How Yellow Tail Tech Delivers Dedicated Career Support

If you’ve explored the world of IT training, you’ve likely come across Yellow Tail Tech. They teach remotely across the US and focus on training adults for careers in Linux and AWS and helping them get the right certifications in the field. And today I’m joined by Courtney Motyczka, Career Success Manager at Yellow Tail Tech. Courtney works closely with students to ensure they’re building the mindset, the job search strategy, and the confidence they need to succeed in a competitive job market. Today we’re talking all about career support at Yellow Tail Tech – what it really takes to help career changers not just learn tech skills, but actually land jobs in Linux, System Administration, AWS, and Cloud.

Tell us about your role at Yellow Tail Tech and what career success means to you?

I'm the Career Success Manager at Yellow Tail Tech. I manage all of our students through both the Student Success and Career Success teams, and everyone in the apprenticeship stage in our program is my responsibility. They work one-on-one with me through tailored coaching – I individually coach each student to prepare for the job market.

Let's discuss the current job market for Yellow Tail Tech graduates and students. Are there specific industries or roles where you see strong demand for Linux and AWS skills in 2025?

The job market, as we know, is very competitive, but it’s not unmanageable. I know that's become the conversation across all industries and markets – people are feeling overwhelmed by what the job market is currently looking like. The difference is now how you approach it. While the job market is competitive, I think the biggest shift we've seen is in how to find those open roles. That’s maybe not as competitive as people think. I will say that we've seen an increase in roles in GovTech. That's become a desired role and also a needed role. So we've had quite a few placements this year that are GovTech-focused.

We just had a student who landed a GovTech role, and it was a quick interview process, a quick offer, and they were also provided relocation support. Relocation support is very uncommon now, especially with a competitive job market.

This was somebody who transitioned from being a teacher. They had that grit, never gave up, and got their role. It's been a journey for them – I'm thrilled.

We always encourage our students to be open to relocating if they can or keep an open mind as they go into job searches. Sometimes, those job titles, while they are Linux system administrators, are not always titled as such. That's another hurdle in this new job market: these job titles are shifting and changing. But I've even encountered some roles titled help desk that are paying $90,000 or six figures!

When does career coaching start with a student at Yellow Tail Tech? At what point in the program do they start considering the job search?

We introduce them early but lightly. As I'm sure you know, and likely many of our listeners know, transitioning into tech is not an overnight thing. It takes a lot of endurance to transition into tech. So we don't want students looking for roles right from the beginning. Although I know lots of our students are eager to do so – they want to get their foot in the door to get that hands-on experience. 

We want to focus on them getting that foundational knowledge right from the beginning, so we do light introductions when our students start. I'm with them for kickoff, so they know who I am and they see my face early on. But we do the deep dive after they've had their foundational training.

Once they've been certified and get into their hands-on apprenticeship with us, I work with them one-on-one. Our apprenticeship is where they get that hands-on experience, arguably the most challenging part of their program. We give that warning right in the beginning, but that's when we see that they need the most support and where we also see a high increase in impostor syndrome.

Do most students at Yellow Tail Tech go into an apprenticeship?

Yes, the apprenticeship is required for program completion. Now, we have some students who may decide that it's not the path for them. Like any educational journey, they may decide they won't get certified or course along the way. But the apprenticeship is the final stage before moving on to the job search.

Give us more information about that apprenticeship. How long is it? Are students paired with a real company? 

The apprenticeship is two months long and involves hands-on experience. Their training is foundational knowledge, networking, and certification prep to help our students prepare for that Red Hat certification. Once they get through all that, we want them to get hands-on experience.

One key thing they are learning and navigating in an apprenticeship is how to train themselves with new tools. If you work in tech or you've worked in tech, you know that tech is ever-changing. You must be prepared to learn independently without necessarily hand-held support and training. So we're there to help them through that so that they know how to be resourceful, they know how to do research, and they know how to keep up.

