A new kind of tech job needs skills, not a degree
ROCKET CENTER, W.Va. — A few years ago, Sean Bridges lived with his mother, Linda, in Wiley Ford, W.Va. Their only income was her Social Security disability check. He applied for work at Walmart and Burger King, but they were not hiring.
Yet while Bridges had no work history, he had certain skills. He had built and sold stripped-down personal computers, and had studied information technology at a community college. When Bridges heard IBM was hiring at an operations center in 2013, he applied and demonstrated those skills.
Now Bridges, 25, is a computer security analyst, making $45,000 a year. In a struggling Appalachian economy, that is enough to provide him with his own apartment, a car, spending money — and career ambitions.
“I got one big break,” he said. “That’s what I needed.”
Bridges represents a new but promising category in the labor market: people working in new-collar or middle-skill jobs. As the U.S. struggles with how to match good jobs to the two-thirds of adults who do not have a four-year college degree, his experience shows how skills can be emphasized over traditional hiring filters like college degrees, work history and references. And elevating skills over pedigree creates pathways to employment and tailored training, and a gateway to the middle class.
This jobs approach matters at a time when there is a push to improve the circumstances of those left behind in the economy, many of whom voted for Donald Trump.
“We desperately need to revive a second route to the middle class for people without four-year college degrees, as manufacturing once was,” said Robert Reich, a labor secretary in the Clinton administration who is now a professor at UC Berkeley. “We have to move toward a system that works.”
The skills concept is gaining momentum, with nonprofit organizations, schools, state governments and companies, typically in partnerships, beginning to roll out such efforts. The approach just received a strong corporate endorsement from Microsoft, which announced a grant of more than $25 million to help Skillful, a program to foster skills-oriented hiring, training and education. The project, led by
the Markle Foundation, began last year in Colorado, and Microsoft’s grant will be used to expand it there and move it into other states.
“We need new approaches, or we’re going to leave more and more people behind in our economy,” said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft.
It is unclear whether a relative handful of programs can train large numbers of people and alter hiring practices broadly. But the approach has already yielded encouraging results in technology, which may provide a model for other industries.
These jobs have taken off in tech for two main reasons. For one, computing skills tend to be well defined. Writing code, for example, is a specific task, and results can be tested and measured. At the same time, the demand for tech skills is surging.
One project that has expanded rapidly is TechHire, created in 2015, the flagship program of Opportunity at Work, a nonprofit social enterprise. TechHire provides grants and expertise to train workers around the country and link them to jobs by nurturing local networks of job seekers, trainers and companies.
TechHire’s network has grown to 72 communities, 237 training organizations and 1,300 employers. It has helped place more than 4,000 workers.
Nichole Clark of Paintsville, Ky., heard a radio ad last year for TechHire Eastern Kentucky. The program offered six months of training in software programming that included working with a company while being paid $400 a week. That was not much less than what Clark, now 24, was making as a manager at Pizza Hut.
Without a degree, Clark said, her horizons seemed confined to lowwage jobs in fast-food restaurants, retail stores or doctors’ offices. TechHire, she said, could be “a doorway to a goodpaying job, which is everything here.”
Clark made it through online screening and an interview and got into the program. TechHire’s role varies, and it often funds training grants, but in this program it solicited applicants and advised and shared best practices with Interapt, a software development and consulting company. The training stipends were paid for with a $2.7 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission.
After four months of taking all-day classes on the basics of writing software and two months of working in an internship alongside Interapt developers, Clark was hired by Interapt in May. As a member of the team that performs software quality assurance and testing, she is now paid more than $40,000 a year, about double what she made at Pizza Hut.
Clark is growing confident about her future. “There are endless roles you can play, if you have these skills,” she said.
In Rocket Center, IBM occupies a few buildings and employs 350 people, including Bridges. They are working on cloud computing, cybersecurity, application development and help desks.
In two years, nearly a third of IBM’s new workers there and in a few other locations have not had four-year degrees. IBM has jointly developed curricula with a community college, as well as one-year and two-year courses aligned with the company’s hiring needs.
“It makes sense for our business, for the job candidates and for the communities,” said Sam Ladah, IBM’s vice president for talent.
IBM plans to hire up to 250 people there this year, including more like Bridges.
“Now we’re recruiting for skills,” Ladah said.