Are you one of the many businesses that are struggling to attract and retain diverse tech talent?

Leading businesses are increasingly finding professional apprenticeships an attractive way to find and retain diverse talent because apprenticeship programs open the door to hiring veterans, women, underrepresented minorities, and those with disabilities, as well as upskilling incumbent workforce.

According to the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 70% of people in the U.S. do not have a college degree. So, if your company requires a college degree for every role, you are missing a huge portion of the workforce that most likely could be trained to do the work.

Adding to that issue is that more traditional education and training models, such as college degree programs, may be slower to adapt or unable to provide the latest skills at the pace employers need. So many people, even with a degree, lack experience to get a job in high demand sectors.

Many sectors are struggling to fill roles—and nationally no sector is as tight as tech with over 3.9M open tech jobs and huge growth in roles projected each year across cybersecurity, UX, and software development to areas like gaming, cloud, and IT business analysis.

According to Ars Technica, “The U.S. produces about 65,000 students with computer science degrees each year, a number that’s gone up dramatically over the past few decades.”

Although, the number of students completing AP courses in computer science is dropping—and with a rate of 65K graduates per year with 3.9M+ open roles, we’ll never find enough people to fill open tech roles to grow our businesses.

Apprenticeship programs connect training to work via work-based learning. People who apply to apprenticeship programs get the role-specific training they need while working on the job, providing value to your company and becoming productive team members in the matter of months.

So, if you are interested in having a diverse workforce, consider growing one via apprenticeship. Start now by removing barriers to entry: 

1. Identify people internally who are champions for leadership, mentorship, and diversity who can drive the process.

2. Review job posts and role descriptions:

• Requirements for degrees — Are they really necessary or truly required?
  • Acronyms — Do you list internal acronyms or industry jargon that limits your pool?
  • Experience required — Are expectations realistic? Is time even a measure of competency? Can you train someone to learn what you want?
  • Culture addition — Do you look at people for what they can ADD to your culture and teams or do you require that they FIT into your culture? 
  • Pronouns, gendered or ableist language — Do you use language that excludes people? Requirements like “able-bodied,” “young talent,” or language that is gendered? Consider tools like GenderDeCoder to help.
  • Focus on durable human skills — Technical skills can be taught, and with the pace of change in technical skills, the ability to learn new skills is more important than years of experience with decaying technical tools.

3. Consider your interview process:

• Listen for transferable skills — Bring a more human approach to hiring by highlighting necessary durable human skills such as attention to detail, curiosity, ideation, communication and empathy.
  • Eliminate whiteboarding — Poorly constructed time-sucking code challenges or hazing puzzles that have nothing to do with the work hinder the hiring process and limit the candidate pool.
  • Human-centered process — Remove identifiers from resumes like name, educational attainments, or detailed work history. 
  • Standardize interviews — Train those who interview to conduct accessible interviews that are not only legally compliant, but also more reliably predict the success of a candidate in the role. 
  • Create a rubric — In addition to standardized questions, provide a rubric to grade responses that gives guidance and metrics for evaluating.

4. Examine work policies like flex time, work from home, paid time off, professional development support, childcare, or other policies that may help you not only attract but also retain a more diverse workforce

5. Consider trends in tech, growth in business needs, and opportunities to support your current workforce.

Growing talent internally through training and promotion is a step forward in creating life-long learning as a practice. Apprenticeship as a model transforms hiring from one of consuming resources to hiring humans. Adding apprenticeship to your talent development strategies brings innovation, motivation, and bottom-line success at all levels. Everyone on your team wins when people get to grow and be their best selves at work. 

Workmorphis provides a full suite of services, including strategic advising and implementation and diversified workforce pipeline strategies, to help employers attract professionals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences to maximize opportunities for the company and employees.

Meet the Authors

Evelyn Van Til (Author) is a culture architect active in designing and delivering innovation in hiring tech talent. She currently serves as the National Apprentice Experience Program Manager at Apprenti where she delivers onboarding programs connecting people into software development, cybersecurity, network, DevOps, cloud, data, tech support, analyst or sales via apprenticeships at local businesses. Based in Columbus, Ohio, she has previously served at The Ohio State University, The Ohio Department of Education, Tech Talent South, along with a variety of other roles in tech education and workforce development.  

Apprenti is bridging the tech talent and diversity gaps, igniting a new paradigm in apprenticeship to develop untapped talent and strengthen the tech ecosystem nationwide

Emily Fabiano (Contributor) is the founder of Workmorphis, a cross-sector workforce consultancy helping organizations build a more resilient workforce to thrive in a changing economy. Fabiano has deep experience in workforce transformation at the government level, working at the cross section of workforce strategy, economic development, and public policy. With a keen understanding of the unique challenges facing today’s and tomorrow’s workforce and the ability to communicate across sectors, Fabiano brings a new level of understanding and collaboration required to address the necessary changes to better connect industry and education to prepare people for jobs.