Fast Company
For years, Silicon Valley has been fed mostly from the elite universities. As a result, the tech mecca has a diversity problem. To tackle this issue, tech companies are now trying to extend their recruiting efforts to people who don’t have four-year degrees.
Cale Guthrie Weissman from Fast Company has gathered a few initiatives that major tech companies are implementing to address their diversity problem. One example is IBM’s new initiative that focuses on “new-collar jobs.” Sam Ladah, head of talent organization at IBM, said that the company is focusing on people’s skills and passion rather than their educational background. “This includes applicants who didn’t get a four-year degree but have proven their technical knowledge in other ways. Some have technical certifications, and others have enrolled in other skills programs. “We’ve been very successful in hiring from [coding] bootcamps,” reported Ladah for Fast Company.
Other organizations like Intel are investing in programs like CODE 2040, which aims to build pathways for underrepresented minority youth to get into tech companies. Likewise, GitHub has partnered with coding-focused programs like Operation Code, Hackbright Academy and Code Tenderloin.
The bottom line is that these companies are starting to realize these sort of initiatives are good not just to tackle the diversity issue, but are new effective ways to reclute new talent that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
Source: Fast Company
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