Blame it on the pandemic or the compounding effect of this year's other headline-rattling trends: unfilled jobs are still a bleeding wound. Even before the pandemic started, businesses were already struggling to hire tech talent; the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation considerably worse by creating massive demand for digitalisation of businesses with moving the delivery of products and services to a digital format.
Most tech CEOs will swear by the fact that they are not finding enough candidates to meet engineering and growth demand – most have struggled and failed to meet the H1 FY 2021 recruiting goals. Evidently a growing number of companies are seeking shelter under the digital avatar of a time-tested solution: apprenticeships!
Apprenticeships, which emphasize learning in context, learning by doing and earning while learning, can go a long way helping organisations build the talent pool they want without endlessly waiting for the talented lot to walk through their doors. For students, college degree isn't the only path to success - for some it could be a technical polytechnic and a vocational training program while for some others it's an apprenticeship.
In the past, apprenticeship programs have focused squarely on traditional trades such as electricians, plumbers, machine workers and field sales; but there lies a great possibility in non-traditional apprenticeship trades — such as tech support services, software testing, digital marketing, content writing and other fast-growing sectors. Also different this time is the rise of a fresh partnership that connect a golden triad: employers, educators and apprentices.
Most employers agree that skills, and often not qualifications, are a far better determinant of a candidate’s suitability for the job. A recent survey found that approximately half of respondents had landed in their tech jobs via a non-traditional route - upskilling, reskilling, or capitalising on transferrable competencies from non-tech roles or apprenticeships. It's exciting because our traditional thesis is that education provides a strong bridge to career opportunities.
Several organisations agree that the way we used to do trainings often doesn't work; apprenticeships are a real tangible model and can solve a pile of problems - from helping attract and retain a diverse workforce to opening employer doors for many candidates. And better than ‘boot camps’, apprenticeships pay candidates from day one rather than saddling them with high fees, income sharing arrangements or high debt.
From an Indian perspective, the idea that you have to go to college is more deeply entrenched than elsewhere - but of our 993 universities and 53000 colleges, only a small percentage have high enough outcomes with low enough costs to be a worthwhile outcome for a working adult learner. College needs to be a choice available for everyone, not the only pathway to a career.
Several universities have created interesting 12-36 month modular degree programs in various areas like software coding, software testing, digital marketing, people leadership and project management. They enrol candidates, set up apprenticeship cohorts, organise coaching programs and curriculums; the companies working with them get to customise the program, pay the stipend and reserve the right to decide if they'll turn apprentices into hires. The beauty of apprenticeships is there's no friction– candidates get a job, employers love these diverse set of less-expensive purpose-trained entry-level talents.
With a few million jobs in the tech industry unfilled because employers can't find qualified help, there's a massive shift going on in how our economy will fare. Degree apprenticeships could be the expressway for getting specially trained people into those unfilled jobs.
As per a recent study, most employers surveyed agreed that investment in apprenticeship based training models provided much higher ROI than most hurdle rates of capital investment by reducing the cost of hiring, improving the productivity of the new hire and helping reduce the attrition rates.
Most tech companies are under pressure right now and have started to experience growth pains due to the imbalance between supply and demand — and it doesn't feel good. Apprenticeship programs, if curated and implemented well, can come to their rescue.
(Shantanu Rooj isFounder & CEO, TeamLease EdTech)
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