Career Jumpstart

I just landed my first full-time position as a designer thanks to Avocademy! It took me two months to complete the Foundations course. Almost three months to complete career jumpstart. And 32 days of job searching to land my first full-time role in tech. If you're like me, I was really curious about Avocademy and would come on here to read reviews because I was nervous about signing up for it. However, I can honestly say it's been the best decision. The course material is really informative + all the mentors are incredibly knowledgable. The career jumpstart portion allowed me to work with international clients and build my portfolio. I feel prepared for my new role and highly encourage anyone who has wanted to make the career shift into tech to consider joining this program. It has changed the direction of my life. My advice to new students: take advantage of all of the resources/people available to you! sign up for mentor sessions + really study the material being offered! Also, believe in yourself. You can do this! Tech needs more people like you in it! 

I was initially hesistant joining a bootcamp I saw on an Instagram ad but from my experience the last 2-3 months have been amazing. The source material is great and the mentors are always updating it to fit industry standards, the mentors themselves are knowledgable and patient with us newbies in the field, and the overall experience we gain as students to prepare us for the real world is unmatched. The foundations class helped me learn more the UX design side with UI mixed in. The Career Jumpstart program which I'm in now has been good for learning to work in a group and with actual clients on projects. Maca and her team really care about us all and want to us to suceed in the field. With their help and our hard work, I feel good about making this career change.

I had an overall really great experience with Career Jumpstart. The main motivator behind why I went with Avocademy over other programs was the price. Typically when something is significantly cheaper, it shows. But not with this program. I was able to learn so much as a designer and land my dream role. It definitely wasn't easy, especially working full time. But I am happy to finally be here after so much hard work. I never felt lost as I always had knowledgeable mentors helping and guiding me.

I think Avocademy is a GREAT value for the money. They provide lots of help, are remote, and their Career Jumpstart program helps you through the job application process seamlessly, and with lots of support. AND you get to work with real clients on real projects, which really gives you credibility when you apply to jobs. If you follow their steps, there is a 100% job placement rate. I'm not sure how it gets much better than that.  

By far the best investment on my future, Jump start was a great program that had a well rounded curriculum with 1:1 mentorship , peer support and job ready experience. 

Avocademy Foundations: I have a background in psychology and employment coaching, not design, so I wasn't sure an 8 week program would be able to give me everything I needed to gain hands on knowledge in UX/UI Design. The Foundations program ended up being a fantastic investment in my career! I loved that the program provided a variety of learning methods such as videos and articles, then had each student create a unique project during which we gained hands on experience for each module. Foundations also introduced me to UX Research and UX Writing - two fields I wasn't familiar with. I ended up finishing Foundations after 10 weeks because I needed a little more time while I did a part time job. No big deal - there was no charge for taking longer to complete the bootcamp. Positives: 
One-on-one mentor sessions to go over anything you're stuck on. 
Real feedback, not just a pat on the back to keep you going through the modules. Sometimes I had to correct and resubmit assignments if they weren't quite meeting modern design standards. This was a good thing as it made me a better designer. 
Connection to other students. The program primarily uses Slack for communication and using that, I was able to make some great connections with other students going into the same field to build a support network. 
Negative: Every assignment needed to be reviewed by a mentor which could take a day or two. Then if you had to make changes and resubmit for approval, that would add another day or two to finishing that module and moving on. Sometime you can go on and start reading and learning in the next module, but you're not supposed to start working on the next assignment until the previous one is approved. Can be a little frustrating to wait for approval and feel like you're falling behind in the program. Then again, getting real mentor feedback on my assignments is what helped me become a better designer. 
Career Jumpstart: After finishing Foundations, I wasn't sure it would be worth it for me to go on to complete the Career Jumpstart program, especially since that would mean paying $5k for it. I've been a career counselor for the past 10 years so didn't feel I needed the career assistance and I have some contacts with local business owners who would have allowed me to work on their websites/apps as client projects.  --- I'm SO GLAD I decided to complete the Career Jumpstart program. While I know how to create a great resume and LinkedIn profile, the type of resume of Design is totally different than what I use for other employment. I also would have gotten totally stuck trying to build a streamlined portfolio. Mainly, the thing I would have missed out on the most would have been collaborating with other designers and leading a team project where I got to communicate with the clients and my team. I also really appreciated the daily calls where students can talk about what's going on in our job search process and learn how to get more traction. After finishing my project and getting my resume and portfolio reviewed by mentors, I started job searching and landed a UX Writer role for over $90k within 11 days of starting my job search. If you're thinking about doing a bootcamp, definitely talk to students from a variety of bootcamps AND look at their LinkedIn profiles and portfolios. I received accolades from many recruiters for having a "modern" and "sleek" portfolio that showed the actual user experience design process. I wouldn't have been able to create such a great portfolio without the Career Jumpstart Program. I'm so glad I decided to do the program! The $5k was definitely worth it since it I'm now going to make $25k more than I ever have in previous jobs. 

