CareerFoundry

So far I have learned a lot with the courses, but I must admit that it was a very short start and I often feel bored with the assignments. Some of the tasks are tedious and too simple and feel more like busy work than learning anything new. Of course it's understandable since people are at all different skill levels when they start, but the school would benefit maybe a little from being more flexible depending on previous knowledge of the student. Also, the school seems to concentrate only on XD/Sketch, but I think it would be useful for students to learn a little bit of other design software, such as Illustrator or InDesign. 

Also, the majority of the learning process is reading long texts. They recently added a function in which there is audio of the text, but since they used computer AI instead of a real person reading it, there are many many mistakes in the audio. I think, the program would really benefit from switching to a video format. Especially since so much of what we are learning is visual.  Read less

I’m currently passed half way of my course and I’m enjoying every bit of it! I’m a product manager so UI/UX isn’t new to me, but I still learn so much from the course so far.  The tutor call feature is super helpful, and it doesn’t have a limit on how many calls I can do. Can’t wait to give another update once I finished the course and see how the job placement goes!  Read less

I'm currently just over halfway through my UX Design course. The course is nicely structured and great if you are self-driven. The most amazing part of the course for me is having access to my mentor, tutor and career specialist, that's where the value of the course is. I really recommend the course for the structure! You're able to have creative freedom with your course project, I really like how I can try something different Read less

Career Foundry has been a great and challenging experience. They have really great team. I have a tutor and a mentor. My tutor works with me through the required tasks there are 10 or so in each course. The mentor is someone from the industry that checks the work at the end of the course. I would highly recommend this program to anyone interested in UI/UX! I am changing my career so if I can do it so can you! Read less

I graduated from my UI Design course in April 2021. Within a month, I was able to land a design job in the FinTech industry. I have a background in healthcare as a nurse. I had the pleasure of being paired with Neha as my career specialist. She was extremely knowledgeable and helpful in providing guidance during my job hunting process - from resume building, optimizing my LinkedIn profile, to salary negotiations. I appreciated and trusted Neha’s background as a recruiter to get the roles that I wanted within a short period of time. My success story would not have happened if it were not the full support of all my design tutors, mentors, and career specialists at CareerFoundry. I fully recommend this program for anyone who wishes to enter the UX/UI design field.  Read less

I have taken and completed Career Foundry's UX certification course this year. I found it super informative - way more beneficial than what I imagined. The course material is okay but I found the one to one mentorship most beneficial. I think it's worth the price and time, and if flexibility is what you are looking for, look no further. It took me almost a year to finish my course(because of full-time childcare responsibility and my freelance work) and this kind of structured course is perfect for someone with other commitments. I worked with Neha Hurpaul(my career specialist) and together with updated my resume and she guided me throughout the Job Preparation process. I interviewed with 18 different companies and I got my first job as a Product Designer after 3 months of job hunt. If you have self-discipline and determination, I would say go for it! You will have to put lot of work, do lot of research by yourself, attend online meetups, network on Linkedin. Good luck! Read less

I am currently halfway through the UX design program, and I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking to do a bootcamp. Every teacher/mentor I have interacted with is very helpful and knowledgeable. The best part is that there is no filler content. They only teach you what you need to know to work as a UX designer.  Read less

I had a tough time trying to decide which online program to choose... soo soo happy that I went with Career Foundry. The support system is amazing, I love how detailed the courses are and how they go everything step by step.  Offers options to have the chapters read to you as you go along, for me that is a bonus and I take in info much better that way. Highly recommend! I really can't rate on job assistance quite yet, as I am not quite there yet ; )  This course is well worth it if you're trying to make the same decision I did  Read less

Hello, my name is Szilard and I’m currently on the 1/3rd of the Full Stack Web Development program!

Before I started the course I did a little research and found out that the CareerFoundry has the best offer in terms of time and curriculum.

This is my first online course so I don’t have any references.
My opinion is that the course material is the best you can get in this period of time, I mean 5-6 months, because I am learning full time.
The support you have from the CF team is blameless, no matter what kind of problem do you have there is always someone to help!

*At the end of the course I’ll come back and edit this review, I’ll write about the job preparation course too! Read less

Having just finished this course I have to say that as a beginner the course was paced nicely and the information was there, with many references to go even further and get more information.
The examples from other students was a nice help, but sometimes these examples were blank, whether this was due to the example being removed and not put in I have no idea.
The course as well was very much geared towards using Sketch with only a little assistance for using Adobe XD and nothing at all for Figma which did make things a little harder for me as I do not have a MAC.
The mentors and tutors have been excellent, answering questions, giving pointers and forcing me to find the answers with hints and questioning.
All in all I would recommend this course to anyone. Read less

I'm almost done with my web dev program, and I have enjoyed my time as a student at CF. Some of the highlights include how understanding and helpful they were when I had some personal issues that made studying full time difficult. They were very supportive and offered me help along the way. You are also assigned both a tutor and a mentor, both of which will review your material and help you out with almost anything. I have gotten so much out of my interactions with these two, and I feel like this is a keystone in the CF student experience. 

