topic: The journey of an Umuzi learner

This might be your first real introduction to what we at Umuzi are all about.

Umuzi’s mission

Umuzi’s mission is to help high potential young people access high value digital careers.

In order to do this we have worked with corporate partners to invest in young people and support their career journeys.

We measure ourselves by looking at the people we have helped. The more careers we launch and lives we change the better.

Your Journey

There are a few phases of the Umuzi learner user journey. What’s a learner? Keep reading and you’ll find out.

Here are all the phases to the journey:

1. Applying online

You have already done this, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

In the background, we mark your tests and figure out who might be able to make it with us. If we think you have potential then we invite you to a selection bootcamp.

2. Bootcamp

You are here.

This is a selection bootcamp. If you do well then you’ll be invited to take part in one of our main Umuzi courses. This is a fantastic opportunity, basically everyone who finishes our courses go on to have awesome careers!

We’ve found that our learners do best when they are able to:

  • hold themselves accountable if we bring people onto the programme who aren’t willing to do their homework without being pulled into disciplinary hearings then that’s a giant waste of time. We are looking for adults who we can trust to get things done.
  • pursue understanding those people who copy random bits of code off the Internet don’t go far in life. If you do not understand the work that you cover in the bootcamp then you wont pass.

The bootcamp is run using our own custom built learning platform. There will be a bit of a learning curve and you’ll probably get confused, but there will be staff on hand to help you out if you get stuck. Please make sure you ask questions when you get stuck!

PLEASE NOTE: the bootcamp should be treated like a full time job! Spend at least a full workday on your course every single day!

It is your responsibility to:

  • make sure you have the time and space to do this
  • make sure you are available for all your scheduled interviews, tests and workshops

Here at Umuzi, we require professional behavior

  • A professional shows up and does the work
  • A professional pursues understanding
  • A professional tries to solve their own problems
  • A professional asks for help when they need it
  • A professional helps the people around them. That’s right, if someone asks for help and you help them then that’s a win
  • A professional is honest

3. Provisional Acceptance

Once bootcamp is finished, Umuzi staff members (and our trusty robots) will make a final selection of who we want to accept into our programme, this selection goes into a pool of provisionally accepted learners as there may still be a number of things outstanding, the most important items are listed below:

  • Employer partner allocation - we need to allocate people to their sponsor. Occasionally we have more awesome provisionally accepted learners than we have sponsors meaning some of them may be deferred to a future intake. We will endeavour to get them into an intake as soon as possible, but in the meantime they should continue up skilling an being awesome.
  • MIE checks - Many of our employer partners are financial institutions thus we need to do criminal and background checks on each provisionally accepted learner.
  • Items outstanding from bootcamp - sometimes due to tight deadlines there are criteria that could not be met during bootcamp, we often need to get these done before you can be accepted and move onto the next stage.

4. Contract signing

Once all the criteria have been met we can official accept those that made it into our programme. Those people will be offered contracts with us and will be referred to as “learners”. Here are a few details:

  • you will technically be an employee, your job will be to grow your skills. You will be expected to follow staff members instructions and to behave professionally
  • You will get paid during your learnership. Umuzi is committed to pay you every month while you are with us. Yes, that’s right! We’ll pay YOU to study with us. Usually people pay good money to have access to this kind of high quality education.

Once you’ve signed your contract, you’ll be an Umuzi learner.

There are different kinds of learners on different programmes with different requirements. So what happens next is different for different people.

5. Level-up your foundational skills

The next phase is learning. You’ll be familiar with how we do things from going through our bootcamp. We’ll give you a whole lot of learning to do, and lots of projects and assessments to hone your mad skillz.

You’ll be expected to work like a real professional. You will be immersed in modern agile practices from day 1. You’ll learn hard skills, “soft” skills (which are by no means easy), interact with your peers and overcome challenges you never thought you could.

At the end of this you’ll have an NQF level 5 National Certificate, and some solid, proven skills, and a network of high potential individuals who know what you are about.

6. Use your skills

Depending on how you grow there are a few different doors that can open to you during your contract period.

You can be given a technical leadership role so that you can build your skills while building the people around you.

You could get to contribute to one of our organization’s projects. Tilde was built by Umuzi and it’s still under construction. There’s also a lot of work to be done on our syllabus because it can always be improved. We have a lot of really interesting problems to solve, and we are always trying to do things better.

You can leave your mark.

7. External work experience

After the first 9 months of your contract with us, we start watching you extra closely and preparing you for job interviews.

If we believe that you are work-ready then we hustle to get you an internship at an external company.

Note: If you are not work ready at this point, we will not be sending you out. We only send out our stars. So be awesome! Umuzi is a reputable training organization and we will only vouch for you if we believe in you.

This does all depend on the size and shape of your contract, sometimes the corporate partner who is sponsoring your learnership has different plans for you. So the external work experience isn’t a 100% certain thing for everyone.

8. Job time! But it’s not the end…

Once your time with us is up you should be ready for work. As long as you put in the effort during our course and behave professionally then you’ll be good to go.

We have a team of recruitment ninjas and a large network of employer partners who trust our opinion. We’re very good at helping people get jobs.

We’ll work hard to get you placed in a job, and if your job doesn’t last for whatever reason then you can get in touch with us and we’ll work hard to hook you up again.

Of course you need to be a “work ready” professional for us to do this.

9. Alumni programme

Once you have gone through our programme you are one of the family and we’ll continue supporting your career. You will have ongoing access to our services and syllabus.

As mentioned, if you are ever in need of a job you can let us know and we’ll work hard to get you sorted out. Our recruitment ninjas are always happy to assist, and our network of employer organizations keeps growing.

On top of that, we will support your continued learning by keeping our platform and syllabus open to you (so long as you keep contributing feedback to your peers). You’ll be able to register for other courses that we run, some of those courses will be advanced specializations. When you complete these courses we’ll be able to give you our stamp of approval.

Our course offerings grow all the time. Maybe you are a web dev who wants to learn about cross-platform mobile development, we’ll hook you up! Maybe you are a data-scientist and you want to learn about productionising your data pipelines, we got you!

Check your understanding!

  • What is Umuzi’s mission?
  • What is the selection process for becoming a learner at Umuzi?
  • What are the expectations of Umuzi learners during the bootcamp?
  • What is provisional acceptance and what are some of the criteria that must be met before being accepted?
  • What happens during the learning phase at Umuzi?
  • What are some of the opportunities that can be available to Umuzi learners during their contract period?

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