Hi, I’m Sam! I have been a product manager for years. Now I work as an industry mentor for the product, strategy, and operations track at Pathrise. I help people land their dream job through workshops and 1-on-1 mentoring. Check out my review of Knowledge Officer.
- What does Knowledge Officer do?
- Who is Knowledge Officer for?
- What does Knowledge Officer cost?
- Ratings and reviews of Knowledge Officer
- Alternatives to Knowledge Officer
- How does Knowledge Officer compare to Pathrise?
What does Knowledge Officer do?
Knowledge Officer is a career accelerator for aspiring product managers, digital marketers, growth managers, customer success people, and machine learning engineers. They offer both free and paid programs with mentoring opportunities. In addition, all courses are remote and self-paced. The company is based out of London.
Their free membership includes online video courses and activities with a personalized learning path based on member data. In fact, the program works through artificial intelligence. First, it analyzes job descriptions from top companies and picks the most common and important skills required. Then, the system compares member skills to their dream job listings. The program also includes a “knowledge exchange” where tech industry experts answer member questions about startups and working in tech.
Membership options
There are different commitment options members can pick. First, there is the free option, in which members usually only commit 15 minutes a day to reach their skill goals within 6 weeks. Then, there is the paid “plus” membership program, which lasts about 3 months. This has a more advanced curriculum and includes mock interview opportunities. Members with the “plus” plan only have to put in about 2 hours of work per day.
Finally, students can choose the paid “pro” membership. This plan is also self-paced, but students are expected to finish the courses in 6 months. Pro members participate in remote expert-led sessions, mock interviews, hands-on projects, and bi-monthly 1-on-1 mentoring with professionals at top tech companies. In addition, pro members get access to 160+ hours of self-paced online learning, which require about 4 hours of work required every day. The pro membership comes with a job guarantee. Therefore, if members don’t land a job within 6 months of completing the program, they get a full refund. However, this refund is only available to members based in the UK, Egypt, and India.
Product management
The product management track teaches members all the skills they need to become a product manager. The curriculum covers product metrics, KPIs, product strategy, Agile concepts, Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and more. Moreover, members in this track also learn customer development, design thinking, UX, user testing, A/B testing, product marketing, and business fundamentals.
Marketing and growth
Members who choose the marketing specialist track learn about competitive analysis, marketing strategy, marketing plan creation, and data-driven marketing. The curriculum also covers buyer behaviors, market research, brand management, growth marketing, and sales enablement. In addition, members learn digital marketing fundamentals like digital advertising, search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, database marketing, and other key skills needed to become a digital marketer.
Members in the growth management career track learn to grow customer bases, hack revenue growth, and boost their businesses. Moreover, the curriculum covers growth marketing fundamentals like market research, customer acquisition, growth hacking, hiring, entering new markets, scaling up, and even mergers & acquisitions. Members also learn digital marketing skills like social media marketing and sales fundamentals like pricing strategy, sales funnels, lead generation, business development, and more. Finally, this track also teaches members to design products with growth in mind through user testing, interviews, UX, KPIs, and growth data analysis.
Machine learning
The machine learning engineer career track teaches members all about artificial intelligence. The curriculum covers introductory programming, math for machine learning, loss functions, regression, algorithms, regularization, deep learning, and much more. Members also work on applied machine learning with introductions to natural language processing, computer vision, and recommendation systems.
Customer success
The customer success program teaches people to mobilize a team and help customers reach their goals. The curriculum covers customer onboarding, journey mapping, and other fundamentals, all while stressing the difference between customer success and customer support. Similarly, members also learn to work with customer relationship management (CRM) tools and customer success metrics, learning to build their own customer success team along the way.
Who is Knowledge Officer for?
People with a little experience in product management, digital marketing, growth, customer success, or machine learning who are looking to launch their careers could benefit from Knowledge Officer’s memberships. The program is especially helpful for people with busy schedules who are seeking flexible, self-paced learning. But, candidates looking for roles in the US might not be a good fit as the program is more focused on the job search in other parts of the world.
What does Knowledge Officer cost? How much work is involved?
Beginner level courses with tailored job opportunities and the knowledge exchange Q&As are free with the “free” membership. In addition, free members can earn points to purchase extra features just by finishing exercises.
The paid “plus” membership is £50 ($66) per month for full course access as well as mentor calls, mock interviews, human graded learning assignments, and a certificate of completion upon graduation. Alternatively, the full “pro” program requires a one-time payment of £750 ($989) for expanded mentoring, live sessions, peer reviews, plus a job guarantee.
Ideal applicants have 1-2+ years of professional experience in a related field, although no formal experience is technically required. The admissions process begins with a brief application. Within 2 weeks, the program contacts candidates for a behavioral interview. Finally, candidates get an answer within 2 weeks of the interview.
Ratings and reviews
So far Knowledge Officer has mostly positive reviews. They hold a perfect 5 star rating on Switchup where a grad described the program as “a very well rounded course” with helpful staff. They also appreciated the 1-on-1 career mentoring, commenting “my mentor was very open to helping me and giving me guidance.” However, the grad had wished the course included “more content and teaching around scrum framework so the students get a better grasp.”
