SpringboardReviews of springboard.com

Springboard said it would be simple to cancel if I decided I no longer wanted their services. It has been anything but easy to do so. They make you jump through hoops to do so. I'm still not even sure it's been done and I won't be charged. Horrible experience. Would not recommend! There are so many ways to get this information without springboard for free.

Make sure you sign up with REALISTIC expectations! For reference, yes I graduated, and yes, I got hired. I see so many 5 star reviews on here, but what percentage of these students actually got hired after 6 months? I'll be as honest as I can. The sales reps at Bootcamps like Springboard commit a serious crime in how they set unrealistic and ridiculous expectations. The job market for UX designers is tough. It can take months to break in, and many starting salaries for entry level in-person positions are under 60k /yr. NOT six figures, (like the “selective”* sales rep at Springboard would have you believe).   *(Selective as they claim to only accept 20% of applicants. Not true. what they really mean is: only 20% of applicants accept them) The following claim is not true: “Yes, it will cost you $10,000 dollars, but you will make that all back within 3 weeks after you get hired!” - My Springboard sales rep  If they were truthful, they would have said:  “Yes, it will cost you $10,000 dollars, and then you will job search for a full-time job for up to 12 months. You can get a job guarantee, but we really would hate to give you that money back, so we will extend the 6 months as long as possible, and use any excuse possible to disqualify you from it. Finally, IF you actually end up getting a job, you will make the $10,000 back in three months because the starting rate for entry-level is only 60k. - Oh, and that’s not counting all of the money you spent trying to support yourself while you search for jobs full time or the money you could have made during the time spent in the Bootcamp working a second job.” As if transitioning to a new career wasn’t financially stressful enough, Springboard would have you PAY them thousands of dollars, and in the end, there is a high chance you will have no job to show for it a year later. It’s all over my LinkedIn feed. If you sign up, make sure you are aware of this issue and the gamble you are taking.  The only valuable part of Springboard is the mentorship. The hiring manager reviews are not great and are subjective, with little actionable advice beyond a “well done!”, or “you are missing this thing from the rubric that hiring managers could care less about…” In general, for the “Hiring manager reviews,” I’d estimate that they spend as little as 5 minutes on each case study, and give hardly any input. Meanwhile, an actual hiring manager looks at that Case study they passed as “would interview,” rolls their eyes, and thinks: “Oh, another fictitious, recycled, bootcamp project, NEXT.” - *Deletes you from the list* - The projects for your final portfolio are not impressive in the slightest to hiring managers unless you go well above and beyond the SpringBoard curriculum. Even the IDP is not impressive on your portfolio. I had to find my own “real” internship and go far above and beyond SpringBoard to land a job. I also got severely lucky in that I got paired with a mentor who could push me to go above and beyond Springboard and make an impressive portfolio, something most students won’t get but does speak volumes about the potentiality of getting a high-quality mentor.  The percentage of Springboard UI/UX track graduates who get hired after 6 months is embarrassingly low because getting hired after 6 months with three fake projects and one two-week real-world project on your portfolio is unrealistic. The curriculum itself is merely a collection of links to web pages you could google and find yourself. Also, the quality of the articles is very poor, and grammatical errors can be found everywhere in some articles. Let’s summarize. You’re paying $1300+ a month for: * a short 30 minute weekly mentor call * on demand mentor calls that are so booked you need to schedule them 30 days in advance (and are not that helpful) * Career advisors who are helpful overall but not necessarily experts about what makes a good portfolio, (the most important aspect) * A bunch of community advisors and managers who you will never talk to or need help from, but you are still paying for * An “industry design project” that is so short, that you have next to nothing to show for it (unless you get lucky) * A sketchy job guarantee with a thousand words of fine details, which according to students I’ve spoken to, will take any opportunity to disqualify you from it or extend it for months * And, again, the curriculum can be found by google searching for it all yourself Let’s be honest. All you really need to pay for is the mentor, and maybe a resume expert /career coach who has lots of experience working with UI/UX designers. My advice? Find the curriculum online for free for youself, and hire and pay your own mentor. Then reach out to small startups and offer to volunteer to get the needed experience. SB would have you pay them 1,300/month for all of that.

Please AVOID AT ALL COSTS! SPRINGBOARD IS A SCAM.

