We tested Le Wagon's job placement data
Using graduate profiles on LinkedIn
Background
Le Wagon is a European-headquartered coding bootcamp with 40+ campuses around the world.
They make the following claims about job placements on their website:
And the following claims in their Student Outcome reports:
Conveniently, Le Wagon refer to using ‘respondents’ in these outcome reports, rather than using every single graduate. On their website, that big 90% figure is placed front-and-centre, on most pages, and with no mention of ‘respondents’.
Interestingly, the data being displayed on the website (which had been there for a couple of years at least), was changed right after we reached out to their founders to ask for evidence & clarification of these statistics: 📝 We emailed Le Wagon’s founders over the weekend…
Coincidence?
📊 Our test
We decided to run a test for ourselves, sampling representative data from Le Wagon graduates (alumni) on LinkedIn.
A few notes to consider:
Our results cannot be 100% accurate; just representative of what is being displayed on alumni LinkedIn profiles - via Le Wagon’s company page, and then clicking on Alumni
We selected alumni who graduated between 2021 and 2023 (up until July 2023, as not enough time has yet passed for Oct 2023 graduates onwards)
We selected those currently living in London, as this is a reasonable indicator of them having studied at Le Wagon in London
We did not included freelancing as a job placement (most graduates we saw who freelanced after graduating eventually went on to find a job)
We regarded a ‘job placement’ as a job in some kind of software/coding role, or at least with elements of that
We did this on an initial sample size of 50, a limited set of data (we tried to get to a sample of 100, but LinkedIn asked us to slow down our searching, as it thought we might be a bot!)
This data is all publicly available on LinkedIn — we encourage you to run your own results and draw your own conclusions.
The results
Here are the results from a sample of 50 Le Wagon (London) graduates, completing the bootcamp between 2021 & 2023.
A sample of 50 Le Wagon graduates (2021-2023):
We then ran the results, this time accepting Le Wagon students working (mostly part-time as Teaching Assistants / Teachers) at Le Wagon as a ‘job placement’. Here’s what this did to the results.
A sample of the same 50 Le Wagon graduates - including Teaching/Assistant hires into Le Wagon after graduating:
In contrast, here’s what their UK (London) outcome report claims:
Source: https://info.lewagon.com/lewagonlondonoutcomesreport
And again what their website claims:
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As mentioned before — this information is all publicly available on LinkedIn, and we encourage you to run your own results, for Le Wagon or any bootcamp.