I love what we are doing (At least I think we're doing anyway) with Phase 4.
My suggestion is an expansion of this before we even start.
- Lots of bootcamps have some sort of a guarantee. We're not guaranteeing you a job. That goes way against our creed here.
- We guarantee Students they will have a place with structure within our campus from graduation day till the first day of employment. But really the guarantee is that we will keep them accountable and not let them off track during their job search.
- Careers Phase (phase 4) isn't a phase at all. First three weeks are a core part of the program, but there is no max cutoff time.
- DBC Resource allocation above the Phase 4 requirements can be pretty minimal as I see it.
- Provide them with a space to work on team based projects.
- Light code / feature reviews of team projects once per week.
- Projects running for 2-3 weeks at a time. Then shuffle teams and start something new.
- Minimum 1 Mock interview per week during first three weeks. 1 mock per phase thereafter.
- Provide structure around teams and some direction around things they might build.
- Provide accountability groups that we force actual accountability from. Re-work these groups whenever someone gets a job. Groups keep you on point. How many resumes did you send out. How much algo practice did you do. Etc...
- Provide Algorithm workshops once or twice a week, so like every Thursday is algorithm / whiteboarding day in Careers @ DBC
- Part of a students participation in Careers phase is an obligation to fill 2 or 3 hour slots for daytime 'mentor' positions, unpaid. This will provide day time support to on-site students without the cost burden we currently have while enabling all alumni to reap the benefits of talking / debugging code with an active cohort as well as brushing up on DBC curriculum continually.
- Because we will no longer have paid day Mentors the opportunity to bring back the coaches program virtues exists. Mainly no-one comes in until they have work experience and actively want to contribute back to the program. Losing that was SUCH A MISTAKE. The main negative here is that the Dayside Mentor is the last continual thing a cohort has left in the space. Losing a singular person to move through the program will be a pain point that I don't know how best to deal with.
I have a project to move Final project demos to New cohort Monday. This must be done in conjunction with careers. My proposal would be:
- Phase 3 demos on New Cohort Monday, we can either extend the length of final projects or make use of a few extra days of instruction on the leading edge of the schedule.
- They have Tuesday off to rest
- Phase 4 starts Wednesday morning
- Replace cohort bonding night with Graduation party week 1 Friday.
- Graduation / Tunnel occurs week 1 Friday