From no knowledge at all to now being a full-time employed UX Designer in a total of 9 months. From my experience, this particular BootCamp sets you up for success.The course is designed to teach you how to find information for yourself.  There was always a mentor available if I needed someone to "hold my hand" so to speak if I really didn't understand a topic.   But the course walked you through the topics, and encouraged you to do further reading and research to understand the topic before they took you to the next activity.  I found that when I tried to fast-track myself or skip over the "recommended reading", it took me longer to grasp a concept and I made more mistakes.  Eventually, I understood the reason they asked us to do this.  I don't know if other students did what I did.  But it took me some time to understand that I needed to be motivated to not do the bare minimum but to go beyond the expectations and read the suggested extra material.  That's what made my knowledge expand. They get you to hit the ground running with the software from the very start. Looking at where I was then to right now, it's leaps and bounds of a difference.  A lot of that knowledge was acquired through activities, talking with other students, and sometimes doing live mentoring sessions where a qualified designer would help talk me through the challenge I was struggling with.  I took longer than 8 weeks to finish the course, but they worked with me every step of the way.  The company wants you to succeed, and if you reach out, and put in the work, you will.  The Career Jumpstart program was worth its weight in gold.  That was 100% the best investment in myself I have ever made.  It was incredibly intense, fast-paced, and hands-on learning.  You work with real clients, on real-world projects.  You're not a student, you are a designer.   But each project is set up so that there's a senior design lead who helps guide the project, mentors who oversee all the designs to help with any roadblocks, and with the hands-on learning you gain so much knowledge and insight into what a designer really does outside of a classroom.    I personally gained enough experience under my belt, that I was leading teams in the end.  It felt like a full-time job, but I knew that this was all in my best interest.   They helped coach me to be ready for interviews and be job ready.   And I got my first paid position with a six-figure salary within weeks of the job application process.   The keys to my personal success were leaving my ego at the door, always being open to constructive feedback (as it was always in my best interest), and motivating myself.  There were many roadblocks.  It was intense and hard.  I took it each day, and each day I was further along the process.  This course turned my career and life around.  This is one decision I will truly never ever regret. 

I joined Career Jumpstart in February 2022, began applying to jobs on June 9th, and signed a job offer on June 30th. I can't express enough gratitude for this program. The real-life experience that this program affords you is vital for actually landing a job. There are tons of interesting projects to work on and many skilled mentors that will ensure you deliver quality products. Case-in-point: the company that ultimately hired me was won over by the high-quality portfolio that Avocademy helped me produce. The position I applied for required 3-4 years of experience but they hired me because of my growth potential, despite only working in the field for 6 months. This is not an unusual experience for Avocademy students. Follow all of their advice and instructions and you'll be golden. The two weaknesses I experienced when I started this program have now been addressed, so I can't think of a reason why not to do this program. STRENGTHES+ Flexibility - most students are also working full-time. + Mentorship - you are never alone. Every step of your project is reviewed by mentors, and often the founder herself to ensure that you are on the right track. Mentors are kind, knowledgeable, and helpful.+ Real-life clients - you also get to choose what projects you want to be a part of. + Community - despite being completely virtual, I felt great camaraderie with my fellow students because of the daily zoom calls for job hunters and the supportive Slack community. The job application process can be incredibly lonely, draining, and discouraging. + Responsiveness - Avocademy is always willing to listen to its students and dedicated to improving its courses based on student feedback. Every day they are researching industry trends, updating content, and trying to find new ways to support us. WEAKNESSES (***which have now all been addressed as of June 2022!!!)- Technical training - when I began CJ, there wasn't any content created in-house for building your technical skills (such as with Figma). This wasn't a huge problem for me as I found tons of other free resources on YouTube, but not all students took the initiative and struggled with some of their projects. My understanding is that Avocademy has since remedied this issue, and created several videos in addition to masterclass courses to help students hone their design, research, and project management skills. - Screening of students - As Avocademy strives to be inclusive, their initial application/screening process for students was very lax. As a result, I encountered some students at CJ that were not as serious or motivated as the rest of us. Sometimes life happens and we aren't able to keep up with all of our commitments, but at a base level, to be successful in the UX field, attention to detail, the ability to learn on your own, and collaboration skills are absolutely critical. Avocademy now has a more intensive application process for its CJ program, but it is inevitable that you may encounter classmates who are difficult to work with. This is arguably a good learning experience as well. 

