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Despite having a PhD in astrophysics, Marcos Huerta, 43, based in Richmond, Virginia, found himself unemployed and struggling to find positions in his field. So he signed up for Pragmatic Institute's data science fellowship through The Data Incubator in fall 2018. Later that same year, he was hired as a data scientist at CarMax with a six-figure salary.

He told Insider the boot camp helped him quickly and successfully switch careers to tech.

"I was looking to broaden the positions and localities where I could find work," Huerta said. "Had the perfect noncoding job come up, I would have still considered it, but I wanted more options to find a stable job at a good company."

Huerta shared his story with Insider and advice for others looking to attend a boot camp.

After graduating grad school in 2007, Huerta worked in science policy for nine years, first through policy fellowships and then as an official in the Obama administration. He moved to Washington, DC, in 2008 and later worked for an office in the House of Representatives, eventually becoming an advisor at the US Department of Energy.

But the latter job was an appointee position that ended at the start of 2017, so he needed to come up with a new opportunity.

"While I found some short-term contract work, I was frustrated with my overall job search," Huerta said. "Data scientist was not really a job title when I left graduate school in 2007, but I started to think about it at the suggestion of my now father-in-law."

While he had some experience in data science from previous jobs, he lacked familiarity with new data-science tools. He taught himself the R language using free Johns Hopkins online classes and an R package called swirl.

Huerta then used R when applying to The Data Incubator since there are data analysis questions as part of the admissions process, but he was not initially selected for a fellowship. He applied again in the summer of 2018 and got in.

Huerta started the eight-week data science training course in September 2018 and completed it on November 2.

"CarMax called me and made me the offer on the very last day of the boot camp," he said. "We were having the end-of-boot camp celebration when I got the call."

Huerta was unemployed while attending the boot camp.

"We were told it was a full-time commitment and not to have other employment, but since I was between jobs, that was not an issue," he said.

Since Huerta was selected for a fellowship at The Data Institute, he didn't have to pay any tuition out of pocket for the training. His total cost for participating was around $150 for a computing resources fee.

Huerta said that the first week of the boot camp was "kind of overwhelming."

"The weekly mini-project was doing a lot of web scraping with Beautiful Soup a Python package and it was all new to me," he said. "Plus, I was also supposed to be thinking about job applications, my resume, my capstone project it was a lot."

The training's first weekly project turned out to be the hardest one, Huerta said. Once he completed that, the key challenges became time management and prioritization.

"The boot camp was a full day around eight hours a day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m," Huerta said. "The amount of time I spent beyond that varied: The first week I probably put in an additional two to three hours a day. Subsequent weeks I could mostly get what I needed done from 9 to 5 or 9 to 6."

As the boot camp went on, the idea of learning something new each week became less intimidating, he said.

"The experience was the opposite. It became empowering as I realized, 'If I focus full time on a new data-science tool, in less than a week I can figure it out,'" he said. "Obviously, I didn't become an expert on what we were learning in just a week, but it still felt like I could learn the basics of anything quickly."

Huerta said when considering a boot camp or career change, try a free or inexpensive course first before diving into a big commitment.If you're still a student, he suggested taking machine-learning or data-science courses at your college.

Since doing a project will be a big component of any boot camp, he also said to give yourself a project first.

"I used several online sites and courses to teach myself Python and R before I even applied for the boot camp," Huerta said. "When I was teaching myself Python, I came up with a side project for myself to make my Raspberry Pi speak out the local weather and metro bus arrival times in the morning."

Finally, he said talk with people who have gone through the boot camp. Although he wasn't able to speak to an alum of the program, he said, he did try to cold email some people on LinkedIn, and a friend of a friend helped him connect with someone who had done a different boot camp.

"Alumni can give you their take about what they learned, the challenges, and the benefits," Huerta said.

More here:

How a Boot Camp Grad Went From Unemployed to 6 Figures in 2 Months - Business Insider