Their apprenticeship is with Procore Plus, so they're working on project-based tickets as they get their hands-on experience. I'm here to support them every step of the way, along with my team. We also have an infrastructure team that helps them. That sounds intense, but we want them to do the apprenticeship independently. They won't be prepared for the job market if they're not doing it independently. So they're getting that hands-on experience with their tickets. And the tickets are intensive. This is approximately one year's worth of work for a Linux system administrator condensed down into a two-month timeframe, so it is very intensive.

Can you give us an example of one of those tickets? What would somebody expect to work on?

They're working in JIRA, a ticketing system, and working with automation, Greylog, Git, GitLab.

The Yellow Tail Tech community is powerful. I have seen our students group together, work on projects together, and do study sessions together. We pride ourselves on having a tight-knit community. It's not just about getting the training; it's an entire network of tech associates to have in your back corner when you get into that full-time job.

What else goes into the job support curriculum once a student is in the apprenticeship?

We're working with students on quite a few things as they go through the apprenticeship. Like I mentioned, we want them to be prepared to be resourceful, be able to do research, and identify those resources that they will use throughout their career. We take career success very seriously. I don't want just to get them a job. I want to get them a career where they can move from one job to the next.

• We talk about overall goals – what do you want your career to look like in five years? 

• We provide resume support. We sit down and go through what a resume should look like and how to represent it. 

• We also have mock interviews; our interview preparation is pretty intensive. We do panel interviews, and we ask them all the hard questions. I often hear from alumni that those mock interviews were way more complex than what I did to get my first job. And we want it to be that way. We want you to experience all those things from top to bottom so that you know how to represent your resume, because your resume is your foot in the door for that first position. But it's also personal marketing material for you, right?

• Soft tech skills look very different from soft skills in other roles and fields. So, we're refining those soft skills.

• Networking – both LinkedIn and in-person. Career fairs are everybody's friend right now. Networking events are super important; we need students to be prepared to network online and offline. 

• Once they are in the job search stage, we'll help them identify some of the roles I mentioned earlier. What's a good fit for them, and what does a good offer look like? Many people have an idea of what their annual salary should look like, and they have a number in their head. They forget about all the other things, like those added benefits, like health insurance. What do my health insurance costs look like? So, they need to understand what to expect when they enter the job market and how to negotiate that salary.

Do Yellow Tail Tech grads continue working with Career Services if they're job hunting again, or if they want to enter a more advanced role? Do they stay a part of the alumni network?

Yeah, absolutely. Many of our alumni come back and become TAs or instructors. All our instructors, except for one, are Yellow Tail Tech graduates. We have a lot of support from our alumni for our current students, and they tend to band together. 

We have an ongoing chat for job searches, and we keep our alumni in touch with us so that we can support them throughout their careers and also give them additional opportunities to grow within their tech education.

From a career services perspective, how are employers responding to certifications right now? 

The base layer is Red Hat Certified System Administrator, or AWS. Our Linux students can continue if they would like to do a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) course and then certify for that. The RHCE certification is very competitive; it's certainly not something you can just sit down and take right without training, studying, or practicing. These certifications are crucial in tech because that's how you show your knowledge. This is how you show that you can do the job. We see more and more of those certifications becoming increasingly significant in gauging qualifications within the tech market.

Is the certification getting a student hired, or is it more about how they communicate those skills in an interview or on their resume?

It's a blend of both. When people think of tech, they often think of this stereotypical software engineer who's coding and not meeting with clients regularly. However, even software engineers must have the skills to communicate technical information to non-technical people. This is a critical part of working in tech that is often overlooked. I mentioned earlier that the soft tech skills are very different from soft skills in many other fields, right? You can do work on the command line. That's tremendous. But if you can't communicate it, if you can't sell yourself, you're going to struggle to land a position.

Could you give us an example of a system administrator or Linux job interview? What is that technical interview actually like? It's different from a software engineer interview, right?

This is where the tech field varies so much from other fields. It differs from company to company and also from the scope of what the position requires. I've heard everything from recruiters and students alike.

