As Coding Boot Camps Close, the Field Faces a Reality Check

1) Define success before doing anything. Pick specific companies or a specialty you want to end up with first.

2a) Take the three months (or however long you can afford to invest) and work backwards. Figure out the most impressive and relevant project that can be reasonably be accomplished in that time. Make sure it's part of a hot trend because the time spent is probably the same regardless.

2b) In parallel, network and build the best quality contacts you can in your target area. Blog about any interesting observations made as the project progresses. Come right out and say in your posts that you are doing this in hopes of building skills, experience, and proof of your abilities, and say where you want to end up.

3) When its done, make it public online make sure it presents with visual appeal and with cogent explanations. Ask for feedback from your contacts, because that's your excuse to show off: "sure was challenging but I was able to go from zero to learning and building this in three months!". Ask for feedback because it's your chance to ask about openings and interviews. Ask for feedback because you really will need it.

How does somebody new make a good project choice, when taking into account everything that would actually be impressive and help land a job would require years of experience to know? You can't without feedback or validation, so don't make the mistake of choosing solo. Just ask people who are in the target area to help you decide. Lots of people would be willing to give input and it's more chances for networking and follow up conversations.

I haven't done a bootcamp, but I've done quite a few MOOC courses so my opinion is based on equating the two. This might not be a valid assumption.

To me, MOOCs and I'd imagine Bootcamps are good to get an intro to something new, but they can't replace rigorous study of a defined base of fundamentals...i.e. a course of study.

What seems like a real opportunity are programs like OSU post-bacc in comp sci, and GA Tech comp sci masters. I've been toying with OSU for about 2 years now, and haven't commited to it yet because they don't have some of the courses online that I'd like to take (computer graphics). And I haven't done the masters program at Tech yet because I don't want to get into that without a more solid foundation. To me, more schools with post-bacc in comp sci and expanded course offerings (online) would find themselves flooded with demand. Recently I signed up at UCLA Extensions...It is almost the right thing, but still has a limited offering and isn't quite the right fit.

Hiring managers are under a deluge of underqualified code boot camp candidates, who are trying to effectively get past resume screens using all sorts of tricks. The blow back from that (I'm speculating here) is that code boot camp folks are probably often being screened out early at a lot of places since its just too difficult to assess them on paper based on the extensive grooming their resumes and github profiles get by their mentors at these bootcamps.

Instead, my advice would be to clearly label the work you've done at a code camp in your README files and include a link to your github. Explicitly call out on your resume projects you have done on your own, and talk about those in your cover letter. If you have literally any other projects or experience related to software engineering include those on your resume and emphasize them!

But highlighting your code camp and trying to tout it as "highly selective" and "accepts only top 1% of applicants" and all that stuff may be doing more harm than good at this point. The well has been poisoned by enough under-qualified people applying that ultimately need to be screened out via an on-site interview, which is time consuming and considered a failure of the hiring process, since they have been set up to pass the resume screen and the initial phone screens. So my advice is to just leave it off, consider the knowledge a secret asset, and don't risk inadvertently damaging your own application!

All it takes is for a company to be burned once or twice by misleading applications from a coding boot camp candidate to just auto-screen out all resumes from them in general. It sucks, but I found myself looking at resumes that seemed genuinely good, but as soon as the boot camp was listed there, I no longer had trust in what I was looking at. So be mindful, there may be folks out there who would have normally had you interview but didn't just because of past negative experiences with others from your code camp, or other boot camps altogether!

It's not surprising that Kaplan, a company that relies on services that are supposed to improve performance but not actually teach, would suck at teaching skills. I think the debate should expand from just coding schools vs uni to comparing coding schools.