What to Expect in LearningFuze’s Post-Program

LearningFuze understands that having technical skills listed on your LinkedIn profile isn’t enough these days. With their new post-program, recent bootcamp graduates can practice their interviewing and networking skills while receiving direct support from expert career coaches. Leah Siff, the Executive Assistant and Post-Program Coordinator at LearningFuze, shares what students can expect to learn over four weeks and how the post-program is already making a difference in recent bootcamp graduates' lives!

What prompted LearningFuze to create its post-program?

We decided to add four weeks to our program to have that formal time to teach them how to become professionals in the tech world. In our post-program, we bring in a variety of career coaches, technical advisors, and mentors to help our students prepare their portfolios and then practice mock interviews.

How does the post-program help recent LearningFuze graduates in their tech job hunt?

The post-program gives graduates the tools to network and land a job. Many of our students have never used LinkedIn before, and it can be confusing because it has its own culture. We teach them the standards for LinkedIn and networking, and how to navigate the job search.

What do students like most about the post-program at LearningFuze?

Our students really like the career coaches! They think that they are very knowledgeable. Some of our career coaches can make direct connections between potential employers and the students, which is really helpful to our students as they start new tech careers. 

What does the 4-week post-program cover at LearningFuze?

During the post-program, students are getting both career services and continued technical practice. We coach them on portfolio items (LinkedIn, resume, cover letters), provide strategies for networking and making professional connections, and conduct technical and behavioral mock interviews.

On the technical side, students do whiteboard practice and in-house challenge problems. They are expected to start a completely new project during the post-program. We also have resources for them to learn additional coding languages they might not have learned during the program.

What does mock interview practice look like at LearningFuze?

The career coaches lead the behavioral mock interviews with students — they treat them like  real interviews! Students learn how to introduce themselves and respond to questions. 

The technical mock interviews are led by a few part-time instructors who our students haven't met. This helps assess our students’ technical skills and gets them comfortable solving technical problems in front of people they don’t know. Our students are given medium to hard LeetCode problems to complete. Each session is typically 40 minutes long.

Web Development students will also complete three rounds of whiteboard practice. An instructor will give them problems, which they try to solve on a whiteboard without using their technology. 

Who leads the post-program?

I oversee the program with LearningFuze President Annalicia Anaya, and we have 3-6 career coaches, both behavioral and technical, throughout the whole post-program. We offer career coaches who have a variety of perspectives on how to tackle the job search, so it’s a really good balance for the students.  

What does a weekly schedule look like in the post-program?

It’s essentially a part-time bootcamp schedule. Students will attend the post-program on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for six hours. This part-time schedule is to encourage them to start building their schedules and to make it a smoother transition from doing the bootcamp full-time.

The post-program schedule for our part-time students may look a little different, depending on their time commitments. We work with our part-time students to make sure they get as many career coach discussions and support as they need. 

Does the post-program look different for in-person and online students?

For the most part, the post-program remains the same for our online and in-person students. Full-time students from our in-person and online cohorts will often attend a post-program at the same time. 

What happens if a student lands a job before completing the post-program? 

That is a great situation to be in! Those students are still welcome to continue receiving help from us in whatever capacity we can provide. 

We recently had a student land a job before finishing the post-program. She was interviewing during the first week of her post-program, and a week later, she got the job. Since the job didn’t begin for a few weeks, she opted to continue with the post-program. This is one of her first jobs ever, so she wanted to have the same valuable knowledge as the other students. 

Tell us about a recent graduate of LearningFuze’s post-program!

Our student Cody finished the post-program and then completed a short UX course. The post-program gave him the tools to seek out different opportunities, and he has landed contract work doing UX design projects. 

What are your favorite resources for preparing for technical interviews?

The biggest one is Leet Code, which most of our students agree is the main thing to practice. We're working on making sure that LeetCode is incorporated more into the post- program for our Web Development graduates.

What are your tips for making the most of the post-program experience?

Treat the post-program as seriously as the bootcamp! This is especially important for students who haven't had a job before. We support a number of students who are new to the professional work force, and are learning what is required to work in tech. The bootcamp and our post-program are here to help you with all of that!

Find out more and read LearningFuze reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with LearningFuze.