If you’re thinking of starting a tech career via a coding bootcamp, Coding Dojo should be on your shortlist. Established in 2012, this top-rated coding bootcamp has over eight years of experience in tech education with more than 6,000 program graduates.
Coding Dojo’s software development program offers a three-stack curriculum that provides graduates with a complete skill set in programming. This ensures that students gain a well-rounded educational and technical knowledge of skills that fully prepares them to learn new programming languages in the future.
Even better, Coding Dojo’s software development programs are open to anyone regardless of your tech background or lack thereof. While tech experience and proficiency might seem important, the bootcamp looks more at an applicant’s determination, resilience, and drive as indicators for future success.
Its 2020 Student Outcomes Report gives concrete examples of the success students have experienced after completing a Coding Dojo program. The report states 89.1 percent of 2019 graduates found a relevant job within 180 days of graduation while 95.3 percent of 2019 graduates found a job within one year of graduation.
Coding Dojo pairs its top-rated programs with comprehensive career services to give its students a running start in tech.
Land a job in tech with Coding Dojo.Unique Features of the Coding Dojo Learning Experience
Coding Dojo’s Software Development program, featuring its distinctive three-stack approach, has been scientifically designed to build a solid programming foundation. It provides deep learning that allows students to contextually apply their knowledge and skills, going from one programming language to another. This groundwork has instilled confidence in graduates to work with any programming language in the future.
The three-stack curriculum is designed with the Build, Test, and Learn steps in mind. The first step, which is Build, sees students experiencing hands-on learning. They are taught to ask themselves how to apply what they’ve learned and to explore subjects independently.
The Test aspect encourages students to reflect and discover what worked and what didn’t. The last step is Learn, where students are taught to conceptualize and find out the answers to their questions independently. These three approaches produce all-around developers who are ready to face any kind of situation.
For Coding Dojo, student success relies on their potential, an up-to-date curriculum based on the latest technology, and lifetime student support. When these three pillars are stacked together, a student’s goal of having a fulfilling career as a top-notch engineer becomes a reality.
Career Services at Coding Dojo
Student outcomes are crucial to Coding Dojo, which is why the bootcamp’s Career Services team works closely with students to help them make a swift, effective, and rewarding career change.
“Our Career Services Program is available for life, for both our students and alumni. It’s our number one priority. Anybody who gets a job then comes back, finds a second job, and whatnot, we’re more than happy to help and support them all the time. They’re part of us forever,” shared Kiana Pan, VP of Partnerships and Customer Success at Coding Dojo.
Career services at Coding Dojo start from the first day of the program, all the way to post-graduation. These help students to look for jobs, write resumes, build portfolios, create professional profiles on LinkedIn and GitHub, and prepare them for interviews. Students also have the opportunity to attend workshops on job search and networking strategies.
“Throughout the program, we have different milestones mapped out. Each of the milestones has a different workshop, one-on-ones, and assignments. They will have to do these as part of career services, on top of the program,” Kiana explained.
“If you imagine the technical training is the program, career services is the layout of the soft skills. You’re looking at a 14-week program, and each sector and each week, there’s a different action the student will do as part of career services. It’s a mix of resume building, portfolio, GitHub, and LinkedIn building,” she continued.
Coding Dojo offers more than just standard career services. By partnering with people and companies across the US, it is able to provide personalized support to its students, who might also be located anywhere in the country.
“We do a lot of research analysis. We are definitely a data-centric company. We do weekly and monthly research on different jobs available out there. Our career services managers are also located in various cities. Each knows their local market really well,” Kiana said.
For instance, if someone is located in Boise, Idaho and wants to focus their job opportunities there, the career services team will focus on the Boise, Idaho market with that person and what that looks like. “We’re hands-on. Let’s take a look, let’s see what the jobs and companies are out there,” said Kiana.
“We also ask our students to know their market as much as we do. This will be different coaching versus coaching somebody who may be located in North Carolina or somewhere else but open to relocation for their next career opportunity.”
Coding Dojo values student success over anything else. This is why career service managers put effort into getting to know the students on a personal level to help them as much as they can.
