Are cybersecurity and coding boot camps worth it?

Let’s discuss! I have nearly 20 years of experience in technology education leadership as a Dean, Vice President, and Professor. I’ve helped thousands of people start and advance their tech careers over the years. This is just my opinion based on my previous experiences. Nothing guarantees an interview or a job!

https://learn.heathermonthie.com

The article I referenced: Caliskan, E., & Vaarandi, R. (2020). Career development in cyber security: Bootcamp training programs. In International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (pp. 503-XVII). Academic Conferences International Limited. https://search.proquest.com/openview/a97ccef9164163f137c669041dfffec9/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=396500&casa_token=6FQmzXFO2VoAAAAA:gTCkSHd5fB2k1cP8pO-5SBRgGJBw7lDOb3dFlluH35CzLROpm3-sDZNg-gW4s74kwDHrBZZx-A

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hello there, and welcome back to my YouTube channel, podcast, website blog, wherever it is that you’re watching this video, I am Dr. Heather Monthie. And in this episode or video, whatever it is that you are, I want to talk about cybersecurity boot camps, coding boot camps, it boot camps, and whether or not they’re effective. And one of the things that I see a lot posted online, and I get a lot of questions by individual people, is whether or not coding boot camps, cybersecurity boot camps, etc, are worth the money. And then a lot of other questions that I see are, what is the difference between XYZ University and ABC University’s cybersecurity boot camp? And which one should I choose? Which one’s better?

So, you know, let’s talk about this a little bit here. So, it my answer for everything is always it just it depends. It really depends on what your goals are, it really depends on what it is that you want to do long term for your career. And it really depends on what kind of education experience training etc you already have. You can be successful, you can be wildly successful attending a boot camp, you can be wildly successful getting a bachelor’s degree, you can be wildly successful getting a master’s degree, it really a lot of it depends on the kind of work and effort that you put in to Intuit right? So, um, a couple things. So cybersecurity boot camps. Yes, absolutely. They’re great. So with cybersecurity and it boot camps, one thing you’ll see is that there’s boot camps out there to help prepare you for a certification. And then there’s boot camps out there that will help prepare you probably more to have a foundational understanding, have a high level overview, be able to apply this more in, in industry more of a practitioner based approach, okay. And then some of them are gonna be much more hands on.

Now, the difference comes in this, you have the certification training, and then you have sort of career training, I guess I would call it and preparing to take a certification test is very different from preparing to start a new career. Okay. Now oftentimes, when you’re trying to break into it cybersecurity, coding, tech, anything, you’ll see a lot of job ads wanting certain certifications, you see it more on computer, cybersecurity, and it versus the software development computer science side, you certainly do see some of it there. But mostly, you see a lot on the cybersecurity information security, it site. And when you’re going to get these go through these boot camps, they’re teaching you the skills to pass a test, that’s very different from taking a class to be able to apply it in your workplace. Okay. And so when you are looking at boot camps, you have to understand what the outcome is of that particular boot camp. So what is it that you will learn to do? What is the transformation that you will get during that boot camp? So when you’re going and you’re talking to, you know, enrollment counselors, you’re talking to different companies, and you are unsure of, you know, what’s the difference between this boot camp and this boot camp, they’re obviously going to try to get you to enroll in their boot camp, right? So they’re going to give you what they have is sort of their spiel about this is what the differences are. Okay. If you look at the, if you ask to understand what the learning outcomes are, or the the expected outcomes are, you’ll be able to understand then what is that transformation that you’ll get?

Are you are you being prepared to take a certification test? Are you being prepared to have a foundational knowledge of cybersecurity? Are you going to be able to secure an entry level position as a software developer? So understanding what those learning outcomes are is really going to be helpful for you as you’re looking at different boot camps that are out there. Now as for comparing XYZ University’s boot camp, to ABC University’s boot camp, to 123 boot camp, right? What is the difference? Okay. So if you look at sort of the back end of boot camps, a lot of them there’s this new business model called boot camps as a service. And there are companies out there like to you, or trilogy is one and hacker you there’s there’s a couple that are out there, that what they do is they work they partner up with universities to offer up boot camps. Now this can happen in a couple different ways. So the, the company, the outsourced company, maybe they’ve already got curriculum developed, they’ve already got instructors, they’ve already got everything in place. They just need a university to run the bootcamp through. And so what they’ll do is they’ll partner up with state universities, private universities, and offer up the bootcamp they hand All of it, they even handle the marketing, they handle all of it, but they’re running it through that particular University. So you’re not necessarily always getting a professor from that particular University, there will certainly be some oversight. But you’re not necessarily getting, you know, a professor from that particular University. It’s their, you know, oftentimes hired out by this other company, totally fine. But my point with that is, when you say, what’s the difference between this University’s boot camp, and this University’s boot camp, on the back end, if they’re being run by the same company, they’re the same boot camp. So it’s really just what do you want to have in your resume? What’s more convenient for you?

Um, do you want to have this university on your resume? Do you have one at this university on your resume? So So what is that, okay? Now, if it’s a different company, you know, there’s going to be some differences in between the content of the boot camps, right. But generally speaking, if you’ve got, you know, it’s being run by the same company, they’re going to be very similar and content. So I wouldn’t get too hung up on you. Which one is, which one’s better? Right? Which one’s the best deal for the for the money? Take a look like do pros and cons, do a spreadsheet and just kind of figure out, Okay, I’m looking at this university, this university, this university, what is the content? What is the learning outcome that you’re going to have?

What is that transformation that you get out of that boot camp? And then what is it that you’re going to learn and who’s actually sort of on the back end of it, you’ve got XYZ University’s name on it, but who’s running it on the back end. So that way, when you’re comparing three or four or five different boot camps, you can see on the back end of it, who’s you know who’s running it, so you can get a better understanding of which ones are going to be comparable. So at the same companies running both of them, the content will likely be similar doesn’t always necessarily mean it’s going to be similar. But likely it will be similar. So when that’s sort of my answer, I guess, when people I was asked me, you know, what’s the difference between these different boot camps? And which one is good? And which one should I go to? And what do you think about this? What do you think without, I think they’re all fantastic. I think they all do a wonderful job of preparing you for, for the workforce. But it also is, what do you put into it, just because you go through a boot camp doesn’t mean you’re going to get a job, just because you go get a bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean you’re going to get a job, you have to do all the other stuff. There’s all this other stuff that goes with that preparing your resume, doing interview, prep, applying for jobs, all this kind of stuff. And I also always like to say that the resume gets you the interview, and then the interview is what gets you the job. Okay, so a company, a boot camp company that you go through, they’ll help you prep your resume, they’ll help you prep for the interview.

But if you understand, okay, I got the job interview. Now it’s on me to really wow, during the interview so that I can get the job. All right. And so always it’s just gonna depend. So um, and lastly, if you’re you’re trying to figure out which of the boot camps are ones that you should go to, I really always just think that, you know, look at, look at what it is that you want to do look at what it is that you want to accomplish, what is it that you want to accomplish in your career? You can you can go and say,

Okay, I want you know, I want to go to this schools boot camp, you know, they’ve got a really good name, make sure that you j