AWS re:Invent 2023 - Working globally to build tech skills and talent pipelines (WPS104)

thanks for braving it all the way to the third floor of the MGM so I hope you didn't have to come far uh so by as a point of introduction I'm Valerie singer and I'm the general manager for Global education here at Amazon web services and uh I'm very happy to be here to talk about our Tech alliances and skills to jobs which is a team uh that is housed under Global education at AWS um and uh as you might have heard in press announcements and we just had a Blog that was released today um we've been working on this new Initiative for quite a while to build new Talent pipelines and to address the growing skills Gap um our team focuses most widely on early career talent and creating diverse pipelines of talent to help our employers uh continue to innovate and to work in digital skills and Cloud more effectively and we're doing this um really for uh around the world and we have uh we're working with about 78 institutions globally which serve about 380,000 students um so again this is a coalition our Tech Alliance of government education in our employer Community we also bring in business conveners you'll hear from one today sitting next to me um and we work backwards from the skills needs of our employers really to understand what their signaling is in their organization and culcate that into curriculum and education and bring government and convenor bodies in to make sure that our early career Learners have a pathway to good paying uh high growth jobs um and so we're going to be discussing the tech Alliance today um and then joining me on stage is ksten Barnett who's the executive director of the New York jobs CEO Council uh ignasio Ronda Cals who's joined us from Spain and he is the technology executive principal at NTT data Europe and laam and then Grant Milstead the BP of digital digital technology came with an Entourage at United Airlines so glad to have you all here today and thank you all for joining us on the panel so uh let's start with the current state of the global skills Gap and um there are lots of Statistics that we can share with you but I will share a couple of them and that's in the US we see that the the cloud growth of jobs will compound 15% year-over-year to 2031 and so that's an awful lot of jobs that need to be filled um and that need to be filled early um in order to ensure that our employer and employer Community can still uh you know keep up with the pace of innovation in Europe uh 57% of all Enterprise report that they uh have skills gaps and that these skills gaps are impeding their progress to be able to innovate and change within their organizations um some other stats are if early career Talent pipelines are continuing to funnel uh this level of talent into Enterprises we can actually change the GDP quite considerably early CER Talent by 2030 uh can impact the GDP by about 1.2$ 1.5 trillion dollar so this is a really big problem and also a really great opportunity for economic development um so there's great trend lines that we can talk about but I do want to pass it on to our panel here so let's start with aosi um you are working with our Spain Tech Alliance and across Europe um so talk a little bit um or tell us a little bit about how NT what challenges you're facing and then how you're addressing them within your organization yeah thank you Valerie U yes as you said it's um huge challenge um in our case uh enti data we work uh Professional Services uh for a lot of customers different sectors and we basically apply technology to transform the business of our customers and this is not possible uh if we have uh problems with the talent so without Talent we cannot develop those Transformations and that's an issue for us because we we cannot U run our business as we expect but also it's it's a problem for um our customers that cannot uh be as competitive as as they could and also I would say it's a general Society problem because uh if we do not solve that issue with the talent Gap we cannot evolve at the speed we could so I mean it's huge Challenge and that's why we are getting very creative and uh joining the tech Alliance it's one of the good initiative we are doing to solve that cup so thank you for that so Kirsten on your side too you're seeing this um as a convenor body of a lot of employers the same types of challenges that agosi just talked about but in the city of New York um similar with the economic development um aspirations that New York has to be Tech Hub can you talk a little bit about um how the tech Alliance is it positively impacting your council's members and also what how this is impacting New York sure yeah so to zoom out just for a minute you know New York is home to some of the country's world's largest employers and greatest employers and they need to have access to the talent in their backyard that's skilled in order to thrive at the same time New York is also a place that has a lot of challenges we have huge socioeconomic divides um opportunity gaps and so we have this huge potential talent pool there that is not currently thriving um and so the the creation of the council was really born out of those two truths uh this the the actual what happened was um the CEO JP Morgan Jamie Diamond convened a group of CEOs including Andy jasse and for a dinner in 2020 that I talked about those two things they're all large employers either based there or have large presences there and said how we're all in a war for talent particularly highly specialized technical roles and we're also want to hire more local talent than we're able to so how can we as private sector leaders Beyond philanthropy do something that's Market driven that really benefits both job Seekers and employers and makes the city stronger and so that's what we are focused on is is taking a city that I classify as program rich but system poor and building a system that works for New Yorkers and and works for employers and what we love about the tech Alliance is I don't think of it as a program I think of it as something that's in a system you're you're actually building in the curriculum into um we do a lot of work with with the City University of New York you're building this into the curriculum that students are receiving to make sure what they're learning in the classroom is exactly what employers are going to be valuing and that bridging of of employers and um Employers in education there's just no other way to do it in a way that's Driving Systems change than to have those two more closely aligned than they have been in the past thank you for that and so the city of Chicago which is the home to United Airlines and 88,000 employees um this is now a an urgent need for your organization as well um and so when we talk about entry-level talent and coming into an organization we also see that when we bring in talent and we give them the support the supportive structure that they need um they there's less attrition there's there's lower turnover there's a higher diversity ratio in in um in your organization and innov and innovation andil becomes much higher so can you talk a little bit about United's Journey um and how you adopted Cloud first approach and then that how that then uh that then kind of Lent itself to entry-level talent and an ATT Tech Alliance yeah absolutely Val um you know on the whole this is the this is everyone's problem you know we're all in it together um I think you made the point that there is just not enough candidates at an entry level uh skill set both in kind of traditional career paths and non-traditional career paths and so for United We Serve 460 communities around the globe and we took a look at those communities and just said