The course I took for over $10k was horrible. The overall curriculum was basic and boring. Videos and reading I could have done all online on Youtube etc. The mentors are beyond useless. Late or don't show to meetings, aren't interested in helping you and just seem to 'phone it in' to get paid. Trying to help or support from Springboard is the worst. Once you've committed and paid good luck. Default canned responses with 'no'. Think the employment guarantee is a good thing? Ya, no. There are so many rules and fine print that it is next to impossible to get in the end and they will work to cancel the guarantee so they don't have to honour it. READ THE WHOLE CONTRACT AND FINE PRINT IN DEPTH, you'll see it. Also, they must get kickbacks from pushing loans. They will run a hard credit check on you before you signup for anything and then questioned on it say 'that's our policy'. Do yourself a favor and look at any other online course provider. You'll save a lot of money and time.

I do not recommend this boot camp. After not being able to get a job in cyber security they advised me to look for IT helpdesk job. They do not cover the skills need for IT help desk jobs The material is not unique to springboard. They use LinkedIn learning videos which can be accessed for $30 a month with a LinkedIn premium account. The instructions on "mini-projects" are vague and incomplete. The mentors are not well screened. I was ghosted by to mentors my first week. I do not believe the material presented in the bootcamp alone would have prepared me for the CompTIA security + exam.

Job Guarantee is a scam. You come in with a baby in your hand - that's a missed call. You applied for a remote job, it doesn't count. You better not come in if you're in the car - even if you're parked. Sometimes my husband is deployed and I'm a single mom stuck at my kid's school so I have to reschedule. They will find ANYTHING for the contract to be nulled. My mentor couldn't come in on SEVERAL occasions, but I don't get my panties all scrunched up because she couldn't come in due to something going on in her life. You can learn all of this on your own, they just gather resources outside and link them in their course. It is not worth the expense. Lacks empathy for a company focused on empathizing with people.

I'm a UX professional. I used to mentor at Springboard for five years. Sorry, would-be UX designers, don’t believe the marketing hype, UX bootcamps won’t do it for most of you. I wrote an article about this and I encourage you to read it. Search for "The UX bootcamp model is broken" on Medium. Springboard has gotten worse and worse over the years. The bottom line for students is, don't get you hopes up. This bootcamp will NOT prepare you for a real-world job, despite the marketing hype. Don't fall for it. They do an exceptional job of over-promising. However, the proof is in the pudding and the numbers aren’t pretty. They’re massively underdelivering. Fudging track-record numbers, they tend to prey on unsuspecting UX students by wrapping their offerings in honey-dipped, virtue-laden marketing ballyhoo, like “futureproofing your career,” and how their “graduates have been hired by the biggest names in tech.” Don't believe it. No one should have any delusions about the fact that these bootcamps are in it for the money. Springboard is a for-profit, ed-tech startup financed by venture capitalists who demand profits before anything else. When we look past the virtue-signaling, noble-sounding slogans, Springboard doesn’t care much if a graduate actually lands a job or not. It’s all about profit. Mentor quality has also dropped. In recent years most highly skilled UX mentors with deep industry experience have quit UX bootcamps in large numbers. UX bootcamps delude students into thinking they’re going to walk into a job shortly after graduation. In reality, anecdotal evidence from UX mentors says only 30–50% of graduates are proficient enough to get an entry-level job. Many struggle for years to find jobs in UX largely because they lack the “job-ready skills employers are looking for.” Myth, legend, and razzle-dazzle all rolled into one, Springboard splashes “build a stellar portfolio curated from hands-on projects with clients” on its pages — yet, no one has actually seen one. Truth be told, most graduate portfolios harm students because they’re teeming with “UX-bootcampy” case studies that don’t demonstrate the ability to solve real-world UX challenges. Hiring managers and design managers are not impressed by UX deliverables piled into a jumble of case studies. The quality of education is seriously questionable. Students are on their own. Several online bootcamps just have students read freely available articles and watch videos in a self-paced, self-managed environment. It does not equate with getting a solid education in UX — even with weekly mentor calls. The random collection of online course material is outdated, some of it is five years old. In an industry moving at a rapid pace that’s not very sound! Many articles are misinformed, outright wrong, and pernicious — selected by someone who doesn’t know the subject matter at all, and has no business curating a UX course. All in all, I do not recommend UX students spend their money on these bootcamps.

I had the misfortune of an overly arrogant mentor with very little emotional intelligence although cookie cutter intelligence. Expensive course with material that could be learned elsewhere for much less