CareeristReviews of careerist.com

I tried the service to generate a presentation letter by attaching my CV and describing the work announcement, but the results were very disappointing, it didn't satisfy my expectations and there are no other options to reformulate the type or the response style

I liked the length of the Course and what I accomplished. What I didn't like is the Time its taking me to find my first QA role.

I finally landed a job after a little over a year. It was a long road and not an easy one. I’ll first say some general things and then get into what I think Careerist should implement and is it worth even signing up. Having no IT experience, I signed up for both the manual QA course as well as the Automation course. I finished the Manual QA after 3 months. It was straight forward. I did feel like I learned a lot considering I didn’t have any past knowledge of anything IT. So it was helpful in that sense. However, if you are the type of person that is a self-learner you can completely do without this course. There are tons of resources you can use to learn the basics that they taught in the manual QA course. They also have an internship. I would use the word internship loosely that they provide. It was a good experience in that it can build up your confidence with certain skills you learned, but to call it a true internship is a stretch. All in all, the material they teach you in the manual course are things you can learn on your own and you really don’t need to spend your money on it. However, if you are completely new and just like something that has structure then it can be a good fit, but not necessary. After I finished the manual QA course you get to work with a career coach. I feel like this is a waste of time. You are assigned a career coach where they help you with interview questions, which is a waste. Just study the 14 interview questions on your own and you’ll be fine. You don’t need to have an interview coach that tells you you need to talk slower or quicker or expand on your answers or just say what is provided for you. It’s so subjective and the experience itself I felt was a waste. What was good is that they help you with your resume. That I would say was the best thing that came out of it. The preparation for the interview was pointless. During my interviews I got asked I believe 2 or 3 of the questions that they provided, but they were those generic questions I feel like everyone gets asked. What they need to implement during the coaching phase are technical/whiteboard interview questions. So, after the coaching I started to apply to jobs. I learned very quickly that just having the manual QA knowledge wasn’t enough, but for a couple of months after I finished the manual course I kept applying to jobs. I only used LinkedIn, Monster, and Indeed. I also would reach out to recruiters and I was actually surprised that a handful of recruiters reached out to me from LinkedIn as well as from Monster. I had one interview about 2 weeks after my manual class was over and it was awful. I got through the first part just fine, but the second part was a technical part and I did awful. This is where I think Careerist needs to help its students out. The technical interview/whiteboard part was a challenge for me. I don’t know if everyone who tries out for a manual position has to do whiteboard type technical questions, but it was the first time I experienced it and it was an hour or my life that felt like an eternity. So, after that I did not get anymore interviews and I was struggling finding just manual QA jobs. It seemed like every job posting wanted you to know a little automation, so I decided to take a break from the job hunt and register for the automation class. The automation class was fun and I enjoyed it. I didn’t finish it in the sense that I didn’t do the career coach aspect of the course because I thought that was pointless because they don’t do any technical/whiteboard type of assistance and I didn’t bother with the internship because as I mentioned earlier it isn’t a true internship it’s more of a confidence boost which isn’t a bad thing, but I felt my time would be better spent job hunting. So after I got through the actual course work I decided to job hunt again. This time around I wanted to prepare for the technical/whiteboard types of questions so I got a tutor with Wyzant as well as with Interview Kickstart. They weren’t cheap, but I needed the help cause those technical/whiteboard interviews are not fun, especially if you already have anxiety in interviews. I wish Careerist would help prepare you more for the technical interview rather than basic questions anyone can just study on their own. Also, the JAS service that Careerist has that can help you apply to jobs is pointless. Don’t even bother with that. With my tutors help I was able to learn how these whiteboard interviews work and get a job as a QA analyst. It was a long road for me. It took a little over a year and looking back I honestly don’t think I would have chose Careerist. It wasn’t bad, but to me it wasn’t worth the price. I think their curriculum is good and what they teach is practical, but they need to get rid of JAS and begin to implement something about the technical/whiteboard challenges into their career coaching curriculum.

Hoping to have the best

I did the training at careerist for software QA engineer. I have completed it and I am good at what I learned. However, finding a job has been the hardest part. I have applied a lot and it’s been 10 months already, and not one call for interview. So I am not too happy about this because I spent good amount of money for this training.

It is a great resource and there are many positives of the program but what really pissed me off was the behavior of my mentor. She didn't stay true to her word, took a long time to respond to my messages, and never apologized for any of it. That was the only sour part of the experience.