I haven't finished the course and made full use of the job assistance program, but it looks really good. I am currently doing the job prep where we are putting together our job profile, optimizing job materials, etc. But it sure has helped me out more than any previous "Resume writing 101" course I have attended. This is much more extensive and helps you out in a more tangible way. 

I don't have any strong issues with the program. Yes, I have stumbled across some parts of the curriculum that were poorly explained or outdated, but the CF staff make an effort to try and update their curriculum continuously. And I don't think that the perfect curriculum exists as you have to learn how to synthesize multiple sources of information as a web dev throughout your career anyway. My tutor has been a great help but I have experienced being stuck on problems and waiting on help for days at a time. This hasn't been too common, but it has happened nonetheless. As opposed to a physical boot camp where you have an instructor at hand to ask direct, pressing questions, I can't count the number of times I have sat for 24 hours waiting on responses to various questions. This is maybe the only really frustrating part of the course, as the response time for requests can end up taking a lot of your time.  Also, in terms of studying remote, you as a student have to make an effort to network and find a study buddy on their slack channel in order to not grow disconnected. This is not CF's fault as this is simply a default for anything remote, and they do make an effort to encourage us to be more interactive, etc. Just be aware of this. 

Overall, I'm glad that I did it, and CF was a great fit for me since it allowed me to be flexible with my own schedule as opposed to being sat in a classroom from X am to Y pm Monday to Friday. And the course price was a GREAT value deal!  Read less

I found an article on LinkedIn that addressed Graphic Designers on how to learn UI/UX. I think it may have actually been a CareerFoundry article! I decided to look into it and wanted to learn more. I was feeling like I wasn't going anywhere in my career and the industry in which I worked was starting to decline (Newspaper). I ultimately chose CareerFoundry as my bootcamp to learn these new skills and I'm very happy that I did.

The curriculum is wonderful. You are first given a quick intro to the course and you learn how to use the tools and some basic fundamentals. Most of the software you'll need is either free or discounted (since you can use your CF invoice to prove you're a student)

The mentors and tutors I had were excellent. Quick response time and very resourceful and insightful. 
You'll learn a lot of the fundamentals, skills and more advanced stuff as well. The course gives you what you need to understand how to take the reigns and learn other things on your own once you're graduated.

Also you get a career mentor (if you choose to do job prep) and mine is incredible! Made a lifelong friend. She was always encouraging and helped me out tremendously. I was able to get a job 3 weeks after graduating. That was applying to at least 5-12 jobs a week. I think you have a better chance if you already had some design experience.

Either way I'm very happy that I've learned better and more modern skills to help me grow my career. Read less

I have a design background with graphic and web experience and I was looking to get back into the work force with new skill sets. I did a lot of research for bootcamps but this one seemed to have a very comprehensive program. I also looked on the website and saw that one of the graduates had exactly the same background as I did (Fine Arts/Digital Arts) and so I looked her up and emailed her directly about the program. Her email was so encouraging. She took the time to respond to all my questions but everything she said felt honest as she throughly praised this program saying it was the best decision for her and her family. I signed up and found out she is a Tutor! So I asked to have her for my Tutor and now still staying connected through her consulting business!

Now looking back I had no regrets whatsoever with CareerFoundry (except maybe not being able to do it full time because the community is amazing and I did not participate as much as I would've liked).  However, the program is geared towards anyone and everyone who is serious about switching gears to become a UX Designer. I was surprised to find that a LOT of folks are mid-career looking for a change. 

Now that I am in the work force, I realize 1) How enormous and wide this speciality really is and how it truly embraces so many different kinds of skill sets - "Researcher, Designer, Developer, Engineer, Coordinator etc"  and 2) How this job description works for literally ANY industry out there - everyone and anyone can use these skills sets and finally 3) everyone IS looking for these skills sets! They are realizing how critical these skills sets are and how valuable.

I absolutely LOVE my job now. I never really connected fully with graphic design or just with web design. I'm also a professional artist so I have a lot of problem-solving skills that I intuitively wanted to utilize in a job environment - I had no idea that this job is setup perfectly for someone like me. This job is highly collaborative though - I have understood that you must work with a lot of different kinds of people understanding not just your user's insights but your stakeholders too etc.

During the program, all the tutors and mentors were EXCELLENT. They had so much experience and so willing to share them, and I still feel confident I could call them up (which I have done so recently) to ask real-world questions from them etc. They have all been so generous with their knowledge etc. Where else could I find those real connections?

