An interview with: Gaby O’Reilly from CODE Lancashire
When you think of coding do you think of someone who looks, acts, and thinks just like you?
Perhaps you should.
Despite the many stereotypes of software developers, CODE Lancashire are breaking down those clichés and bringing the power of coding to more people in our red rose county.
We spoke with Gaby, CODE Lancashire’s Programme Director, to discuss their 12-week programme and explore all the ways it benefits candidates, employers and the wider community.
What is CODE Lancashire?
CODE Lancashire brings together local employers, trainers, coaches and mentors to help individuals develop digital skills. These skills cover areas such as coding, programming, data science, data analysis, and software engineering.
But they don’t just stop there. CODE Lancashire also helps candidates explore and sharpen their employability skills — bringing both hard and soft skills together to ensure participants are fully-equipped as they embark on their digital career journey.
CODE Lancashire combines technical skills learning with practical industry experience in an immersive 12-week programme that upskills and trains individuals to create a new generation of passionate digital talent.
Unlike many other digital bootcamps, you won’t find any box-ticking at CODE Lancashire — just pure, unadulterated impact.
About Gaby O’Reilly, CODE Lancashire’s Programme Director
Before we delve any deeper into the wonders of CODE Lancashire, let’s introduce our guest for today: Gaby O’Reilly.
Gaby is the Programme Director at CODE Lancashire, the Founder of The Community Collaborator and an Associate at Scale-Ability. As a skilled Project and Business Development Manager, Gaby’s career has been forged through collaborations across sectors. Increasing employability and nurturing future talent have been common recurring themes throughout Gaby’s career as she helps both individuals and businesses alike.
Now, as a self-described non-techie in a tech world, Gaby is shaping future digital talent in Lancashire-based businesses through CODE Lancashire.
Let’s start at the top — What is CODE Lancashire?
Gaby: CODE Lancashire is part of a national campaign running Digital Skills bootcamps up and down the country to fill vacancies within the tech sector.
Obviously, CODE Lancashire is Lancashire-specific. But the key thing about our programme is that it is employer-led. It’s not just another training course. We work closely with employers who desperately need talent with these skills.
The employers we work with inform the training. In its most simple form, that primarily looks like a coding course focused on Software Development. But it’s more than that. As participants progress through the programme, they can go into different areas of digital and tech.
It’s a fully-funded 12-week programme available for Lancashire residents aged 19 years old and over. It’s hybrid too so participants can join in-person or online. Other than that, anyone can apply. There is an application process featuring a test and a challenge to see if it’s something you want to do, then you get to join the fully-funded programme for 12 weeks with a guaranteed interview at the end.
CODE Lancashire helps people with both the technical skills and the employability skills, and I think that’s really something to shout about.
You can teach yourself to code online quite easily. But can you teach yourself the practical skills to actually go into a job with it? Probably not. So, the CODE Lancashire digital skills bootcamp is equally weighted between employability and technical skills.
How does CODE Lancashire differ from other digital skills bootcamps?
Gaby: Because it is a funded programme, we have targets and KPIs that we need to achieve. It can become easy to see the bootcamp as just being a tick-box exercise. Bootcamps have a bad name because of that. But that’s not what CODE Lancashire is.
I have had several candidates who have done their research and challenged me on this idea of bootcamps during their interview. And, first of all, I’m thinking, “Good, I want this person on my programme” because they’re challenging things. Second of all, I am so passionate about this bootcamp not becoming a box-ticking exercise.
We will hit our KPIs and targets by working with candidates and employers and tailoring everything to their needs. If we do that, it will work. So, let’s focus on making it the best possible programme that we can. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.
We don’t just want people to go through the 12 week programme, go to the interview, and get a job. There’s more to it than that. We want to help them explore their options and figure out the right direction for them. I want people to come out of the CODE Lancashire programme feeling empowered to take control of what they want to do, and not just feel like they’re being shoehorned into a career for the sake of it.
I would love everyone to come out of this programme and wake up on a Monday morning feeling happy that they get to do a job they love.
How has CODE Lancashire helped people so far?
Gaby: The majority of candidates will have learned things that they’ve never learned before. And I say the majority because, from a technical perspective, we have candidates that have been teaching themselves online for years. But they’ve just never been able to break into the industry because they’ve not got any work experience.
The majority of people, though, are learning technical skills for the first time. Everyone will come out of this programme with something to show for it.
I’m not a traditional techie so, for me, the biggest way we help people is on the employability side of things and the softer skills.
Although the programme is essentially here to train software developers, that could be in a range of different roles. What we’re seeing, and what I’m really passionate about, is that over 12 weeks, participants are finding their fit.
