The events of this year have forced many of us to deal with perennial, pre-pandemic problems with a lot more urgency. Tech training is one such issue.
The old model simply isn’t working.
Take this sobering headline from Gartner: Stop training employees in skills they’ll never use. According to their analysis, over 30% of the skills needed to do a white-collar job three years ago will soon be irrelevant. That means millions, perhaps even billions, are being spent on training that can’t be used.
But this doesn’t mean training is useless or unnecessary. In fact, it’s never been more important.
Covid has transformed digital initiatives into digital imperatives. All of the digital transformation programmes that seemed too difficult or expensive six months ago now seem essential.
Digital transformation – at pace and at scale – relies on another kind of transformation: the transformation of your current workforce into a digitally skilled, technically empowered workforce.
So, to recap: you need to transform and you need the talent to do it.
In an ideal world, you could just hire the tech talent you need. The problem is, in the real world, everyone else is thinking along the same lines. The talent shortage has become a talent drought.
Your only other option is to build on your internal technical capabilities. But this is easier said than done. Traditional training practices were never designed for a world in lockdown and often they fail to deliver desired results in short timeframes.
What you need is highly specific training that’s learner-centric, high impact and aligned with the strategic goals of your business.
Or, in other words, you need what QA calls TechTalent Acceleration. TechTalent Acceleration is a comprehensive portfolio of market-leading tech talent and training services to help you get the tech talent you need, fast. These services include our digital bootcamps.
How digital bootcamps work
What you see is what you get: tech talent, fast. We’re talking as quick as 60 days fast.
Our programmes last between 8 and 16 weeks depending on the technical skill-set but for most disciplines, we can comfortably transform a novice into a professional in just 12 weeks. And it doesn’t matter if they’ve never written a line of code. Our high-intensity, precision learning methodology is specifically designed for beginners.
There are three ways it can have an impact on your business.
You can rapidly redeploy employees from one department to another. Take a look at our Nationwide case study for an example.
Or you can integrate it with your hiring process to transform high-potential recruits into IT specialists. That’s what BAE Systems did. They entered new hires into the programme and, after just 16 weeks, were able to place them on technical projects.
Equally, you can build capability where you need it, at speed, by making use of our market-leading Tech Academy. We regularly train and then deploy QA people to businesses like yours to boost existing teams. These skilled reinforcements will support and contribute to your teams from the moment they start working for you – freeing up bandwidth so your people can get innovative and fill gaps in your transformation processes. Find out how the Department for Education used this approach to scale up their Microsoft Azure knowledge.
And at the end of two years, you can choose to keep all that accumulated knowledge by employing these individuals permanently.
Here’s what the British Computer Society had to say about our approach to developing tech talent:
"This is a well-designed, well-run and well-led programme. I have no doubt that when candidates leave the Academy, they have the capability, both technically and professionally, to rapidly deliver at Level 3 [of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)] within their first engagement, if the role demands it.
"The syllabus is relevant and robust, the fact that it is regularly reviewed to reflect changing demand and emerging technologies (where these are known to be used by QA clients) will ensure that it remains so."
Empowering people to do extraordinary technical things
However you choose to use it, the fact is that TechTalent Acceleration just plain works.
And that’s not just because of our learning methodology. Or our expertise. Or our training talent.
It’s because of the philosophy that ties all of these things together. We believe it’s possible to achieve the most daunting digital transformation goals without compromising on the learner experience.
In fact, the two go together. Create a relevant and accessible learning experience that’s built around personal needs and broader business goals and you can spark grassroots transformation; a ripple effect that resonates across the business, or even the wider community. We’ve seen how well this type of programme can work at grassroots level with our Teach the Nation to Code campaign, designed to bring anyone into tech, regardless of their background or experience.
This is a new way to transform your business that’s practical, cost-effective and led from the ground up. And it’s arrived just in time.
This is the third in a series of blog posts on digital transformation. In previous posts, we looked at how to emerge stronger from this crisis, and how to lead an L&D revolution. Don’t miss them.