Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Overview
The Career Readiness Incubator is multi-faceted experience to shape your career path in tech and digital roles. You will be matched to a team and assigned one of the roles on the team (e.g. product lead, tech lead, QA lead, product designer). Each person on the team will rotate to be a scrum master.
Your team will be assigned a problem to be solved using a tech-enabled solution, emphasizing emerging technology such as AI, Web3 and Blockchain.
You can find a detailed overview of the Innov8POD Methodology here
Please note that the cohort fee has to be paid to secure your spot in the incubator
Important dates to note:
Cohort 5 (Q1 2024): Application is Open
Session start date: Monday, January 15th
Session end date: Friday, March 29th
Please use this link to complete an application
You will use several tools to facilitate collaboration and coaching such as Slack, Zoom, Miro, Loom and the Innov8POD online learning platform for the online course. All the tools will be properly introduced and access provided so that you can learn how to use them throughout the project.
Enrolling
The Career Readiness Incubator is for ambitious and aspiring product managers, QA engineers, scrum masters, UX designers and developers who want to accelerate their career, growth and potential.Â
This incubator is robust and time consuming. It is intended for people who are ambitious and resourceful, who want to sharpen their tech product management expertise. Whether you are a university students, a recent graduate, an early career professional, a mid-career changer or an entrepreneur, the key criteria for success is your interest in solving complex problems by creating technology-enabled solutions
Typical participants will have zero years of experience in tech Product Management, with varying backgrounds and from different industries such as financial services, consumer products, technology, healthcare, agriculture etc.
This is a global cohort and all timezones will be accommodated.
This will be taken into consideration during the pod pairing so that you can collaborate conveniently
An investment of USD $2,000. And it’s not just the money, it’s the time you’ll be spending as well
There are two reasons for the investment. The first is that the Career Readiness Incubator requires a significant amount of commitment. Not only time, but the decision to overcome your status quo. One way to make that happen is to raise the stakes
The other reason it’s not free is that in order to build the world-class experience, we are investing in advisors, tools and technology to run the incubator smoothly and successfully
If you have a job, that’s wonderful
This course is intense and requires a commitment of time and money. The expected time commitment is ~10 hours per week for 12 weeks.
I am eager to provide information for you to share with your manager to find a way to support the time and energy it will take, and I am thrilled if they want to support your program cost as well
Absolutely! This is a global cohort and the key requirement is to have great spoken, written and reading English skills
You will also need to be aware of the timezone differences
You don’t need a visa but will need to be present and awake during the online agile ceremonies
Yes, you can!
Please indicate your interest in the future cohort by completing the RSVP form here.
You are in good company as most participants will be in a similar situation. It’s important to have the discussion with your family (partner, etc) before committing to the program so that they can support you during the 12 weeks.
During The Incubator
This incubator requires constant collaboration with your team members. You will have recurring meetings as a team as well as project work to complete offline, in addition to the twice-weekly review sessions with the program coach.Â
You will spend majority of your time applying new concepts to solve a problem for an established business. You will spend time identifying and refining a complex problem to be solved, generating an idea (or ideas) to solve the problem, refining your idea through prototyping and implement your idea into an MVP product.
You will be surrounded by a community of advisors and a coach who are truly passionate about innovation and product management and will guide you throughout your learning and application journey, to create impactful results.
You will have access to an online course to complete the new concepts that you will be applying on your project.Â
Twice weekly, your team will be meeting with the program coach for review and feedback
You will have role-specific Slack channels for peer reviews and to also connect with industry mentors
This is a 12-week program and the other participants are counting on you and every other participants to be fully present.
I ask that each participant allocates times to take this process seriously as the rest of us
Generally, there will be no requirement for traveling. However, depending on the particular project that you will be working on, there may be some limited travel required (for example, to conduct surveys and interviews). We will evaluate the need for it on a case by case basis.
Each cohort has limited spots to maintain a participant to coach ratio of 12:1
You’ll be divided into team of 5-6 participants and will get to know them quite well from collaborating on the entire product lifecycle
You’ll also have plenty of chances to meet everyone in the program
In addition, there will be chat rooms and discussions where the coach will respond and provoke, as needed
A few hours, full of group work and human interaction. To be specific, participants will commit to weekly sprint ceremonies.
It’s essential that you don’t miss a session.
I recommend that each participant blocks off a few hours a day for completing the learning modules, doing research and solo work; in addition to time blocked off for the weekly sprint ceremonies.
It’s a commitment, which is partly why it works. You give a lot but you get far more than you give in return.
You will have at least one meeting per day and at most three meetings per day.
You will have daily huddles as well as a backlog grooming and sprint planning session each week.Â
In addition, you will have two review sessions with the program coach
This is an online program so we will leverage digital tools (e.g. Slack and Zoom) to collaborate virtually.
Cost of the Incubator
The program fee includes access to digital tools for collaboration, online learning videos, frameworks, tools and templates. You will also have access to a coach and domain experts for peer reviews
Depending on where you live, the investment may be tax deductible.
We will also support you with required documentation for you to be reimbursed by your company, as more organization are understanding the value of upskilling and continuous learning.
The Career Readiness Incubator is a mutual commitment. Innov8POD commits to welcoming you to the cohort of professionals and doing everything we can to deliver on the promises of the program. In return, we ask that you commit to spending time, money and passion it takes to level up.
As such, the investment to the program is non-refundable.
We understand that life happens and that plans can change. That being said, we have to be fair to other eager participants who are ready to take the leap and level up.
We will allow just one deferral. You’re eligible to defer one time, to the next session on our calendar. You’re only eligible to defer if you’ve paid in full and 7 days before the beginning of the session. No deferrals are possible afterwards.
If you are admitted to the program and need to defer, please email info@alidarwabalinda.com and use the subject line “Request to Defer – Career Readiness Incubator Program“.
A growing number of partner universities are providing a loan, which you get to pay off after securing a job. If you get offered a place in the incubator, this option will be offered to you.
You can pay 50% of the fee upfront and the remaining 50% of the fee before the start of the program.
The fee will need to be paid in full before the start of the program in order to confirm a spot (which is on a first-come, first-served basis).Â