It’s no secret that finding skilled IT professionals is proving difficult in our current job market. Half a million IT jobs are currently open in the United States and that number will increase if the Tech Industry continues to grow as projected. In fact, Information and Technology jobs make up about 12% of current job openings.
What’s a hiring manager to do?
The White House recently released a statement about the gap between IT jobs and skilled IT workers with a plan to make education in IT more readily available to Americans. The goal is to help fill employer demand for talented people in the workforce while helping underserved communities with a program called TechHire Inititive. TechHire is offering $100 Million in grant dollars to communities around the United States to implement its programs and objectives.
What’s Minneapolis doing about it?
Minneapolis is among the twenty-one communities across the United States that have agreed to work alongside TechHire to implement three primary changes to education and hiring in their area. The city of Minneapolis, Concordia University, and several companies and non-profits within the Twin Cities have committed to expanding their hiring practices to hire those with non-traditional education and work experiences, create and expand training to prepare students in under a year, and connect these newly trained persons to jobs within the community. Specifically, Minneapolis will be expanding three tech training programs and connecting with sixty companies to help educate 300 people this year to help with the demand for skilled technology professionals.
What could this mean for you?
If the program is successful, Minneapolis could have an influx of highly skilled IT professionals. Talent could be coming to you with an education from cutting-edge training programs—like coding bootcamps—as well as traditional 2 and 4 year degrees. Are you prepared to hire professionals that are highly skilled, but do not fit into the “normal” HR requirements? After all, “It doesn’t matter where you learn to code, it should matter how good you are at writing code” (President Obama, March 9, 2015). It may be time to reflect on your current hiring specifications to help you hire individuals who have taken a non-traditional route.
There may be a light at the end of the hiring shortage tunnel. TechHire’s goal is to get highly skilled workers from a variety of backgrounds into the job market as rapidly as possible. Who knows, you may have some developers, engineers, and security specialists from the TechHire Initiative to fill your roles within the year.
Click here to learn more about TechHire.
You may also enjoy reading: Negative Qualities That Make Great Employees (3 part series)
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