Valentine Onazi

For over six years, Valentine Onazi built a solid career in telecommunications at AT&T. He gained real-world, hands-on technical experience in networking, cabling, and infrastructure. But when he looked toward the future, he hit a wall: his current role didn't leave room for growth, and his grueling work schedule left no time to upskill.

Determined to break through to his dream job, Valentine made a bold choice. He left his position, spent months studying on his own, and successfully earned his CompTIA A+ certification.

Despite having both field experience and formal certifications, the job market didn't bite.

Desperate to bridge the gap after being out of work for over a year, Valentine decided to try a popular online career consulting service. He paid for professional resume services and profile building, contracted them to submit 200 targeted job applications on his behalf, and waited.

The result? Zero interviews.

"I was struggling financially, struggling mentally," Valentine recalls. "I had stayed out of a job for 8 months at that time."

Then, while scrolling through Facebook, he came across a video featuring alumni from Per Scholas Houston. Hearing their stories gave him a spark of hope. He applied immediately, passed the screening rounds, and enrolled in the AI-Enabled Tech Support program.

Valentine's journey at Per Scholas didn't start with an immediate breakthrough. Because he already held a CompTIA A+ certification and possessed years of hands-on networking experience, the first four weeks felt repetitive.

"At first, I couldn't find the 'wow' moment I was looking out for," Valentine admits. "I was having a second thought like, What's going on? I already have hands-on practical experience."

To make matters worse, financial stress was mounting. Commuting long distances to campus every day while unemployed made him seriously consider quitting.

That was when the Per Scholas holistic support system kicked in. The staff connected Valentine with one-on-one professional guidance counselors to help him navigate the mental strain. To ensure he didn't drop out due to travel costs, Per Scholas provided him with gas cards to keep him coming to class.

Then came Week Four, introducing the weekly Friday Career Development sessions with instructor Nate Anderson. That was the exact moment everything clicked.

"That was when I started having the 'wow' moment—discovering what was stopping me from landing my choice job. My focus shifted from just being an individual trying to get a job to make 'church money,' to someone desiring to find himself in the tech industry to make a real contribution and provide solutions the world needs."

As part of the cutting-edge AI-Enabled Tech Support cohort, Valentine wasn't just taught standard technical troubleshooting; he was introduced to the inner workings of modern artificial intelligence. He gained deep insights into Large Language Models (LLMs), machine learning architectures, and token structures, and even attended networking events focused on building custom AI tools and applications.

Reflecting on the curriculum, Valentine noted that the technical training was only half the equation:

"Per Scholas has a curriculum called 'break and fix' where you take apart hardware components and put them back together. But there is an unwritten curriculum at Per Scholas that breaks and fixes the learner. If you pay attention and follow instructions, you go in one person and come out entirely different."

His cohort faced immense technical hurdles throughout their training—from network glitches to lab environment errors. But under the guidance of their instructors, those obstacles turned into lessons in perseverance. "We became built tough," Valentine says. "We knew every problem was a problem we could solve."

With his technical background rebranded and his mindset transformed, Valentine revamped his job application strategy. The impact was immediate and overwhelming:

Within 30 days, he went from zero callbacks to over 20 interview invitations.
By Week 6, he lost count of the incoming interview requests.
Before graduation: He received more than 7 formal job offers, including three from Fortune 500 companies.

Faced with an overwhelming number of choices, Valentine sought guidance from Per Scholas career counselors to negotiate and evaluate which offer aligned best with his long-term goals.

What Valentine did next set him apart as a leader. Because he was receiving more job offers than he could accept, he turned hiring managers into pipelines for his classmates:

Creating Classmate Connections: Valentine actively introduced his peers to hiring managers who were trying to recruit him. Through his direct recommendations, 7 of his fellow Per Scholas classmates landed jobs.
The Graduation Day Convoy: On graduation day, Valentine wasn't sitting in an auditorium. Instead, he drove three of his classmates out to Louisiana to start work on a Meta data center project. Because his peers lacked transportation, Valentine personally drove them to the site, took a short-term role alongside them to help them get settled, and stayed until the full team was established.

Today, Valentine works as a Network Infrastructure & Data Center Specialist, providing data protection, infrastructure-as-a-service, and cloud support for enterprise clients.

Interestingly, Valentine turned down higher-paying job offers in order to take his current role. For him, short-term money took a backseat to real-world learning and long-term career positioning.

"In a very short time, I've come to know way more than I used to know," Valentine says. "Tech gives me the confidence that every problem has a solution."

Looking ahead, Valentine's roadmap is ambitious:

In 6 Months: Become a financial sponsor, donor, and hiring partner for Per Scholas, creating a direct platform to connect new learners with hiring managers.
In 1 Year: Transition fully into a Cloud Engineer role, designing scalable, cost-effective solutions.
In 4 Years: Establish an independent consulting platform to help others break into tech with guidance and self-discovery.