Non-techies learn ropes in lay training program
In preparation for her graduation from California State University East Bay, Sheena Lyons began researching her next move.
She wanted a job that would set her up for a career, that would make her feel like she was part of something greater than herself. She wanted something fast-paced and challenging, something that would allow her to advance and grow.
So, she thought, why not the tech industry?
The problem was Lyons had no experience in tech. She had never done an internship, knew no one in the field, and, she soon found out, even entry-level positions required more than a year of experience at a tech firm.
“How do you get that experience if they won’t hire you without any experience?” she said.
This is the question co-founders Rahim Fazal and Joel Scott want to answer with their new company, SVAcademy, a vocational training program that prepares participants for careers in sales and business development by putting them through rigorous training in those areas and then partnering with
tech companies to get them in the door as fellows.
The training program takes a different approach from the many coding boot camps or computer-science-oriented schools that promise participants a path into tech. Focusing on skills that are less computer driven and more business oriented, Fazal said, opens up opportunities to a broader, more diverse group of people, regardless of their ability to code or affinity for math and computing.
It’s an unusual approach in an industry that has long emphasized coding and computer science as the primary paths to success. But, Fazal said, that’s why he believes it will work.
“I’m not a coder and Joel is not a coder, and if we relied on that set of skills to get into this economy, we would have been shut out,” Fazal said. “Every single company relies on sales and development as a growth engine of the company. There are often more opportunities in sales and business development than there are in engineering.”
Fazal’s long-term goal is to get 1 million women, people of color and under-resourced Americans high-paying jobs in the tech sector.
The training program, which takes each cohort through 15 months of coursework, is paid for by the companies that would benefit from the skilled workforce SVAcademy plans to churn out. It is free to its students.
The first three months are classroom training that prepares students for the next phase: a 12-month contract with a tech company, during which the students are paired with a coach and a mentor, executives from top tech firms, charged with helping students shrink their skills gap during the first year on the job.
SVAcademy announced its program Tuesday but already has put 50 students recruited from colleges by Fazal and Scott through its coursework, which focuses on socialemotional learning, technical sales and business methodologies, and lab work that replicates an actual business environment.
It has signed up companies like Salesforce, Box and Yelp to employ its students upon graduation.
For Fazal, the motivation to help push nontraditional candidates into the tech sector is personal as well as professional.
Born in Canada, Fazal grew up in government housing and started his first company while he was in high school. He never went to college.
After founding and selling several startups, Fazal began work on SVAcademy late last year. The company has raised about $2 million from venture capital firms and angel investors.
“We want to break the elitism in the recruiting system here,” he said. “After I sold my company in high school, I traveled around the country. What I realized was that the majority of young people looking to get into the tech industry don’t have the interest or the foundational math background to be successful in a development role. And yet there’s such an emphasis on engineering and software development that young people feel like it’s the only way in.”
Ultimately, Fazal said, he would love to broaden his base of students to those who, like him, never went to or completed college. But for now, he’s focusing on colleges and universities that tech companies traditionally overlook — like community colleges and state schools.
In an attempt to create more diverse cohorts, Fazal said, his company recruits at schools with high proportions of black and Latino students, or visits student groups made up mostly of students of color.
The company also looks for mentors at tech firms who value and advocate for diversity to ensure that the students are well supported as they progress, Fazal said.
“There’s a lot of unconscious bias that has really shaped the way these systems have been designed, so, for example, one of the things I’ve never been able to get my head around is why tech companies recruit at the same 10 schools every year,” Fazal said. “Luck and opportunity may not be evenly distributed, but talent is.”
Lyons majored in business administration. She’s a people person who reads Harvard Business Review and Forbes and knows that as a black woman, she’s something of a super-minority in the tech sector.
“I saw that as a challenge,” she said.
Lyons decided to take a job at Thanx, a San Francisco startup that manages loyalty programs for small businesses. She saw the flexibility, demands and challenges of a startup as an opportunity — the opportunity to do what she’s always wanted.
“There are often more opportunities in sales and business development than there are in engineering.” Rahim Fazal, SVA cademy co-founder
Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae