At CareerFoundry, the question people ask us most often is; “Am I smart enough to become a web developer, or designer?”

The futurist Arthur C. Clarke – who had a knack for formulating uncannily accurate predictions of where technological developments would take us, and when we’d get there – echoed this sentiment when he asserted, rather beautifully:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Arthur C. Clarke, 1973)

For the majority of us, sitting at our laptop or gazing at our smartphone, this is exactly what we have in front of us at this very moment: Magic. Our innate, human drive to understand the motor beneath the hood is rapidly quelled by the apparent enormity of the task. A lethal cocktail of helplessness and hopelessness is served, and we give up.

This is where CareerFoundry steps in. Tech skills are currently in massive demand, and will remain so for many, many years to come. We decided to give hope where there was none, and help where it’s needed. By combining technology and real human beings, CareerFoundry has developed courses which take you from complete beginner to job-ready in as little as six months, and send you off on a path to greater freedoms and higher earnings. Students come from all walks of life – some with previous experience in their desired field, others with none at all – and the company boasts an exceptional success rate: 95% of graduates obtain a job in tech within 6 months of graduation. They’re so confident, they even guarantee you’ll find a job on completion of your course.Here’s how they do it.

1. Learn whenever and wherever you want.

Let’s get this one out the way. This is the not-so-bold claim of virtually every online company: The marketing blurb inevitably focuses on access and convenience – you can do everything on the go, from wherever you want, and whenever you want. Book accommodation, manage bank accounts, read the news, watch movies… Of course, the reality is that we still do most of these things at home on the sofa, just on smaller screens.

So yes, with CareerFoundry you can learn wherever and whenever you want. You can fit your studies in and around your daily job and take steps toward changing your career while literally taking steps toward the metro on a Monday morning, or you can quit your job, knuckle down, hole up in a hipster hovel for a few months with your MacBook Air and come out the other side a certified tech guru. And you won’t be alone: CareerFoundry boasts a community of thousands of people who, just like you, are changing their career for the better, as well as a world-class network of committed, engaged mentors. More about them in point 2!

2. CareerFoundry’s real human beings are real industry experts.

The advent of web-based learning has brought about a huge drive towards self-study. The resounding success of companies like Khan Academy and Duolingo – and even Wikipedia – is a heart-warming affirmation of humanity’s thirst for learning, as well as our hunger to impart our knowledge once we have learned.

However, anyone who’s ever got caught in a YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit hole will know how evolutionarily unprepared our basic human curiosity is for these websites. You start watching an enthralling talk on the science of happiness and end up watching Sir Patrick Moore talking about xylophones, and three hours have passed.

CareerFoundry ensures this doesn’t happen to you by coupling you up with a Mentor at the very beginning of your course. Their Mentors are industry experts with at least five years experience in the field– they’re your VIP-access to your new industry, affording you a direct line to the tech’s top tier. They’ll guide you through your course, help structure your learning, evaluate your work, and generally make sure you aren’t getting lost down any rabbit holes.

This careful balance of web-based, autonomous learning and expert mentoring sets us apart in the world of edtech, where the developer’s ideological drive toward complete automation dehumanises the learner’s experience. This ignores the extraordinarily strong impact of socialisation on motivation. A simple “well done” from a Mentor is infinitely more effective than the reward of virtual blueberries, or hearts, or a thumbs-up, on completion of an exercise. Your Mentor affords you direction and expertise, but also feeds your motivation, desire, and commitment to succeed.

3. Courses are designed specifically to get you prepared for your next job.

Web-based products infer another advantage over their paperback predecessors – everything can be updated as soon as it’s outdated. The world of tech moves fast, and a good designer or developer will stay abreast of the latest trends and technologies. Indeed, they’ll revel in doing so. CareerFoundry’s team of Instructional Designers work with industry experts to construct and maintain courses, ensuring absolute relevance and applicability to their field.The courses are frequently reviewed by representatives from partner companies – the kind of companies (Amazon, Invision, Apple… ) where you might well be applying in the near future – to make sure that they’re completely watertight.

So you can be confident you’re learning the right stuff, but how can you be confident that you’ll get a job at the end of it all? Well, the Instructional Designers develop the courses within the rubric of project-based learning. Critically, this approach affords you the opportunity to implement what you have learned in a practical, hands-on task at the end of each section. These tasks, once refined with the help of your Mentor, contribute to your final portfolio, which will in turn constitute one of the cornerstones of your next job application. And just in case that’s not enough, extensive Career Services are provided to help you build a career you love. Which brings me neatly to point four…

4. When you’re ready, we’ll get you a job. Guaranteed.

All mentored courses come with a job guarantee – if you don’t get the career you want, you get your money back. 95% of our students get a job within 180 days of course completion, and our alumni network now contains representatives from huge, multinational behemoths like Apple, the BBC and PayPal to next generation startups like Contentful and Brandnooz.

And to what do we owe this success? Well, to the students themselves, of course, and to the Mentors, the Instructional Designers, and, last but certainly not least, the Careers Services Team. When you’re three-quarters of the way through the course, our Tech Career Specialists step in to offer up resume advice, placement guidance and interview preparation. They’ll even help you give you that long-neglected LinkedIn profile the onceover.

5. CareerFoundry constantly innovates to ensure that they – and you – remain at the forefront of tech.

Career Foundry doesn’t only cater to those looking for a career change. Once qualified in your new field, they also offer some truly unique, innovative courses to help further develop your knowledge and skills as a developer or designer. Take the Voice User Interface Design course, for example. CareerFoundry collaborated with Amazon, a true pioneer in the burgeoning field of voice design, to ensure they cover all the mHeading 2ost industry-relevant skills for future Voice Interface Designers – surely one of the coolest, most contemporary responses to the age-old dinner-party question: “And what do you do?” Once completed, you will have designed a complete voice experience for Amazon Alexa, and you’ll be on the cusp of shaping how people interact with next generation tech. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future.

What You Should Do Now

If you’d like a step-by-step intro to find out if a career in development or design is right for you – sign up here for a free 7-day short course in the field of your choice.

If you are interested in becoming a designer or developer, check out our full courses here.

If you’d like to speak to an expert Career Advisor for free about how you can get a new job in tech, connect with us here.

About the author

Ed Wood

Edward is the founder of Humble&Brag, the full-stack YouTube marketing agency. Before launching the agency, he held leadership positions at some of Berlin’s most exciting edtech companies. He enjoys writing, mentoring and consulting across topics like marketing, growth, and management.