What Sets Apart a Makers Fellow?
We’ve had a few questions about our Fellowship programme which we wanted to address here.
We take pride in Makers being a source of top tech talent. The only people accepted onto the Makers programme are those who have already demonstrated a strong aptitude for coding and problem-solving exercises.
If you’ve got an exceptional level of coding talent you might want to consider our Fellowship programme. While we answer some of the key questions on our FAQS, we also wanted to talk a bit more about it here.
Why does Makers have a Fellowship programme?
We’re committed to removing barriers to entry for a more inclusive tech future.
Our Fellowship gives the best and brightest potential developers out there the chance they deserve to break into and advance themselves in the tech industry.
We believe everyone deserves a job they love. We also believe that a truly inclusive approach to education is more than box ticking.
When we talk about inclusivity and the fellowship, we don’t care where you went to school, or what you studied, or where you grew up. We care about whether you can code well, how you solve problems and how well you work with others. We care about whether you’re interested in pursuing a career as a software engineer via Makers.
We don’t discriminate on any factor except whether you have the drive and commitment to succeed.
What sets apart a Fellowship candidate?
The Fellowship is a route into a full-time career as a software engineer. With this route, your spot on the course is sponsored by Makers — you don’t pay a penny to take the course.
Doing a Fellowship means that you have different intentions that someone who does the usual paid course — it’s a longer and more intense commitment.
What sets people apart is the ability to demonstrate that commitment. Besides exceptional technical aptitude, we’re also looking at problem solving skills. After you’ve finished the Makers programme, it is a massively accelerated career pathway.
If you’re doing to do the Fellowship, it’s a minimum 16 month commitment (potentially longer) with the possibility of having to relocate.
Where might relocation be?
It could be Cambridge, Croydon, Milton Keynes, Edinburgh. We pay a £500 relocation fee.
I can’t leave London. Can I still apply?
If you aren’t willing to relocate, please be really direct with us. We understand some people can’t relocate but if you can give us your specific personal reasons then this helps to manage expectations with our hiring partners.
Even if you can’t relocate but are still really keen to do the Fellowship, we would encourage you to apply — in future we might have more roles available in London.
What does a recently graduated Makers employee do?
As a Fellow, you complete the Makers programme alongside everyone else and then become a Makers employee for your first year of working, though you are placed with one of our hiring partners and work from their offices.
The goal is to get you to become a mid-level developer as efficiently as possible — ideally you go from a junior developer to a mid-level developer in 12 months.
The actual projects obviously vary from company to company, Maker to Maker. One thing we do know is that you will be working from the same skill-set building software we provide and that your career pathway will be accelerated as a result.
How much choice does a Fellow have in what job they will do after the course?
Our careers team (above) work really, really hard to match people well and appropriately, according to their skills, according to their desires and intellect. The primary aim of Makers is still to get everybody a job that they love.
We have no motivation in putting people in jobs that they are not going to be happy in. So there are assessments, towards the end of the course, with the careers team. There is a lot of job matching that happens and that’s why we have such a large careers team in order to get that right. Our aim is always to put you in the right place.
Our careers team is not paid on commissions, so there’s no incentive for them just to place you for no reason.
How much will I get paid as a Fellow?
You’ll get paid £32K whilst on a placement for the first 12 months. After a year, you can go up to mid-level after you go into a permanent job. You would be expected to become a full-time permanent employee of the hiring partner you have been placed with for the previous year. Salary-wise at that point you’re often you’re looking at £45K and up.
