose. It was something she inherited.

She started at a maximum security prison, teaching GED classes to inmates. She did that for about a year and a half. Then she moved to middle school, where she taught language arts for eight years.

Eight years of middle school. If you know, you know.

The Salary That Never Moves

Ivette loved teaching. But Florida changed the rules. Under the new salary structure, a teacher would make the same pay for fifteen years straight. Not a slow increase. Not a modest bump every few years. The same number, year after year, for a decade and a half.

That was the breaking point. Teachers were leaving in waves, and Ivette's friend -- also a teacher -- found CYDEO first and told her about it.

But Ivette already had a plan. She was studying for physician assistant school. She had taken the science classes. She had passed the entrance exam. She was on track to become a PA.

When her friend told her about the tech program, Ivette did not drop her PA plans. She filed the program under "Plan B."

"When she told me about it I was like, you know what, Plan B. Let me do this as a Plan B just in case I don't get into the PA program."

She signed up without even doing the intake interview. A new batch was starting, and she jumped in. Plan B.

She never went back to Plan A.

Mom and Dad at the Same Time

Ivette had just had her baby. Her husband, who is in the military, was deployed and not home. She was alone with a one-year-old, learning to code, and running on almost no sleep.

The classes ran on a schedule. The baby did not.

"Sometimes I would be in class and he will be crying the next room and I had to leave class to go find out what was wrong and I wouldn't -- I would miss a part of the class and I would have to wait until the next day to watch the recording of what I missed."

She missed pieces of lessons all the time. She caught up by watching recordings the next day. She went to every team meeting, every alumni mentor session, every group practice session. If she missed something, she texted her mentor directly and asked to meet one-on-one.

The program gave her the tools. But the hours she put in were hers alone.

"I can't tell you how many times I've called my friend and cried and cried and cried. I told myself I wasn't going to be able to make it."

She cried. She told herself she could not do it. She called her friend and said it out loud. Then she wiped her face, put the baby to sleep, and sat back down at the computer.

9:30 PM, Every Night

Here is what Ivette's evenings looked like during the program.

She spent the day in class and taking care of her son. Around nine or nine-thirty, she would put the baby to sleep. Then she would walk back to the computer and practice interviews.

Not sometimes. Almost every night.

Her team practiced together constantly. They asked each other interview questions. They critiqued each other's answers. They ran mock interviews the way athletes run drills -- the same scenarios, over and over, until the words came out smooth.

She also watched recordings of other students doing interviews. That was her learning style. She could not retain information just by reading. She needed to see how other people handled the questions so she could learn how to do it herself.

"I practice as much as I could. I met very often. I was at every team meetings, alumni mentor meetings, mentor meetings. Almost every day I will put baby to sleep at nine, nine-thirty, I will be back in front of the computer doing practicing interviews."

That nightly routine -- baby asleep, computer on, practice until late -- is what got her through. Not talent. Not luck. Repetition.

1,500 Applications a Week

When Ivette hit the job market, she was under pressure. Her husband had been supporting the family for two years while she was on maternity leave and then in the program. Their savings were shrinking. Rent was going up. Electricity was going up. They had a baby now. Everything cost more.

She needed a job. Fast.

So she treated the job search like a second full-time job. She made spreadsheets. She tracked every application. She applied to over 1,500 jobs per week. Her email inbox had more than 2,000 messages -- mostly rejections.

"I was applying to between -- jobs almost about me, over 1,500 jobs a week. I was making the list of all the jobs I was applying for. I had over 2,000 emails."

The rejections came in waves. But so did the interview calls.

The First Interview Sucked

Ivette's first interview did not go well. She says it plainly: it sucked. She was nervous. She stumbled. The whole thing felt wrong.

But something shifted after that. She stopped treating interviews like exams. She started treating interviewers like friends.

She made jokes. She asked the interviewer about their life. She shared stories from her own life. She was warm and real instead of stiff and rehearsed. That change in approach made a big difference.

"I got into basically treating the interviewer as my friend. If you're making jokes, asking the interviewer about your personal life, telling them about my personal life -- that made a big difference."

She was on the market for a month and a half. During that time, she kept applying, kept interviewing, kept refining her approach. Then the offer came.

One offer. She took it immediately.

More Than Double

Ivette is now an automation test engineer. She makes more than double what she earned as a teacher. She and her husband were able to travel. They started rebuilding their savings. They are looking at buying a house. She can provide anything she wants for her son.

"I make more than double what I used to make as a teacher. We were able to travel. We are able to start rebuilding our savings."

The financial stress that had been crushing her family for two years started to lift. Not all at once -- life is still expensive, especially with a growing child. But the weight is different now. She is not surviving. She is building.

And here is the part that surprises people: she actually enjoys the work. She compares testing to solving puzzles. You try something. If it does not work, you start over. You dig into the problem until you figure it out. For someone with a psychology background and eight years of wrangling middle schoolers, problem-solving came naturally.

"I love doing puzzles and I see being a tester like a puzzle. Because you're trying to figure out if it works, if it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, you start over. I can sit in front of the computer and do my work and not be bored."

She is not bored. After years of the same salary and the same classroom and the same broken system, she is doing something that challenges her brain every day and pays her what she is worth.

The Friend Who Started It All

Ivette still talks to her classmates. A few of them text each other every week or two, checking in on jobs, sharing interview tips, making sure everyone is okay. The community did not end when the program ended.

Her brother saw what happened to her career and enrolled in CYDEO himself. He just completed the program. Teaching really does run in that family -- but now they have options beyond the classroom.

And the friend who told Ivette about the program in the first place? The fellow teacher who found CYDEO and passed it along? That one conversation between two teachers looking for a way out changed both of their lives.

What You Can Take From Ivette's Story

• Your Plan B might be your real plan. Ivette signed up as a backup while pursuing physician assistant school. She never looked back. Sometimes the thing you try "just in case" turns out to be exactly what you needed.

• Cry, then sit back down. Ivette called her friend sobbing multiple times. She thought she could not make it. Then she put the baby to sleep and got back on the computer. Feeling like you cannot do it is not the same as actually not being able to do it. Let yourself feel it. Then keep going.

• Treat interviewers like people, not judges. Ivette's first interview was stiff and terrible. When she started making jokes, asking personal questions, and being herself, everything changed. Interviewers are human. Connect with them.

• Volume matters in a job search. 1,500 applications a week sounds extreme. It is. But Ivette needed a job fast, and she treated the search with the same intensity she brought to the program. If you are not getting callbacks, the answer might be to apply to more places, not fewer.

• Use recordings to learn. Ivette could not retain information from reading alone. She watched other students practice interviews and learned by observing. Know how your brain works and study accordingly. Not everyone learns the same way.