They get all these different elements, like employability coaching and one-to-ones, to really look into themselves — their values, culture and where they fit in a team.
At the end of 12 weeks, you’re not just going into a job and that’s the end of it. You come out of it with long-term goals and a greater understanding of your fit in the digital space.
If you interview our candidates now, they might not realise exactly what they’ve achieved at the end of the 12-week programme. Because there is just so much that they take away from it. When running this style of programme in the past, one candidate said it had transformed his life. He’s using skills now that he got taught on the programme, but he just didn’t realise it at the time.
The other thing the CODE Lancashire candidates come out with is an ongoing support network. We run socials and have an online collaboration tool. As we do more cohorts, we’ll be bringing them together as alumni. We encourage participants to go to tech events and, of course, they have their peers who they went on the journey with. There will be 20 other people around them with similar interests who can all share their experiences and learnings.
We support people past those first 12 weeks and we’ll always have people on hand that they can turn to if they need support in the workplace.
We try and do whatever we can to encourage and empower our candidates.
“It doesn’t matter what your background is, or what your interests are, you can do this job if you have the skills.”
With the next cohort now in progress — what can CODE Lancashire participants expect to gain from the programme?
Gaby: Right now we’re nearing the end of our first cohort and we’ve also kicked off our second cohort.
Our second cohort are in what I like to call the “easy stage” of the programme where we’re starting to embed their learning. This helps everyone build a foundation before they build on these skills and learn new elements.
Looking at it logistically, participants have three tutorials every week. Two of those are technical and one of them is on employability, which covers practical and theoretical employability.
The technical tutorials start off with HTML and CSS [where cohort 2 currently are]. At the end of this stage, candidates build themselves a portfolio then move onto JavaScript where they can add more interactive elements. From there, we go into the deeper technicalities of building an app, linking the backend and frontend together, debugging and security, and deploying.
As candidates move through the programme, we mirror practical elements of the working world with things like stand-up meetings and project management as we know these are things that candidates will experience when they step into employment. And a lot of our employers are telling us that these are skills that are missing. So, we interweave these elements into the programme.
On the top of the tutorials and practical sessions, we run group mentoring from a technical perspective. These mentoring sessions are optional. People can turn up and, if they don’t have anything to share, they can sit back and listen to their peers. Maybe they won’t quite realise what they are struggling with until something is brought up during mentoring. These sessions really help candidates work through any challenges.
As well as group mentoring, we have socials so everyone can get to know each other outside of the working environment.
Then, on top of that, candidates also get coaching. They’ll have an initial coaching session with our employability coach where they can come up with a personalised learning plan. We’ll put the learning plan in place over the 12 weeks and they’ll get an additional four hours of one-to-one coaching that is totally tailored to them, and they can use those coaching hours however they wish.
Wow, it sounds like you’ve covered every possible scenario where they might need help!
Gaby: Yeah, we cover a lot!
I really want CODE Lancashire to empower people to use the programme to its full ability.
Halfway through the programme, we do feedback surveys to help us tweak and amend the programme for current and future cohorts.
The people who have done the best on this programme are the ones who really utilise all the support that is available.
Towards the end, we’ll run optional mock interviews too. Some candidates on the programme haven’t had an interview for 20 years. So having that mock interview and getting feedback is critical for them. They’re not just being thrown into a real interview and thinking they’ll be okay. They get lots of support to help them.
As I touched on before, we have online tools as well where candidates can help each other. Facilitators and the rest of the team are also on hand if candidates need anything.
Ultimately, for us, it’s not just about getting people into a job. It’s about helping them stay in that job. That’s what employers in Lancashire need. We help candidates understand the benefits of working with SMEs in Lancashire, and you get all the extra support too. We really want to help our candidates find their best fit.
As we know, there is a huge gender gap in the tech industry — How can we empower and support more women in considering a career in tech?
Gaby: I can only speak from personal experience. When I first started running this programme, before it was known as CODE Lancashire, I didn’t even know what a software developer was. I was coming into it as a project manager.
I came into a very stereotypical environment. We were working with an organisation that was all white male developers, who loved gaming, and that’s all they talked about… and I felt really out of my depth. My initial reaction was that I don’t fit in here and, therefore, I’m never going to be a part of this industry. But I carried on and persevered.
That’s one of the reasons why we run the socials at CODE Lancashire. We want people to bring their personalities to the projects. We want people to see that there’s more to being a software developer than being interested in video games and realise, actually, I can fit in here. That is just a stereotype.
We also have an employer board that meets on a monthly basis. Those employers are asking for softer skills which, stereotypically, a woman would bring. So, by tackling stereotypes we can open up opportunities for more people.
