The transition to Online Education
As the future of work changes drastically, technology will be the driving force behind the change.
Recent world events have caused the onset of remote work and spurred change surrounding the skills employees are required to have.
Tech-based skills have started to increase in value whereas traditional skills are slowly falling to the wayside.
Technology will never fully replace human workers, but it is becoming more and more clear that the tasks assigned to human workers are going to radically change.
With that in mind, hiring employees who are proficient with technology and boast a wide array of skills is the best course of action for any company hoping to survive in the future.
As reported by the Washington Post, several big-name companies are keeping tech employees on from home, which means attracting talented tech employees will become even harder.
However, if sourcing is done in the right areas, any company can identify and onboard top tech talent.
Partner with Online Degree Schools
Traditional education is still an extremely respected form of education, for good reason, but recent years have seen the number of participants in online degree programs increase at a substantial rate. While technology has enabled remote work, it has also enabled people from all over the world to obtain an education from anywhere.
Some bright students are unable to pay the tuition required to attend a typical four-year path but receive a very respectable degree in a tech field from an online school. Working closely with these online schools as a partner can help attract talent to your company, while also providing you with a source of untapped tech talent.
The fact of the matter is that when a candidate is asked why they should be hired, it’s not about where they went to school, but rather what they learned and the skills they developed. Overcoming the traditional recruitment path can open up the door to previously undiscovered tech talent vying for a chance to prove themselves as resourceful and impactful employees.
Discover Vocational Schools
Vocational schools, or trade schools, are similar to online schools in that they do offer courses completely on the computer. However, some trade schools have in-person campuses around the world and in many countries. Unlike a traditional educational path, vocational schools train students for a specific career, using specialized classes, in about a year.
An example is General Assembly, which offers campuses in 35 locations around the world and courses ranging from data science to full-stack development. Options such as this are attractive to prospective students because they often defer tuition until you are able to pay or, in some cases, until you actually land a job following graduation.
The National Center for Education Statistics found that vocational school enrollment has actually begun to rival traditional education enrollment, which shows just how popular this option is becoming. Sourcing talented tech employees from vocational schools can give you employees who have some industry experience and all the skills needed to enter a specific career path.
Identify Accredited Bootcamps
Not dissimilar to vocational schools, bootcamps are even more intensive forms of education that are centered around one specific career. The trend of educational bootcamps originated with coding bootcamps over the last decade but has evolved dramatically since then. Just to emphasize the variety in tech-based bootcamps, there are now highly-rated data science bootcamps that prepare students for a career in the field.
Keep in mind that data science is a field that used to require a master’s degree, but has recently become more available for anyone willing to learn.
There are a number of tech fields, such as data science, that offer bootcamps as a form of preparation. Most of these bootcamps are accredited and often provide students with more hands-on industry experience than a traditional path.
No matter in which country you are, there is likely a tech-based bootcamp near you producing a number of highly skilled potential tech employees every year. Sourcing directly from these can help your company to reduce training expenses that often arise with new graduates from a traditional college or university.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with finding tech talent from a university. As the importance of tech skills increases, however, it will also become important to find new locations to source talent from.
Tech-specific educational institutions, such as trade schools or bootcamps, often offer industry mentors that can help students to be more highly skilled than their university counterparts.
Recruiting from only one source will only provide a narrow list of candidates when the potential number is, in reality, so much more.