FROM NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS TO ALL DAY, EVERY DAY
We’ve grown from a 12-week program to a 12-month program, and now, to a four-year Fellowship encompassing multi-year intensive training and career-building services. In that time, we’ve helped hundreds of Fellows learn to code and launch high-paying careers in technology.
We began as a nights and weekend program. We started with this format because most other programs at the time were offered during the day. This was our opportunity to serve individuals who needed to work or had other obligations during the weekdays. After hearing feedback from the population we serve, we launched our daytime classes in our third year. Since then, Pursuit has been an all day, every day operation. This enables us to reach many people and serve the different needs of our community.
Regardless of schedule, the goal is the same: to help our Fellows get jobs. Fellows in both schedules receive the same quality of instruction and support, and our results are consistent across both. Furthermore, we are committed to the long-term success of all our Fellows. Even when our formal curriculum ends, our support does not: we work with our Fellows for as long as they need to achieve their goals.
EVOLVING OUR CURRICULUM WITH THE TECH INDUSTRY
New programming languages, frameworks, and libraries are being developed all the time. Technology is constantly changing. As a tech training organization, it’s important that we change along with it. To that end, we work constantly to adapt our programs to current and future developments so that we can best prepare our Fellows to succeed in the tech industry.
We launched Pursuit by teaching Objective-C for iOS. We eventually shifted to Swift for iOS as that become the predominant language. Later, we expanded our program to teach Android and Full Stack Web. We have increased our emphasis on data structures and algorithms—a critical piece of the curriculum that enables Fellows to pass their technical interviews and hit the ground running at their first jobs.
Since the tech landscape changes constantly, we work closely with employers and leaders in the industry to gather learnings and insights. This is critical to keeping our curriculum fresh, relevant, and aligned with industry standards. What we teach will continue to adapt to the market.
POWERED BY TECH INDUSTRY VOLUNTEER NETWORK
From the beginning, our program has been powered by tech industry professionals who volunteer their time and expertise to Pursuit. And for good reason. Tech industry professionals bring real-world experience, knowledge of the field, and industry connections to help our Fellows and our organization achieve success. Our volunteer community is a pillar of our work and mission.
Our volunteers are involved in every step of the Fellow journey. They help us identify talented candidates in the student selection process; work one-on-one with Fellows as mentors; provide feedback to Fellows on the projects they present at Demo Days, Hackathon, and Technical Showcase; share their expertise as guest speakers and workshop leaders; and help to shape our curriculum.
Volunteers don’t just help our Fellows master the technical and professional skills they need to get jobs. They help them to actually get those jobs as well. Armed with industry connections, volunteers can help Fellows build their professional networks and connect them with employment opportunities at their companies.
Volunteers remain integral to our work and mission even as we’ve grown our team of full-time instructors. Last year, we hired our first Volunteer Manager who has played a pivotal role in expanding our volunteer community and opportunities to get involved. Volunteers have and always will be at the heart of what we do at Pursuit.
MORE THAN TECHNICAL
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Learning to code is essential for breaking into the tech industry. But for our Fellows, building their professional skills is just as critical. While they are incredibly talented, many of our Fellows lack college degrees, professional experience, and other credentials necessary for employment. By complementing their technical skills with professional skills, we can help our Fellows break free from this stigma and break into the tech industry.
We provide a range of professional skills training, including: cover letter and resume writing, technical and behavioral interview prep, job search support, and networking. As part of our curriculum, we design opportunities that emulate real-life professional experiences. Our Fellows prepare presentations, work as teams, and design real-world projects that they can add to professional portfolios.
TRANSFORMING THE INDUSTRY
Our Fellows are extremely talented—it’s a big reason why we accepted them into our program. However, systemic barriers make it difficult for our Fellows to land that first job in the tech industry. As the leading workforce development organization serving high-need audiences, we’ve developed different strategies to overcome these challenges.
For many employers, candidates for open engineering roles are required to have a college degree and relevant job experience. Despite the lack of credentials, our Fellows have what it takes to succeed. To help our Fellows to overcome these challenges, we are developing a number of strategies. Some solutions may seem minor but have a big impact, like including technical projects and major apps on their resumes and LinkedIn profiles. This enables our Fellows to highlight their expertise and abilities so they can put their best foot forward during their job search.
We’re also tackling this problem at its root, working directly with employers to disrupt traditional hiring practices and requirements. We do this by building partnerships with and opening direct talent pipelines into companies. For example, we worked with Citi to remove their college degree requirement for our Fellows—the first time they’ve done this for their highly coveted Summer Analyst position. We are also working with top venture capital firm a16z to rethink hiring for their portfolio companies and how we enable more representation in the tech industry. Over the long-term we hope that by helping our Fellows get hired at great companies, we can prove to the industry that our Fellows, while lacking traditional markers of success, have the talent and drive to succeed in the tech industry.
INVESTING IN OUR FELLOWS BY INVESTING IN OUR PROGRAMS
We are grateful to work with and receive grants from leading foundations and organizations across philanthropy, business, and technology. Philanthropic funding is the springboard that launched Pursuit. However, there simply isn’t enough philanthropic funding for adult workforce training to make the deep investments necessary for our Fellow to succeed.
That’s why we created a new source of funding: Pursuit Bond. With Pursuit Bond, we secure funding from social impact investors to create high-quality programs and deliver those programs to many more people than would be possible with grants and donations alone. Pursuit Bond comes full circle with an income share agreement (ISA). With the Pursuit Bond ISA, our Fellows don’t pay anything up front. Instead, they pay a percentage of their gross salary for a set amount of time when they get a high-paying job. The ISA is a central part of Pursuit Bond: it enables us to build and scale high-quality programs and motivates us to help our Fellows achieve success.
LEARNING, GROWING, AND CONSTANTLY IMPROVING
We embrace and thrive on a passion for growth—as individuals, as an organization, and as a community. It’s this mindset that drives us, year after year, to provide a better and better program.
To achieve this goal, we’re constantly evolving. We apply the data we’ve gathered and the lessons we've learned to create collaborative, thoughtful, and purposeful solutions to provide our Fellows with the best experience possible. This is key to helping them reach their full potential.
Our program may not look the same a year from now, or even a month from now. But this kind of change is necessary. It’s what drives the success of our organization and our community. We’re excited to embrace the next step of growth for Pursuit.