 If you're thinking about transitioning into UX Design and really getting to know what it's like to work on projects within the industry, Career Jumpstart is for you! I chose Avocademy because of their affordability for my situation. You work on real projects with other companies and start-ups with other team members- it helped me get a really good idea of how I work with others and what a design process looks like in live time. The mentorship we receive is one of the biggest pluses of joining the program. Getting help from interview prep, portfolio presentation, or even just general questions I may have, I know that my mentors will be able to provide that support! Avocademy has a wonderful community and everyone is always uplifting each other. I know that I can reach out to someone or express my uncertainties and have someone immediately bring me back up and push me forward. As we all come from unconventional design backgrounds- if you're thinking about changing, do it! I landed my first UX job because of the support I was given at Avocademy and it's made me realize that UX is a great fit for me. 

I have take other courses and done a lot of self research and avocademy is truly special. The course organizes the information in a way that makes it easy to understand and includes information I may not had watched on my own. Having the mentors help really made a difference , their feedback allows you to grow and notice details you may not have otherwise and the support from everyone around you really helps when you feel defeated . It is a great environment to learn and I am glad I found Avocademy .

This program has been life-changing for me - I just accepted a job offer after ~3.5 months of the Career Jumpstart Program Overall. I spent a little over 2 months working on projects with designers across the country for REAL clients and then my job search lasted 41 days! After finishing my foundations course with Avocademy, I enrolled in Career Jumpstart. The community of mentors and designers is incredible - they genuinely want everyone to succeed and break into tech. The staff and mentors are there for you every step of the way from reviewing assignments in a timely fashion to being available any time of day (morning or evening) for zoom meetings to talk about UX/UI, practice all kinds of interviews, and for anything else you need. I love that this program gave me the opportunity to work with real clients - this really gave me an advantage over students coming from other bootcamps and allowed me to land a job that wanted someone with 3+ years of experience. The whole experience is fun and upbeat as avocados are mentioned a lot, but also very informative and focused on real-life applications. I feel well prepared as I'm about to start my first full-time role as a product designer. 

Career jumpstart was a little overwhelming at times, but a great experience overall. I was apprehensive to join after doing the UX/UI Foundations Bootcamp because I didn't have money to spare on much, but after learning more about it, the payment options and the process, I chose to dive straight in. Working in teams on real life projects helps learn SO much about the process and the "real-world" of UX. The unlimited mentorship was also an AMAZING bonus. Avocademy the most supportive atmosphere I've ever had the pleasure to be apart of. I can reach out to anyone or suggest something in the a general channel and will have people there to support, help or answer questions, fears, imposter syndrome, etc. I ended up landing my first UX job through this program and I can say with 100% certainty that joining Avocademy's programs is the best decision I've ever made in my life.

Wow! I expected to be write this review but just not as quick as I am! Let me back track...I originally found Avocademy via Youtube. I was learning what UX design was and if it was something I was interested in because I was making a huge career switch. I just graduated with my master's in 2020 and was now deciding to go another route come Sept. 2021...I ended up doing Avocademy's Foundations course (which can be a whole other review in itself) and to make that long story short, I was beyond impressed with the knowledge and skill I got out of the course. When starting Foundations my initial thought was to use the course to test the waters instead of paying the 10k-12k at another bootcamp for the same experience. What I got from that first part of the course was beyond my expectation. There wasn't too many reviews at the time so I did feel like I was take a risk but after meeting with Maca I just felt the genuineness associated with the company and after my experience I can truly say that you get a quality experience! But anyways, that was foundation. When moving onto Career Jumpstart (CJ), it was around Nov/Dec 2021. I knew I want to go start into CJ because I wanted to add more project into my portfolio, work with teams, and get extra help in making sure things can be at their best (my resume, my portfolio, etc.). I was in CJ from Nov/Dec 2021 to May 2022. Within that time frame I established a great resume that highlighted my experience, worked on 2 real client projects with other students (as a team) in order to create final designs that can be added to my portfolio (so I ended up have 3 projects minimum on my portfolio in total - 1 from foundations course, 2 from CJ). I also received support from mentors and peers! I also made amazing friends along the way! After finishing my client projects, writing up those case study and getting prepped from job search it was already March 2022. I applied to ALOT of jobs ( ~200 applications, MANY rejections, and like 4 company interested in moving forward with interviews). By end of April 2022/early May 2022, I accepted a job offer. So in less than a year (8 months since Foundations Course and 6 months since CJ) I was able to land a job as a UX Designer. I would be lying if I said there were shed tears along the way, I mean making a big career change is hard!! But I'd do it all over again because I've learned so much out of this program and have grow personally for myself and professionally as a now UX Designer. Even the job I've accepted the offer from said it themselves that they were impressed with my work in my portfolio! So I just wanted to share my experience, I remember when I was looking for reviews and couldn't find anything when I first started so I hope this helps anyone that is reading this! 