I could have participated a LOT more with the community but you have that option as well. Their community is thriving with all sorts of CareerFoundry staff members ready to help as well as newbies to the program that could easily make new friends, etc. and it's amazing because we're all over the world. I really appreciate that viewpoint too because being headquartered in Berlin just gives more of a richness/diversity to the program as an American. The course was very logically setup with enough instruction with enough pace, not overwhelming but organized enough to keep me interested and pushing through it. But all of it is based on "tasks" to get things done and in the end goal is to "produce something," for your portfolio and that is worth the entire program. And to be honest that's only way that I learn so I was able to actually complete it. 

But ALL the skills that I learned, I am using daily in my current job. I got hired as a UX/UI Design Lead for a software company that works with DOD projects here in the US. My 90+ person team is developing an Air Mobility Program for the 618th AOC here at Scott Air Force Base. I am the only UX Designer supporting 8 software development teams, working in Agile/Scrum environment, etc. And because "UX" is relatively a new industry, my co-workers actually don't know what a UX/UI Designer really is or what they do and how they can help shape and contribute to the entire vision of the product for their users etc.  I came into the role finding out my predecessor was not a "designer" actually but probably was a gifted UX "researcher." However, that did not setup the program very well and so I'm now in the process of reorienting these teams to provide a cohesive, integrated application from the design perspective, adhering too UX design standards, etc. for the entire program! It's a lot of work but I am loving it.

Truly so much potential! And just getting started! Absolutely have already recommended this program and want to become a Tutor myself to support this exciting and fast-paced growing community. Finally excited to do my work everyday!

Thank you CareerFoundry!

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I had decided to go with CareerFoundry because it's comprehensive and super flexible.  You will get a tutor who reviews your assignments and a mentor who reviews assignments at the end of every achievement.
It's a self paced course so you can make your own schedule. A lot of study material with videos will be provided and you can book calls with your mentor whenever required. 
I would recommend it to anyone who wants to start learning UX design. Read less

The lessons, coursework, and projects are great! And the fact that I get a tutor and a mentor has been very beneficial as in past bootcamps I only had a mentor and it might take him 2 or 3 days to approve an assignment or get back to me with an answer to a question. My tutor always gets back to me very quickly with advice or approvals or helpful answers. My only concern is that neither tutor or mentor are too heavily involved in my projects, and they often times forget or don't know details about my project that I thought they would have known. Read less

At the beginning of the year I decided to take more look into bootcamps vs. getting a degree. I needed something super flexible as I'm working full-time. After long comparisons, I decided to choose CF. It's super flexible and it's self-paced. It's based on self-study. They have course content you read, some chapters have videos, there's links to external articles. You get a tutor and a mentor. Tutor reviews your assignments and mentor reviews the assignments at the end of each achievement for a portfolio review.

Why did I choose bootcamp when I could have saved money? The fact that I get a curriculum to keep me on track makes it worth the money. I love how self-paced it is. I started in February and my graduation date is December but I'm more than half way through and will be on track to finish a couple months before December. 

So far, I have no regrets! 
(Giving a 4-stars just because I haven't finished yet)

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The whole enrolment process took 6 months. That should have been the first red flag but I was excited so I ignored it. The level of mentorship/tutorship is way bellow the expectations. You'll have to almost beg them to look into your stuff and it always feels rushed and careless. See, the tutors and mentors have a real 9-5 job, and CareerFoundry probably pays them pennies so naturally you will be at the bottom of their priority list. If you are thinking you'll have someone explaining everything to you and will go through your code with you, let me break it to you but it's not gonna happen. You'll be completely by your own for the most part. In fact whenever my tutor answers to one of my questions, he asks me if I "googled it already" and then send me a stack overflow entry he got from a quick search. The curriculum itself is alright. Think of it as a compilation of the free resources online. Definitely not worth that much money for the material alone. I think you are better off learning on YouTube and Google by yourself. It's easier to follow and free.

My general feeling is that the course is way too expensive for what it is. Unless you have prior experience or don't need any mentorship whatsoever, then I'd NOT recommend this course to anyone. Specially if you are paying from your own pocket.  Read less

I'm currently studying the FullStack Development program and it has been a great journey. I had some previous experience in the field of software development and I was looking for something to boost my knowledge and I think that it was the right decision to start a course with them.

The CareerFoundry curriculum is very well organised and complete. When you are studying on your own there is a lot of information out there and you usually feel overwhelmed and don't know how or where to start. In this school they have a complete program from the very basis that is going to guide you to succeed your goals as a web developer.

Also your Mentor and Tutor as well as the student advisors are always there for you to answer any question you may have.

For those reasons I truly recommend CareerFoundry School if you are looking to start your career in this field. Read less