12 Comments

I'm a General Assembly Full time Bootcamp grad, and I successfully transitioned. (not 6 figure right away) It took nearly 1.5 years to fully transition, and I had to really put myself out there multi-channel strategy.

I had much better luck interviewing with startups!

What really stood out in my portfolio was a project from a hackathon that my team and I brought to life. That case study and working with devs pushed my portfolio up many notches. I also learned AI for UX and spoke about it as my interest. Hope this helps ;)

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What an incredible insight with the multi-channel strategy, can you share more? I would also love to hear what fellow alumni of GA Design think of this article and what worked for them!

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Thanks Felix!

My tools:

- Trello to organize and track applications.

- Medium to write articles. (share to LI)

- Slack to join communities, (Google to find long list)

- Notion to keep notes, a Shine-Page (any praise I get to look back on when feeling low), Important bookmarks, videos, mentor pages.

Networking:

LinkedIn- comment and reach out, be bold :)

Meetup.com and Evetnbrite- virtual and in-person events

ADP List (obvi)

Inspiration/learning:

Podcasts & Articles (share on social with a thought.)

Design Challenges:

- 1 from Adobe, which gave me a year of free software!

- From GA, which our team won and we brought the app live and then all got jobs within a month!

- Solo whiteboard practices (shared to video)

Game changers:

- My VIRAL article on Medium (shared to LI) got me 3 freelance writing gigs and a part-time UX job in AI!

- I landed my full-time job from a cold outreach on LinkedIn.

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As a Springboard mentor (of almost 6 years now), I think having honest dialogue about the pros and cons of bootcamps is so important. I have worked with many students, and the outcome and success they experience is directly tied to the work they do. Yes the market is saturated, but the designers who take the time to refine their design skills and build outstanding portfolios have managed to land roles and transition. It does not happen just by completing the course and "checking the boxes" in the curriculum... there is no denying that it's a lot of work beyond what you do as part of the bootcamp.

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Love this honest and insightful breakdown!

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Thanks, Aakash. Expensive decision, hope to help others make it right!

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Hard to fully trust an article about boot camps that's being sponsored by a bootcamp

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Yes and, the article was written personally by me without biases (Springboard was a sponsor but had no edits in terms of the written contents). Hope this clarifies, this was an uncanny coincidence.

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100% agree that design boot camps are worth it - I did one!

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Kelly.

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Great article! I am an experienced career transitioner and tried Career Foundry's UX bootcamp. Despite an ambitious job search strategy and multiple post projects, I have had zero success. The market is totally saturated. Unless you are an amazingly gifted designer, you're outta luck. Invest your money in the market, you'll get a far better return.

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Great to hear your insight, Gina - this is an incredibly insightful comments. Would also love to hear what fellow alumni of Career Foundry think of this article!

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