CareerFoundry

One year ago I decided to give a try to Careerfoundry online Web Development course.

After a few presential courses and some all over the place self study, I decided to try something more structured than my own program and more modern than the previous classrom intake.

My major concern though was the kind of support I'd receive and how to proceed when I got stuck.

It turns out that I had the best feedback ever and the tutor and mentor know in so much depth what they are teaching. To not mention how quick they are. You usually wait 1-2 days for an assessment review and you can also schedule calls.

I do think the course doesn't go into enough depth into JS and Ruby, to be honest, but it already took me nearly 8 months to conciliate work and studies. So overall it has a good balance.

I'd strongly recomment this course to anyone willing to start a career as web developer but keep in mind to go further in all the links and extra material your tutor provides.

The carrer specialist were also great and helped me to tailor my resume and get more confident for interviews.

As I was putting some of the course skills on my marketing and social media job since the beginning of the year, I had some sort of experience in the eyes of the marketing but not much, what was decisive were the code challenges and I was able to do them all until I found the perfect match 2 months ago.

 

Career Foundry's UI Designer course helped me to up skill is some key areas where I need some help. As a designer with 8 years commercial experience I was unsure whatelse I would learn. But, I was wrong.

The course structure is designed for someone who has no 'design' expereince so the early course content was a little limiting. But as the course progressed learning new software and applying design patterns to mobile interfaces was inspiring and worthwhile.

The tutors are friendly and helpful and my mentor pushed me to succeed. The online community are very supportive and I found each student wanted to help and assist eachother.

The only CON I would have is that the UI course is predominatly mobile app focussed. This was fine for me as I wnated more expereince in this area. But the course content is less aimed at desktop and tablet, if this is what you are wanting.

I did found it difficult to juggle full time work and a young family around my studies. This could be down to my time management but I found the length of course content challenging. Full time workers beware.

 

 

The decision to depart from my 11 year long career in Marketing to become a UI designer was not one i took lightly but was without doubt one i will never regret. It's one year since i began my UI Design course and since completing the course just under four months ago, i have managed to secure a number of paid UI/UX design roles and just last week a full time designer position in a well respected UK digital design agency. I am delighted i chose Career Foundry as my course provider and enjoyed every minute of the course. The format of the teaching and lessons were well crafted, the projects challenging but fulfilling and the general UX of the online course was great. One of the best parts however, was the tutors and mentors. My tutor was extremely helpful and marked all work in a timely manner. My mentor, Muwuso an very experienced designer by far exceeded my expectations in his mentoring role providing me with consistently valuable feedback, insights and suggestions and continously inspired me in my journey both throughout the course and onwards. He was generous enough to support me in my search for a job even once i had completed my certificate and we are still in touch. I cant communicate enough how important his mentoring influence had on me. 

I researched many many courses and even signed up for a few, but they did not have the level of detail or proffessionalism I needed. I got an amazing tutor and she encouraged me to develop the course in a direction I wanted to best suite my requirements.

Skype calls were really the best and quickest ways to develop ideas and go through feedback, also my tutor Olga went the extra mile and always encouraged me to email her any time I got stuck. 

My partner is now doing the UX course and I have the confidnce that she will complete it being ready for the change of career she desires.

Expensive, but really, it's worth it in the grand scheme of things.

The CareerFoundry UX course was a great experience for me. My intention for taking it was to change careers and get a job in UX Design. The course material was excellent and I gained many new skills over the 7 months. What made this course highly valuable to me is the interaction I had with my mentor, tutor, and career advisors. At the end of the course, I felt confident in my skills and abilities, and was excited about moving forward in the UX industry. Most importantly, I was successful in getting my first UX job at a well-known company!

Overall, this course was worth every penny. I learned a lot, enjoyed interacting and receiving feedback from mentors and peers, and got a job in UX! 

I took the online UX intensive back in the fall of 2015. I was really pleased with the experience - the material was well written and easy to follow, and I liked completing the tasks at the end of each unit. My instructor took the time to give me constructive feedback during our sessions that I feel really helped me apply what I was learning in a practical way. I think the focus on creating a portfolio-ready piece by the end of the course set me up for success and helped me showcase my skills to potential employers. I'm now a full time product designer and very happy with my experience with CareerFoundry.

