Do you want to strengthen your technical skills together with problem-solving skills and creativity? Do you want to switch over to technical career from a non-technical one? If your answer is “yes” to any or both of these, attending a boot camp should be your best bet.
As technical skills are high in demand these days, boot campshave become one of the most sought after methods to obtain the additional skills required to cover the extra mile in your career. Over the last few years, boot camps have popped up all across the globe, which promise to consider non-tech candidates and transform them into tomorrow’s technical people, often in as little as a couple of weeks or months.
1- What is a technical boot camp?
You can consider a technical boot camp similar to one of its non-technical peers, sans the physical effort. Here, someone won’t yell at you and order you to do pushups when you get an answer wrong. Put simply, a technical boot camp is a learning format designed in a manner to help participants focus intensely on acquiring new technical skills quickly. Like a non-technical boot camp, the primary principles here too are speed and high impact.
2- Key advantages of attending a boot camp
It’s important to note here that before you even plan to attend a boot camp, you should acquire a bit of self-knowledge. For example, what are you exactly looking to get out of the boot camp – an entirely new career, a better job, or new opportunities? It becomes even more crucial if you’ve never had any technical skills before. Many skilled professionals hold degrees in their fields while some others are self-taught. But the thing they all have in common is the passion for their career. If you aren’t sure whether you’ll actually want to work in your chosen field, it’s always recommended to start off with one class, get your feet wet, and then jump into a bigger program. You should understand that finding the right career path isn’t only about the pay or occupational outlook. A proper fit plays one of the most crucial roles as well.
Once you’ve done the soul-searching and determined that a tech field is perfect for you, a boot camp is perhaps the best way to delve deeper into your chosen field. Here’re the key advantages that a boot camp can provide you with.
2.1- GET INTO A NEW ROLE
It’s not the employees with a diverse range of technical skills on which tech organizations depend alone. If you’re already working for a tech employer but looking to get some help in stepping into a technical role from administrative or other creative roles, a boot camp can create the opportunity for you. All you need to do is use the connections you’ve at your workplace to determine the most suitable field to attain your goal and get enrolled in the suggested program.
2.2- OPPORTUNITY TO STEP INTO A NEW CAREER
Unquestionably, this is one of the major selling points of any boot camp. By attending a boot camp in your chosen field and acquiring the required technical skills, it’s possible to switch to an entirely new career. However, it’s important to note that the final outcome may vary based on the program, the coursework, and your personal background. What this means is that making the leap from a low-paying career to a high-paying one is indeed possible. But again, you’ve to pay careful attention to the practical aspects of attending a boot camp before making the decision.
2.3- OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP YOUR NETWORK
Another major benefit of attending a boot camp is you get the chance to make a significant number of connections in quite a short period of time. From your fellow participants to instructors to previous alumni – everyone can help you expand your network. Once you’ve the network developed, you can explore it for different career-related purposes such as getting industry insights and placement assistance, among others. Especially, enlarging of business area is crucial.
2.4- RELATIVELY AFFORDABLE ALTERNATIVE
For many people looking to learn technical skills in demand, a boot camp acts as an affordable alternative to regular college education. The main reason is that the price of attending a college for traditional education has skyrocketed. Also, there’re other factors like housing, books etc that don’t come cheap. You should even consider the fact that the cost of higher education is rising steadily. On the other hand, a boot camp offers a varied range of tuition – from free to part-time to full-time programs, thus giving you a lot of choices. Boot camp is indispensable piece for career planning.
2.5- EXTREMELY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME
If you want to learn technical skills and take the traditional college route, four years is the obvious tenure that you’ll have to invest. In addition, students sometimes take up to six years to complete their college education. From class overflow to taking time off to work to pay student loan debt – reasons may vary a lot. When you attend a boot camp, you can forget those years and go for an intensive training that will help you learn the skills in demand in as little as a couple of months or weeks. Courses at boot camps usually range between 4 and 30 weeks with a majority of them falling in the 9 to 12 weeks range. A boot camp seems like an obvious choice when it comes to learning the technical skills for your desired job faster as compared to college courses.
2.6- JOB PROSPECTS
We’ve already discussed the advantages of attending boot camps in terms of switching your career and switching roles. Apart from lesser time and costs, job prospect is one of the biggest benefits of these programs. You may ask – will you get hired when another applicant holds a traditional college degree? Surprisingly, many tech organizations are less bothered with a traditional degree. Technical skills and talent seem to be more important to them than a traditional degree, particularly considering that these skills can be self-taught.
Till now, we’ve been discussing the key advantages of attending a boot camp from the perspective of an individual. Tech organizations can reap a lot of benefits by helping their employees attend such a program.
In today’s tech landscape with a high attrition rate, it has become quite difficult to retain top talents. Companies are trying their best to support their best employees. Getting your employees certified can provide you with a multitude of benefits. Let’s have a quick look at them.
- It’s usually cheaper to get the existing staff certified than hiring certified staff from outside
- It improves workplace methodologies and professionalism
- It improves employee retention, morale and acquisition
- Certified employees come with greater technical skills, which result in new client engagement
Here’re the major advantages of getting your employees certified through boot camps.
2.6.1- Up-to-date knowledge
The tech landscape is changing rapidly, and thus, it has become crucial for companies to ensure that their employees undergo quality training that enrich them with up-to-date knowledge, practical hands-on experience, and new technical skills within a limited period of time. In this scenario, a boot camp is probably the most feasible solution not only because of the time constraint faced by the companies, but since these programs offer a distraction-free learning environment too and are well-equipped with crucial software and hardware that add value to the experience. Data science boot camp in the Bay Area gives companies numerous advantages.
2.6.2- Regulation compliance
Sometimes, companies find it difficult to remain compliant to new regulations. Boot camp sessions run by adept professionals help introduce the participants to new regulations quickly. It helps the participants to obtain a better and clearer understanding of compliance regulations, and learn how to remain compliant without affecting business activities.
3- Things to keep in mind when searching for a boot camp
All boot camps aren’t created equal. So, it makes sense to have a clear idea about the factors that differentiate a great program from an average one. Here’re the things that you should be looking for in a boot camp.
3.1- JOB PLACEMENT RATES
A reputable boot camp is more likely to share its job placement rates with candidates, and offer information on the types of jobs one may get after the program. Remember to focus on the latter part as you’re presumably not investing your hard-earned money to get an opportunity that pays less than or same as your current job. Event area is expanding day by day.
3.2- CAREER SERVICES
f you’re going to enroll in a career-changing boot camp by paying top dollar, you’ve to make sure that it’ll offer you an excellent career service after the program gets over. Some boot camps offer mentoring programs, alumni networks, and even job guarantees after the programs end.
Final note
When it comes to developing technical skills, these are the major advantages of boot camps, both from the perspectives of an employee and an employer. There’s one important thing that you should always keep in mind – regardless of the duration and the field of the boot camp you’re planning to attend, you’ve to keep realistic expectations at the conclusion of the program. Contrary to how a program is marketed, they sometimes make a better fit for participants with good technical skills to master an advanced skill.
To learn more about data science, click here and read our another article.
