For people moving into technology from another career, the question is often how to prove they can do the job when their CV doesn’t follow a traditional technology path.
New graduate data from HyperionDev suggests that practical, skills-based pathways can help make that transition possible. In South Africa, 72% of graduates switched to a new career within three months of completing their training, while the company’s broader Graduate Outcomes data reports an 88% employment rate and a 178% median salary increase.
Riaz Moola, founder and CEO of HyperionDev, says the focus should be on giving career changers the technical capabilities they need, and a way to demonstrate them. “A career change doesn’t mean starting again from zero,” says Moola. “People bring years of experience and problem-solving ability from their existing careers with them. What they need is the technical skill set to apply it in a new field, and a way to show an employer they can.”
For employers, that evidence can be more useful than a qualification alone. A portfolio or practical project gives them something tangible to assess, including how a candidate approaches problems, applies technical knowledge and produces a working result.
Research published by Collective X in 2025 estimated that South Africa had around 118,000 unfilled digital roles, including around 41,000 at junior level. The research pointed to a mismatch between the skills young people have and the workplace experience employers expect.
HyperionDev graduate Johane Neethling is one example. Based in the Western Cape, Neethling was working as a cashier before completing a Web Development Bootcamp. She built an online music-player application as her capstone project and developed a portfolio while job-hunting. An interview for a receptionist role unexpectedly turned into a conversation about her coding background, leading to an apprenticeship in full-stack development.
“I left the bootcamp with more than technical skills. I left with the confidence to show them off,” says Neethling. “The support I got with my portfolio, my CV and interview preparation helped me understand how to present what I could do.”
Robin Titus shows a different route into tech. After completing a BCom Investment Management degree at the University of Pretoria, Titus enrolled in an advanced finance course but spent his spare time teaching himself to code. “I came to the realisation that I was actually more interested in tech than in finance,” he says. He withdrew from the course and enrolled in HyperionDev’s Software Engineering Bootcamp instead, where he built Table4, an app that helps groups split a restaurant bill. “This particular bootcamp allowed me to change career paths much sooner than I anticipated,” he says. He went on to work as a Full-Stack Developer at EasyCrypto.
Between them, Neethling and Titus show that the evidence employers respond to can come from very different starting points: one from an unrelated career, the other from a self-directed interest in technology that developed outside his formal career.
As technology reshapes roles across industries, Moola believes this kind of career mobility will become increasingly important.
“The strongest career pivots aren’t about erasing what someone has done before,” says Moola. “They combine existing experience with new capability. Someone who understands a business, or has spent years solving problems, can bring that into a technology role, provided they can also show the technical skills the role needs.”