“Everybody learns differently. It’s about the relationship. You’ve got to build a relationship and get to know your students before you start trying to help them. You have to know why they came and [what are] their pain points. You have to understand what works for them and their personality. We really spend time understanding each person as an individual,” Kiana shared.
Coding Dojo’s career service managers can build these effective relationships with its students because of their neurodiversity. Each manager has a different approach to coaching to better match and service the coding bootcamp’s diverse learners in the style of learning that fits them best.
Delving in another unique factor of Coding Dojo’s career services is the program for life access given to students. “There’s no expiration for them. It is also so we can work with them at their own pace. Some people work faster, some people are a little slow, and that’s okay. We’ll work with them depending on what’s happening in their lives. Nobody’s life pauses for anyone, so we understand that,” she continued.
Given that Kiana and the rest of the Coding Dojo Career Services Team are ready to help students from Day 1 until they land their first job, and even after multiple job changes, commitment by students is critical.
Her advice for those considering Coding Dojo: “If you truly want this, we will run, walk, crawl with you as much and as long as you need us to. But if you are going to join Coding Dojo, I expect a 200 percent commitment from you. That’s number one.”
Students should also do their own research as many do not know what it means to go to a bootcamp. “Everyone knows what a bootcamp is in the military or army. I want people to know that if you’re going to be registering for a tech boot camp, it’s a bootcamp for your mind.
“Be ready for it, commit to it … [you must] be ready for, honestly, eating, sleeping, breathing, everything Coding Dojo for the time you’re with us. But then the outcome is going to be great,” Kiana enthused.
Coding Dojo Student Success Stories
Alyssa Nickow: From Math Teacher and Principal to Software Engineer
Alyssa Nickow spent a decade working in education. She started as a middle school Math teacher before becoming a middle school principal and finally leaving the profession as a high school principal to pursue educational technology.
In her new learning path, she began studying coding to understand technology better with the hopes of securing a non-technical role one day. However, her job exploration got her interested in taking up a technical role instead, which led her to enroll at Coding Dojo.
“One of the big benefits of Coding Dojo’s three full-stack approach is that I have become confident in my ability to learn new languages and frameworks. In fact, each job I have had since graduating has been in a language that I didn’t learn at bootcamp.
“However, because I learned the fundamentals, and was able to observe patterns across multiple different languages, I was able to pick up new ones on the job,” Alyssa shared in her Coding Dojo review.
Her job search may have started slowly, but as she paid more attention to it, she began to see the results. Alyssa soon moved through the full interview process with three companies and received offers from all three. Currently, she is working as a software engineer with Chime.
David Kavanaugh: From Healthcare Customer Service Rep to Software Engineer
Prior to attending Coding Dojo, David Kavanaugh spent eight years in healthcare customer service and finance. As a teenager in high school, David already knew how to code and enjoyed it, having developed his garage band’s website. Although coding was something he found interesting and was good at, he did not consider becoming a full-time engineer.
Many years later, he and his wife moved to Seattle and began meeting people who worked as engineers in Microsoft. He realized they were not that different from him, and decided to make coding his career one day. He started to teach himself systematically, as he couldn’t quit his full-time job just yet.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, David lost his job. However, he received an unemployment check that was larger than his income. He also finally found the time to pursue his interest, enrolling into Coding Dojo the same month he was laid off.
“I chose Coding Dojo because they teach three stacks in three months. I also wanted a bootcamp that taught .NET and C#. I gained a lot of confidence at Coding Dojo, and I realized how much I enjoyed solving algorithms with others. When I graduated from Coding Dojo, I was confident I had the foundational experience I needed to excel in the industry,” David said.
He enrolled in Coding Dojo in October 2020 and today works as a software engineer at Microsoft’s Cloud Operations and Innovation Engineering division. He plans to work his way towards becoming a senior engineer in the coming years.
Alyssa and David are just a couple among the numerous student success stories that have come out of Coding Dojo.
Will Coding Dojo Help Me Find a Job?
When you combine Coding Dojo’s up-to-date program curriculum, comprehensive Career Services Program, and excellent student outcome rates, the possibility of starting a fulfilling tech career after Coding Dojo is very real. Along with your passion and determination, Coding Dojo can be the conduit to a new and exciting stage of your tech career.
To see the complete 2020 Student Outcomes Report of Coding Dojo, click here.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