I am now 2 months of 3 into the Web Developer course from Careerfoundry. 

You get daily text lessons for which you have to submit exercises at the end which are then revised/approved by a Tutor. At the end of each chapter you have to submit one project which is video reviewed by a Mentor. You also get  a total of 4 Skype calls with the Mentor. 

The first part of the course you work on a single page portfolio with HTML, CSS, JavaScript & jQuery. The second part is learning Ruby on Rails and creating an ecommerce app. 

First of all, the lessons themselves are limited and short, and not always easy. They can serve like the thread to climb along but won't be helping you enough by themselves. You do spend most of your time researching the internet and learning from outeside sources. I myself am enrolled in 2 other Rails courses in the internet, which are cheaper and explain the Ruby on Rails framework better. So why this course?

Well, the good part ist that you have a Tutor at your availablility which can help you out if you get stuck or have questions. My Tutor is quite available and really knows his way around Rails, so I am quite happy with it. My Mentor is also really professional and his video reviews are always very helpful. All in all it does motivate you to keep going and that is something that helps many people to not give up. 

A part where the course is lacking is the student community. You actually don't have any contact with your fellow students. There are some Slack channels but they are not very well visited because it is not enforced. Which is a pity because collaboration and team work are important parts of being a developer, too. There is a commenting system on the lessons where students can ask questions about the course, but 99% are not answered so you are better off just asking your poor Tutor. I think in this area, the course could improve and enforce the students to help each other out more. Additionally it would be great if someone would take care of those student questions, which sometimes arise due to unclear or outdated course material. 

The course comes also with a "Job Prep" course, which is supposed to help you change careers. I have not finished that part of the course yet, but what I have seen of it is indeed helpful. 

I feel that the idea of the course is really great and that it you can access it with a "Bildungsgutschein" is wonderful. But there are areas where the course could really improve, like the student community, and the lessons could be revised a bit more often. Finally, I personally don't think that the course is worth 3500€, but that is really my opinion, as I would expect a little more for that money. But it can help you to become a Rails Developer if you really fully dedicate yourself to it and use other courses and start your own projects soon - and it is a wonderful alternative to other courses that are available with a "BIldungsgutschein" - so my review is still 4 of 5 stars. 

 

CareerFoundry was definitely one of the best trainings I have done in my life. Indeed, I received on top of the skills acquired during the course some proper coaching from my mentor Darren (thanks again mate!) and the super friendly career advisors. What I enjoyed a lot is that my experience as a student was outstanding before, during and after the course. Indeed, CareerFoundry is not only teaching UX but really embed those human-centric principles into every single touch point with its customers and stakeholders. This is a true inspiration for me on how UX can be applied at scale within an organisation and its ecosystem.    Of course the program in UX design was for me the beginning of my learning journey as I continued to upgrade my skills in disciplines such as UI design, service design or even coding long after the class was over.    But the course helped me to find my true calling and to gain confidence in my abilities to drive a UX project from the brief to the final delivery. When taking the class I worked as a business developer for a Fintech company, I now work as a business designer for the innovation department of Nordea, the leading bank in the Nordics. My work consists at leading innovation project from facilitating workshops, prototyping interface or services to testing with customers. I still apply the UX process I learned during the course to the projects I run on a weekly basis.

I enrolled the UX design course in December 2016 and finished in August 2017.
I had a basic knowledge of design and psychology from my previous jobs, but I was totally new to a tech field.
At the beginning, I easily and often got overwhelmed because there were so many things to learn. I wasn't sure if I could finish the course. It was not easy and very challenging. But more I learned, more I enjoyed, and eventually my anxiety disappeared.
I am sure I couldn't have completed the course without the help of my very passionate and encouraging tutor, and very precise and perceptive mentors.
There are still lots of things that the course doesn't cover and I have to learn on my own. But I felt I was quite ready to start my career as a UX designer after completing the course.
Following the advice from the awesome career specialists, I updated my resume and LinkedIn, and a few days later a design director from a digital healthcare company got in touch with me asking if I'm interested in a UI/UX designer role, and eventually I got the job!
Even though it's an online course, I got to know very inspiring people such as my tutor, mentors, career specialists, other students etc... and I will be in touch with them for sure!
Taking the UX course was definitely one of the best choices I made in my life :)

I wanted to do a UX course for a while and tried to study UX on my own. Because there are some many websites, blogs and free courses out there, I didn't know where to begin. That's why I choose to follow a UX course at Careerfoundry. I hated going to university: studying books and writing papers was very boring to me. However, I love the UX Fundamentals course in Careerfoundry because you can start building up your portfolio right away. The exercises are hands-on, very practical and exciting! I really appreciate the help from my tutor and mentor, as they always gives me helpful and motivating feedback. What I like the most is that I can immediately start using my new skills in my current job. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who is interested in UX!