Knowledge Officer’s app holds a 4.5/5 star rating on the Google Play Store. Users described the program as well organized and “user friendly” with flexible learning. One user appreciated that the app makes “chunks of learning fit into those 10 minutes gaps you would normally waste in your day between activities.” However, another user felt that the “UI needs to be more simple. Sometimes I get lost and don’t know where exactly I am.”
The program holds a 5 star rating on Facebook. One student appreciated the brief daily lessons and was confident he “still benefits from it” every day. However, one grad felt “everything is good except the pricing. It’s overpriced.” Another grad was impressed with the entrepreneurial content, describing the program as the “best place to learn for your startup and gain professional experience.” Overall, people seem satisfied with Knowledge Officer’s career support and 1-on-1 mentoring, but some would have preferred a slightly more in depth curriculum, especially for the free and plus memberships.
Alternatives to Knowledge Officer
If you decide not to sign up for Knowledge Officer, there are a number of other resources and bootcamps to help you land a job as a product manager, digital marketer, or machine learning engineer.
- Another popular product management community, Mind the Product has 150,000+ active members. They offer workshops and networking opportunities for aspiring product managers.
- The popular tech bootcamp General Assembly teaches full-time, part-time, and 1-day courses on a variety of tech topics including product management and digital marketing. Students in the product course learn the fundamentals of product management, working hands-on with real tools they’ll use on the job. Read more about General Assembly in our review.
- Similarly, BrainStation is a bootcamp with product management tracks. Students participate in hands-on product management assignments and professional development. The program boasts 1,000+ hiring partners including Google, Facebook, and more.
- Students seeking a more advanced PM curriculum can look into Product Faculty, a part-time online product management career accelerator for folks with experience.
- The product management associations Product Gym, Product Talk Academy, and Silicon Valley Product Group offer training, job support, and networking opportunities to aspiring product managers.
- Similarly, Product School, Linky Product, and Product Innovation Educators teach full-time and part-time product management courses.
- Product Hall and Blackblot are product management bootcamps with live courses and 1-on-1 mentoring opportunities.
- The bootcamp Product Academia has full-time and part-time PM courses. Their focus is on helping women launch new careers as product managers.
- Women, GNC people, and trans people can check out CodeOp, which has courses in web dev, data, and product management.
- Likewise, consider One Week PM, which was created by Product Manager HQ. In both programs, students learn product management fundamentals and network with aspiring and current PMs.
More alternatives
- Metis has introductory data science courses with both onsite & remote bootcamp options. Learn more about Metis in our review.
- Similarly, Divergence Academy and Magnimind have part-time and full-time data science courses.
- Online bootcamps GrowthX Academy, Bootcamp Digital, allWomen Academy, Richardson Sales Performance, and Digital Creative Institute have courses for people who are interested in product management, UX design, growth marketing, sales, and business development.
- Similarly, Pluralsight, One Month, Somerville Academy, NJIT Digital Skills Bootcamp, DeltaV Code School, Pepperdine Graziadio Bootcamps, and InternStreet offer tracks in digital marketing.
- edX is a massive online learning platform with courses from top universities like Harvard and MIT, plus big tech companies like Microsoft. Students can choose to learn the fundamentals or dive deeper into specific topics, like machine learning and Agile systems for PM. Learn more about edX in our review.
- Similarly, Codecademy is one of the most popular coding programs online. They provide free courses on many different programming languages and memberships for more course options and greater support. Learn more about Codecademy in our review.
- Another low-cost and self-paced option is Udacity. They offer courses on product strategy, design, and launch. Students in their program build polished PM projects for their resumes and work closely with experienced mentors. Learn more about Udacity in our review.
- Similarly, Springboard is an educational resource that hosts courses on machine learning and plenty of other tech subjects. If students don’t land a tech job within 6 months of graduating, they get a full refund. Learn more about Springboard in our review.
- Aspiring customer success and salespeople can check out Flockjay. This bootcamp helps people launch a career in software sales. They also allow their students to finance their education through an ISA. Learn more about Flockjay in our review.
How does Knowledge Officer compare to Pathrise?
Most Knowledge Officer members start with no experience and work through the program to learn the skills they need to break into the industry. At Pathrise, our team of mentors works with people who are ready to level up their job search so they can find a great job faster that makes more money faster than they would on their own. Our mentors assist with all phases of the job search, including resume and LinkedIn optimization, portfolio building, technical and behavioral interview skills, and much more.
Pathrise is a career accelerator that has helped 1,000+ people land their dream job. Fellows learn through workshops and 1-on-1 sessions, then they put their new knowledge into practice in their job search. With our support, fellows triple their application response rate, double their interview scores, and negotiate 10-20% higher salaries. The Pathrise income share agreement (ISA) means that fellows don’t pay anything until they land a job they love and start working. We never require deposits or upfront payments.
Pathrise optimizes the job search through workshops and 1-on-1 mentoring. If you want to land your dream job faster, join Pathrise.
Apply today.