So I just finished the job search part of Career Jumpstart or CJ at Avocademy. The overall process was fun, difficult at times, and such an amazing process overall. It's broken down into two parts: projects and job search.ProjectsSo for this part they post projects for people to submit for and then connect you with other grads from Foundations on projects with real world stakeholders. You work as a team to complete projects to finish out your portfolio and sometimes can even lead a project later on. I worked on three projects which allowed me to get a greater feel for what it's like to work on a real design team and a real world project. It also helped me grow my UX/UXR skills and find an area of focus for my career search. Each project is different and can be something like a website evaluation and design recommendation to creating a brand new product from scratch. Now these projects can be intense at times, so I would strongly suggest doing one at a time at first. I did two projects at once because I wasn't working and it was fun but challenging at times due to the workload. Most people finish projects in about 2 months and then begin the job search portion which can last about 6 months but people have been finding jobs sooner.  Big takeaway for this part is to communicate with your team about your real world time constraints and things that come up. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Job SearchThe second part is the job search and they help you with mentor calls to prep for interviews, resume reviews, how to work through design challenges, and more. There's also a weekly call for job seekers to talk about struggles and lessons learned which was super informative and encouraging. I applied to just shy of 130 jobs my first week (they tell you to apply to 160 in your first month) and I think it really is great advice. I started interviewing pretty soon after I started and just got a job at a great company that I'm super excited about. I had a number of years in the job market before this but I know a large part in what got me the job was what I learned from the projects I did. I was able to talk about how my experiences, good and bad, from those taught me things that would set me up for success as a researcher for the company.  I am incredibly grateful for Avocademy and CJ. 

I chose Avocademy because of the unlimited mentor access and job placement help and I was correct to do so! From the beginning, you have people in your corner to help with whatever you need. When I had trouble understanding something, there was always a mentor to answer questions or help me talk through things. And then they were there for every step of the job process in Career Jumpstart. They help you build your portfolio, write your resume, interview prep, and even negotiate. It was hard work, but I am so excited I did it.  I'm thrilled I chose Avocademy for this experience. I made a 75% pay bump from my previous position in just 3 weeks of applying! 

Great program. Currently in my senior year of college as well as this program and was able to land a job 6 weeks before my college graduation. Worked on 3 projects over about a 4-6 month period with real clients as a UX designer with a team of other designers. This was combined with constant mentorship, design, portfolio and resume reviews, and they helped me redesign projects that I had completed at other UX design internships/jobs. Very lenient with me being in college and not being able to dedicate as many hours weekly. Landed an 85k job offer 3.5 weeks after I offically started the job search process. Mentors are amazing, the other designers are all in similar positions as you and many resources are provided to help you along. Would recommend this program and Avocademy Foundations to anyone! 

Avocademy was the greatest decision I made so far, the foundations bootcamp was an amazing opportunity for me to  switch careers and do something I love! Through the Career Jumpstart I was able to land into a Senior Designer role. I am so grateful with the support they gave me with the career change.

Avocademy is a great place to learn UX/UI design! The foundations course taught me relevant, important information about the design process and the career jumpstart program gave me experiences with real clients that I was able to put on my portfolio.  The community at Avocademy is also amazing. The mentors really care about the students and everyone is just really supportive and transparent. If you're looking for a UI/UX course, I HIGHLY suggest Avocademy!

This course has helped me gain so much experience in such a concentrated amount of time. I have amazing products to put in my portfolio and I landed a job in two weeks of starting my search! The mentors were so helpful and available throughout all of my projects and the ups and downs. I never felt lost or confused. They helped me through the job search process and gave me all the necessary information to be successful in interviews, design challenges, negotiation and accepting a job! It's all very organized and professional. This changed my life. Best decision ever.

As a fresh college graduate with a background in Computer Science and Digital Arts, I had a huge lack of self confidence when it came to landing my first UX/UI related job. Career Jumpstart provided ways to help build my portfolio by giving me project opportunities where I was able to work with real life outside clients and a design team. On top of that, through great mentorship, I was able to gain valuable feedback and improve the way I was approaching interviews because honestly, I was a nervous wreck in the very beginning of my job search. The course includes many valuable resources such as 1-1 mentoring, resume reviews, weekly check ins, portfolio reviews, project opportunities, and mockup interviews. I also enjoyed being part of the strong, supportive and encouraging peer community. It offers a great way to connect and network with individuals all over the US coming from diverse backgrounds. Plus, previous graduates give lots of helpful advice and share job opportunities that come across their way!Overall, Career Jumpstart was a very positive experience for me. I started off feeling a lot of uncertainty when it came to job hunting, but Maca and her team has taught me so much and I am forever grateful and glad I was part of this course!