Very dissatisfied with the Student Advisory team. More of that later.

The course is tough! Taking up more time than expected but I'm progressing and on track to finish on time. If you're a beginner like me, treat this as a full-time course. You may find it difficult to stay on track if you devote only 20 hours/week.

One thing I do not like is the excessive amount of links the lessons throw at me. Ruins my flow. I'd spend a bunch of time finally understanding a section, go on to the next section and get links to read up on other stuff. This happens a lot and pretty much in every lesson. It's overwhelming. Hard to determine which links are important and which ones I can save for later. If I were to go through each link, it would take forever to complete the course. Not ideal for a beginner programmer. Intermediate or Advanced, okay. But I'm not gonna read through all this stuff. I would have liked something more streamlined.

My tutor is okay. He responds to my lesson submissions within 24-48 hours. Maybe on 1-2 occasions, past 48 hours. If I'm stuck and send him a direct message, he'll respond in a couple of hours. 24 hours the latest. Good luck if you have a PC. It's hard to progress once you get on Achievement 3, Ruby. Easier if you have a Mac or Dual boot Ubuntu. Tutor wasn't able to help me with my PC problems so I ended up having to take my Mac out of storage to continue on with the course.

Not a lot of activity on the CF message boards. A lot of questions go unanswered. I might get better success on Slack but I don't see a lot of students posting lesson specific questions so I never bothered. From what I've seen, most of the posts on Slack are for career placement.

My mentor knows his stuff well. Hesitant to reach out to him, however, as he's very busy. He's a contractor for Career Foundry and I was encouraged to reach out to him on Slack only when it is urgent or if I'm really stuck on something. He also didn't sound too confident when I asked if he can help me get up and running on Achievement 3 using a PC. He said he'd try his best. I opted to just get my Mac out of storage. Our communication, for the most part, is via webchat. I have about 8 sessions(up to an hour) total. I need to have a list of questions prior to each session to make the most out of them. Outside of these webchats, it's tough to send quick questions.

I'm basically on my own. They highly encourage Google and Stack Overflow to solve your own problems and only reach out to your tutor/mentor when you absolutely need it. Since they take up to 24 hours to respond to you and not much activity on the message boards, it's hard to get a quick answer.

The course is ideal for intermediate/advanced programmers but for a beginner who needs a little extra hand holding, I feel the human element is strongly lacking. This brings me to the Student Advisory team. These are the guys you reach out to if you have general questions, concerns, requests for tutor/mentor replacement, etc. I'd like to compare the student advisor I was paired up with to that of a robot. This person felt that copying/pasting blocks of text to answer my questions was sufficient correspondence. Questions were only partially answered. I complained about it and another advisor volunteered to replace her when I considered dropping out of the course for a full refund. I believe you have a week or two to back out before you are financially committed. The thing is, once I agreed to stick with CF and knew I wouldn't get a refund on what I currently paid, the replacement advisor stopped answering my emails. It's funny, the only genuine conversations I've had with anyone throughout this experience were with the sales rep when she was selling it to me and the replacement student advisor who assured me I wouldn't have to go through the same frustrations I've experienced with the first advisor when I was thinking of getting a refund. When money is involved, I know they would put in their best effort to address your concerns. After that, you better be lucky you're paired with a good advisor, tutor, and mentor. In my personal experience, I've observed that CareerFoundry is driven most by revenue and will put in a minimal effort into my growth and development and a web programmer.

I haven't started on the job placement portion of the course yet. I'm only halfway done. Don't need to wait, however, to complete the course to write this review. I've already formed my opinion of CareerFoundry. They get 1 star for the overall experience, but I'll add an extra star because I am learning(ever so slowly) and for the job guarantee.