Addressing the gender gap comes from our narrative. It comes from our marketing, the language we use and the things we’re putting out there. We need to ask why females, like me, feel like they don’t fit in the industry and how we can help break that stereotype and create a more balanced workforce.
It doesn’t matter what your background is, or what your interests are, you can do this job if you have the skills.
I also think a lot of the work comes from within — I still feel like I’m not a techie. I don’t feel like I can say I’m a woman in tech, even though I am.
The education and support also needs to happen much earlier. It needs to start at school and college, helping people see what the job looks like, not just what is the stereotype associated with this job.
It’s a big thing to tackle but we are always trying to create balance. We have principles in place to help attract and encourage more females onto the programme. We’re opening up that stereotype that you don’t just have to be a bedroom gamer to go into this industry. We’ve all got amazing backgrounds, personalities and things that interest us so let’s bring that to the table.
It’s a big change to tackle and we’ve got a long way to go.
“I would love everyone to come out of this programme and wake up on a Monday morning feeling happy that they get to do a job they love.”
How can local employers get involved?
Gaby: CODE Lancashire isn’t just here for individuals looking to grow their digital skills. We also support local employers and SMEs as we want CODE Lancashire to be employer-led.
We have an employer board that meets on a monthly basis and we also give support on the employer side. We do the whole 360, as we call it, where we run workshops for employers and have one-to-ones with them. We work with employers and their existing teams to look at how they support and manage new employees.
Through the work we do with employers, we are focused on improving retention. It’s a fully immersive programme for both employers and candidates.
Employers can get involved with CODE Lancashire at any point. They can interview candidates, do an employer talk — just come down and get involved!
They don’t have to be tech employers either. Everyone needs tech and most companies will have no idea what that looks like or what they need. So we can work with those employers to understand if they have a role and what that looks like.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to grow their tech career?
Gaby: Join CODE Lancashire, first of all!
Don’t stop learning. The tech industry is changing all the time. The feedback we get from our employers is that as long as people understand the fundamental principles of something, they can develop.
A lot of our employers are looking for that commitment and passion. They want people who enjoy doing this stuff. Because it’s constantly changing, tech isn’t a topic you can learn once and never revisit. You have to be on it all of the time.
One of the biggest things you can do to keep in touch with the tech industry is to go to events and grow your community. All of the events ran by Lancashire Digital Hub, like the Digital Tech Talks, are so important for that. It helps you keep your foot in the door and keeps you on top of the industry changes.
What does community mean to you? And why does it matter?
Gaby: Community means having a purpose. It’s a feeling, not a thing. It’s not just meeting people, it’s having that belonging that you are part of something bigger.
Community is the difference between going through life on your own and staying in the same place or growing as a person and learning from other people and other situations. I think that’s important for everybody.
There is nothing better than meeting likeminded people and feeling like you have that sense of purpose and belonging, both in a professional and personal way.
There’s more to life [and a job] than salary. There are so many benefits you can get from working for an SME in your local community.
We’re better together. We’re better collaborating and when we have other people around us who complement us and lift us up. For people who are starting off in a new career or changing industry, that peer support is crucial.
Before we go, do you have any final words of wisdom to share?
Gaby: Don’t be afraid to push the norm — it’s where these bootcamps have come from.
It’s so easy to go school, college, university, job then realise “Oh my god, what am I doing? This isn’t making my heart sing. This isn’t giving me purpose”.
We go through this structured way of life and I want to encourage people to push the norm, challenge it. It doesn’t have to be that way. Dig into your values and find your fit.
And that’s not just on a candidate side, that’s on our side as employers and service providers too. We want to help employers challenge their current processes and find ways to approach things differently.
Be open-minded and don’t be afraid to go against the grain.
Parting thoughts — Find your community and push the norm with CODE Lancashire
What an amazing insight into the innerworkings of CODE Lancashire! If there’s anything you take away from this conversation with Gaby, let it be this:
Anyone can work in tech — no matter your background, demographics, or interests. If it’s something you’re passionate about, go for it.
It’s clear that CODE Lancashire is so much more than just another digital skills bootcamp. They really do put candidate progression and development at the heart of their programme. Everything in the programme is designed to help candidates reach their full potential, all while ensuring SMEs get the opportunity to find and nurture the next generation of incredible tech talent.
The best part is that it’s happening right here in Lancashire.
Find out more about CODE Lancashire and when their next cohort applications open up at codelancashire.tech or by following them on LinkedIn at CODE Lancashire.
Who knows, this could be the start of an exciting new career path for you…