Seeking Tech Talent, Companies Kickstart Apprenticeship Programs
31 January 2020 - 2:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Agam Shah
Companies challenged by the shortage of skilled technology staff
are using an old-fashioned method -- the apprenticeship -- to
recruit nontraditional workers for entry-level roles.
The applicants, many with just a high-school education, are
getting months of training in digital skills, including programming
languages such as C++, building a pathway to more challenging roles
and higher salaries.
"The rapid change seen particularly in high-tech presents a
challenge for education to adapt quickly enough. Industry cannot
wait and is forced to take additional steps," said Charlie
Ackerman, senior vice president of human resources for North
America at Robert Bosch GmbH. The Germany-based engineering company
and auto-parts supplier is focusing on developing its electric and
autonomous car technologies.
As soon as this quarter, Bosch's North American unit, based in
Farmington Hills, Mich., plans to kick off a 12-month tech
apprenticeship program to train applicants to write code that
supports emerging technologies such as driver assistance and
autonomous vehicles.
Bosch has included technology training in its German
apprenticeships since 2015.
While the four-year college degree remains a top indicator for
gauging success, it isn't the only one, especially as need outpaces
supply.
Recruiting tech talent was a challenge for about 80% of roughly
2,800 U.S. employers surveyed in 2019 by Robert Half International
Inc. The number of software-developer jobs is expected to grow 21%
between 2018 and 2028, faster than the 5% average of all
occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"CIOs are concerned because they are competing with the likes of
the big tech companies for the same talent," said James Atkinson,
vice president of quantitative analytics and data science at
Gartner Inc.'s human resources research and advisory practice.
Bosch plans to train 16 apprentices in fundamentals such as
system architecture, design and coding in the C++ programming
language, which is useful in engine management and braking systems.
They will also spend a minimum of 128 hours training in soft
skills, including communication, presentations, collaboration and
project management. Applicants must have a high-school diploma.
The first cohort will account for about 5% of the 342 software
engineers the company plans to hire this year. Eventually, Bosch
expects the apprentice program to grow to 20% to 25% of annual
software-engineer hires.
"We have to get over some mental paradigms that we have about
recruiting and the standards that we have," said Mr. Ackerman,
adding that he had to convince division engineering heads of the
benefits of bringing in software engineers without college degrees.
Technical experts at Bosch will serve as mentors to the
apprentices.
Bosch is registering the apprenticeship program with the U.S.
Department of Labor, which has set standards for levels of
classroom training, job supervision and other metrics specific to a
job.
The U.S. wants to replicate Germany's well-known apprenticeship
program. The effort comes as Germany itself is struggling to find
enough apprentices because young people make up a dwindling portion
of the population and many of them are interested in college.
Besides teaching technology skills, some companies are using
apprenticeships as an opportunity to diversify their workforce.
U.K.-based bank Barclays PLC has taken on more than 100 tech
apprentices in the U.S. since it started a program in 2013 to fill
technology roles in areas including software and storage
administration.
"The apprentice program helps us hire people from the local
community who would not necessarily get this opportunity because
they've been disadvantaged in terms of getting the education on
their résumé to even qualify to apply through traditional methods,"
said Brian Dolan, managing director for client-facing technology at
Barclays Investment Bank, the investment-banking arm.
Barclays places apprentices in locations including New York
City. Applicants don't need a college degree.
An apprentice who joined recently was trained on Linux and
analytics software Splunk. Apprentices take online courses and
shadow managers as part of the learning process.
Since International Business Machines Corp. started its
apprenticeship program in 2017, it has hired applicants including a
nurse, a police officer and a nail technician. Applicants need to
have a high-school diploma or GED.
The company has hired about 500 apprentices so far and plans to
hire more than 450 of them this year, said Obed Louissaint, vice
president of talent at IBM.
The program provides on-the-job training for more than 20 roles,
including administration of mainframes, which companies and U.S.
states are still using to run legacy applications.
"At the core of building our neural networks and algorithms you
may not have an apprentice, but that doesn't mean that on the
testing or support side you couldn't," Mr. Louissaint said.
Write to Agam Shah at agam.shah@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 30, 2020 10:14 ET (15:14 GMT)
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