10 technology boot camps to kick-start your career

It's quickly becoming easy to learn new skills to add to your resume or to land a promotion at your current job. You can attend online courses no matter where they are and what your schedule looks like. And with the growing tech skills gap, more boot-camp style courses are popping up to help you get up to speed on the latest tech skills.

Course Report, a company that offers reviews, application tips and interviews with founders, students and instructors on different boot camps, offers a database full of technology educational courses, from online to in-person. Read on to see their 10 highest rated online boot camps available today.

Coding Dojo offers courses focused on full-stack development for developers or aspiring developers. You can attend online, but you can also attend in person or take a hybrid online-and-on-campus course in Silicon Valley, Seattle and Southern California. In addition to the intensive courses, you also receive guidance and feedback from remote teacher assistants who are available up to 15 hours a day. The courses are for people of any skill level, with tailored custom programs for anyone from beginners to experienced developers. Coding Dojo also prides itself on offering "one of the widest ranges of coding boot camp scholarship opportunities for prospective students," according to Course Report.

Thinkful offers a slew of unique courses for those interested in changing industries or honing a new skill for the job they already have. Classes are entirely online, but you'll be paired with a mentor who works within the industry you're studying and they're available via email and video chat. You can even take a customized boot camp for $1,400 a month that is tailored to your career needs. Alternatively, the part-time courses start at $400 and are focused on mastering a specific skill. Courses can be completed at your own pace, and require anywhere from 7 to 10 hours per week of work on average.

Bloc is another coding boot camp with a strong focus on mentorship with an "apprenticeship approach," according to Course Report. This is aimed at those who already have a career, and who can't up and quit their jobs to attend a rigorous full-time boot camp. Instead, Bloc helps students work around their busy schedules by pairing them up with a mentor who will provide one-on-one guidance. The curriculum is designed by professional Curriculum Developers and students can expect to walk away with a strong portfolio. At the end of the program, students will also be well-prepared for the job market with technical interview questions and a career support team to help better tackle the job search process.

The programs offered through CareerFoundry are aimed at "training students to become employable developers in six months," according to Course Report. It offers just two options for students, allowing them to choose between Web development and UX design. Similar to other programs on this list, it has a strong focus on mentorship by pairing students with a mentor in their desired field. In the Web development track, students will develop a Web app as well as an online portfolio to help them get hired. For UX design students, you can expect to re-design a Web-based app and to walk away with a better grasp of industry standards and user interface design.

AcadGild, which only offers online courses, was founded by a group of IT professionals based out of India and California. One of the unique aspects of AcadGild is that the classes are small, with only 3 to 5 students per course. Courses last 12 weeks and, according to Course Report, are more affordable than other comparable options. By the end of the course, you can expect to have a "marketable project," and you will spend one week of the course focusing on mock interviews and crafting your resume. Unlike other courses, you'll also walk away with a certification in either Android, Front End or Full Stack Development.

General Assembly was established in 2011 in New York City as a way for individuals to further develop their tech skills. Since then, it's grown into a full-fledged boot camp that offers online and on-campus courses to students all around the world. As a student, you can partake in full-time programs that immerse you in the subject matter, long-form courses or shorter classes and workshops that focus on specific skills. You'll find campuses in a number of major US cities as well as around the world in Sydney, Australia; Singapore, Malaysia; London, England; and Hong Kong.

Hack Reactor is a specialized boot camp that only offers courses in full-stack development, but ensures that each student will graduate as a full-stack software engineers and JavaScript programmers. Programs last 12 weeks and can be completed online or in-person, but each course starts with a 6-week introduction to developer tools and techniques and finishes with 6 weeks of intensive training through group and personal projects. Students will also gain job preparation skills throughout the course by developing a strong online presence, writing a resume and perfecting their LinkedIn profiles.

Designlab offers part-time online courses focused on developing hands-on projects with 1 on 1 mentorship from experts in UX design. Students can meet with their mentors via Skype at least once a week, and mentors are expected to deliver timely feedback on students' projects. The company boasts mentors from well-known tech companies including Twitter, Airbnb and Dropbox. Designlab is mostly targeted towards developers, product managers, entrepreneurs, marketers, aspiring designers and anyone interested in web or mobile products, according to Course Report. Students can complete courses at their own pace, so it's a great option for those with a busy schedule.

Launch Academy offers 10 week immersive courses in full-stack development aimed at aspiring software developers. The curriculum is based around Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, HTML and CSS with a focus on "breakable toys." What that means, is students will come up with a product they've wanted to work with, and then learn how to "build and improve upon their 'breakable toy'," according to Course Report. Students will learn these skills from experienced software engineers and at the end of the program, they will present their products to different companies at an organized career day with hiring managers from tech companies across the nation.

RefactorU offers 10 week intensive courses in full-stack development at its Boulder, CO campus; but it also offers online options for students who can't take 10 weeks off to complete a course. Instead of signing up for one big program, online students can pick and choose from a list of "a la carte" options, or alternatively, they can subscribe at three different membership levels, which each offer a different amount of access to the site. "Recognize It" is the entry level subscription, at $25 per month and allows students to access all of RefactorU's online courses and apply credit towards the on-campus courses. The next level is "Retain It", which cost $250 per month and offers an additional Q&A forum and 5 hours per month with a remote expert. The third, and most expensive level at $850 per month, is "Reinvent It", which allows for 16 hours or time with a remote expert every month and an exclusive monthly webinar.