Thanks to Jean-Luc for sharing with us his success story.

I discovered Udemy a little over a year ago. At the time, I had been working as an English to French senior translator for a big IT company since the year 2000, and I had also set up my own business as a photographer as a second activity since 2003.

I met Rob Percival in October 2014 through photography, after he hired me to take pictures of his family. That photo shoot became an insight into a brand new world for me after Rob extensively explained the principles of the online courses platform.

I had been unhappy in my day job for over three years and Rob on top of his chit chat about Udemy, wondered why I would stay in a job I did not like for so long just because it was well paid. Surely there were alternative careers to be pursued using languages, my love for web design or photography.

Six months later. In April 2015, my day job position was being made redundant as part of a restructuring exercise, and the decision I had been dreading to make for years was taken for me and I was let go, finding myself jobless for the first time in 15 years.

It was the end of an era, however it felt more like a beginning from then on. I had created a Udemy account right after meeting Rob and had taken advantage of the Black Friday promotion to get myself a few courses to improve my skills set for my photography business: digital marketing, SEO, and social media. Including Rob’s own Web Development course.

Strong from all this e-learning, I did not even think of going to the job centre to get my dole money, instead I embarked on a full time career as a photographer and web designer creating photography websites while still taking Udemy courses throughout 2015 to better my knowledge.

The year went very well. Making me realise that if I had known earlier on in my life how good it feels to work for oneself I would have left my day job a long time ago, or I would have developed my side activity as a business rather than just a hobby. Hindsight is a beautiful thing…

But as the Autumn was drawing in I realised that photography was a very seasonal activity and that I may need to go back to a full time job for the time being to have the security of a monthly pay cheque while still building my business in the wings until it reaches a self sufficient stage.

So I looked at what I could do next as I was not so keen to go back to a translation career with relatively low wages and hardly any room for further personal growth. I was however keen to get more technical and use more coding languages as part of my daily work tasks.

Just as I was pondering my next career move, an agency head hunted me for a French technical support specialist role in a growing company specialising in Internet transactions and payments. They were looking for someone to help their French speaking customers resolve their issues and adapt the company’s e-commerce basket to the look and feel of their website - a very interesting and exciting prospect.

I prepared for my first job interview in 15 years using Rob’s Web development course and more specifically the HTML, CSS and JavaScript sections of the course as I had to solve a small technical riddle for the technical part of the interview.

The interview went well and I was praised for finding a satisfying solution to the technical issue I had to solve. So much so that I was not even asked to come back for a second interview but was offered the job outright! That came as a huge surprise especially as it was the first interview I had had in 15 years, the Udemy courses made me more able to sustain the technical questioning and answer the questions with confidence.

I’m very grateful to the Udemy instructors whose courses I followed and I cannot wait to get stuck into more courses to better myself further.

Well done Jean-Luc!