Some say they had to take a test, in which they had to literally sit next to somebody and work in the system. Others were asked three questions and then hired. But the best thing is to prepare for all scenarios. And that's what we try to do with our students: prepare them for just about anything that can come their way. 

Diversity in your preparation and your professional development is critical. And that would apply to any field. It could be tech, non-tech. 

Okay, we've got to talk about AI. Is Yellow Tail Tech now preparing students to use AI tools in their job search, or to be able to talk about their use of AI in an interview?

AI is a priority in all fields, certainly in tech. It's a hot topic right now. There are a lot of changes coming with AI, and AI itself is changing. So, being able to utilize AI is critical. 

It's imperative to understand how to use AI as a tool in the job search, but not a solution. I emphasize that you have to know your own resume. You cannot go into an interview and not know what is on that document. Like I said earlier, it's personalized marketing material. You need to know what you are marketing to be able to sell it.

So you need to use AI smartly, which can work to your advantage. One of the ways that we use it for job search at Yellow Tail Tech is by having a job search platform with an AI tool. The AI tool helps students tailor their resume to target the role they're applying to and identify some of those keywords. This helps to make their job search and application process quicker, but ultimately, they're using a base resume that we've created, which they're updating for each application in a faster way.

We also use an AI interview preparation tool. This tool allows students to create mock interviews for themselves or assign one to me. Students can also put a job description for a role that they're applying to and complete a mock interview. With that mock interview, they can get immediate feedback from AI.

Courtney, let's talk directly to our career changers who are listening and considering Yellow Tail Tech. What is one way that they can maximize the career services experience?

Take advantage of attending the events we host and using that time to network and understand networking. They can schedule meetings with me whenever they want, and I'm flexible in scheduling as well. You know, they have a lot of opportunities to ask the questions that they need to ask and to get answers.

Things like their LinkedIn profile, resume, and all of those things up to where they need to be. So, asking those tough questions and just being vulnerable. This is one of the most overlooked parts of the job search. When you're struggling, having that person to go to and say, “Hey, I'm having a tough time with this. I'm not even sure what direction to go in” is important. Sometimes you don't know what questions to ask, and that's okay, too.

Do you think “vulnerability” is the one underrated skill or mindset you'd tell students to focus on right now for long-term job success?

Vulnerability is one of them. The way that applies in an interview is that sometimes the most straightforward and basic approach is the best. Saying in a job interview, “Hey, I'm interested in this role, I would love to work for this company.” Sometimes people overlook that entirely because they're so focused on the technical part, which is excellent.

Another underrated mindset is not to marry the job search process. The commitment should be to yourself, not just landing that job. That so often gets forgotten because we know that many people are getting inundated with “We went with another candidate or the job closed,” all these are canned responses and are not tailored to that person's job search efforts. Don’t get too invested in that portion of your job search because if you do, you will inevitably carry it from one interview to the next. So you have to take each experience for what it's worth and just trust that if you put in the work, you will get the job you need. That is the difference between someone who does 100 interviews and lands it on 101 versus someone who does 100 interviews and doesn't land it until 500. Don't let the frustration get the best of you.

Courtney, now that you've been working with Yellow Tail Tech for about a year, is there a specific background that translates really well to Linux, cloud, or AWS careers?

No two journeys are the same. The ones that do the best and are the most successful are the ones that stay ahead of the game. They're not always the quickest, but they are the ones that pursue every avenue – they're posting on LinkedIn, they are going to networking events, they're messaging me two weeks into their course, they have resilience and grit and stay hungry. 

The students who struggle are the ones who let that defeat sit in. You almost have to be overly confident to overcome that impostor syndrome. Going into tech with a mindset that nothing is going to stop you is the game-changer. You have to live that.

Last question for you: What is one word that you would use to describe Yellow Tail Tech's career support?

Dedicated. Definitely dedicated. We want you to have that job just as much as you want to have that job. 

Courtney—thank you so much for sharing how Yellow Tail Tech empowers students on the career side of their journey.

Find out more and read Yellow Tail Tech reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with Yellow Tail Tech.