Hey how do we get more talent in our organization that is as diverse as the customer base that we represent and so we started looking at alternate paths and so at United we uh we created a program that we call innovate and innovate is a combination of apprenticeships internships and kind of your four-year tradition entry level candidates all coming together into one program and that pathway um has really been incredible for us on the apprenticeship side um we started with just 12 apprentices um we're up to about 50 apprentices in our program and we plan to grow at about threefold between now and 2025 and we've already converted um 12 of those apprentices to full-time employees so we're so excited you know a program that we didn't have three years ago is now creating new early career Pathways to our organization um and it's been an incredible learning opportunity both for the apprentices joining United but then also for our employees who get the great experience of growing Talent within the organization seeing somebody grow through an apprenticeship and then seeing them get hired at United so it's early days but we're so excited about that so I'm going to ask a follow-up question I've got so many questions on this too as you know but uh the followup question is really around the ancillary effects or the KnockOn effects of bringing in early career talent and an apprenticeship program can you and I had this conversation about the benefits to the existing organizations so can you talk a little bit about how that helps the growth and development of current employees yeah 100% um you know first of all when apprentices come into the organization it was new for United and so we asked ourselves you know what skills are these apprentices going to have what do we need to grow in terms of learning and skill set through the organization and I think first and foremost we've been really really impressed with the capabilities of apprentices and how they've GR grown in the organization and in terms of internal benefits one of the things that we're seeing is it's a great opportunity for high potential employees that are not yet leaders they're not yet managers um to be able to be a coach and an assignment leader of an apprentice and as that Apprentice is growing in their skills and and adopting technical skills um we're seeing some of our high potential technical leaders grow in their leadership skills and their communication skills and their feedback skills and that's been an incredible kind of knock effect from the organization um it's also been incredible in terms of our retention you know employees that are part of this program they're passionate about it it tends to be kind of a Grassroots program where employees that have passion uh want to be assignment leaders and it makes them feel like they have you know really a place in the organization in a place in the mission of United um and we're just so excited about that growth and the leaders that are coming out of that program both in terms of the apprentices but then also some of the young leaders that are growing to be managers through that experience as well I love that um one of the one of the questions we get a lot in the tech Alliance is not just about uh Bridging the skills Gap or training early early Learners on skills that they can then take into the organizations they're going to be serving but how do we help our early career Talent develop the the soft skills or we call them durable skills that they need to be successful and NT has had uh great success in onboarding uh new career talents and bringing them into an organization into the organization so that they have the cultural underpinings to be successful soosi tell us a little bit about what NTT is doing there yeah exactly I mean um one of the situations we were facing was um that we have um all the entry levels um employees joining the company we had to spend a lot of effort in on boarding them within the company to to make them ready for a productive uh to work with a real customer um and in in those programs um during the onboarding we do we doing uh basically technical um stack U trainings but also soft skills methodology and so on and that's that's because uh what we were seeing is that uh when they finish the formal education they still have a huge gap to be uh really productive and that's not as I was saying not only on the technology stack because um we'll be talking later about the technology is evolving so fast that it's uh it's almost impossible to to catch up so you need to continous be be learning but especially on on the way we work with our customers uh having team building working as a team working together um well how we help each other so that kind of training uh that's something that we had to to do in the past now with the tech Alliance we are um uh starting that process before so it means we are not doing this during our our onboarding process but we start that onboarding process during the educational the official uh part so that that part we we gain some time and obviously we save some money uh and we see that the final result when they finalize the official education they are more ready for for real real world uh environment so I mean that's very good experience in that case that's great best practices so we have reinforced learning and uh and mentoring that helps develop Future Leaders continuous learning on your side and also ensuring that you're onboarding early quer Talent with the kinds of incubated support systems that they need in order to be successful so thank you um and as we mentioned the tech Alliance is the is it it brings together a lot of bodies education government the employer community and our business conveners like New York job CEO Council um but a huge part of of this is how education uh and educational institutions can really uh help with developing the curriculum it's relevant to early career talent and that matches the skills that employers need um so Kirsten talk I want to ask you a little bit about the unique relationship that New York job CEO Council has with City University of New York which we call cuni uh to support and connect students to Industry and how that pathway works or so what are some of the best practices that you're seeing in New York that this group can also maybe consider in their world so CI the City University of New York is is was our first partner and one of our strongest as we're building public private Partnerships and just to share a little about cuni for those who aren't familiar it's 25 different public colleges eight of which are two-year degree schools um it all within the five buroughs of of New York it's 250,000 degree seeking students another 250 that are non um half of CI students come from families that earn under $30,000 a year in New York City and uh almost all of commity students 85% or so are people of color so it's this Rich pool of talent that is this target market for for our companies um and as my other two fellow panelists just mentioned our companies have been changing their hiring practices and rethinking how they make that door wider to talent but just making it wider doesn't naturally fix the problem you also then have to make sure that the talent has the skills that you need and aligning business a really the only way to do that and so um with Partnerships like the tech Alliance C's been an incredible partner because they can essentially help steer us with where are the schools that need help the most with their curriculum where also does it align the most with our partners our fellow companies partners and missions which is why we started with some of the community colleges um and how can this connect with the hiring practices and changes that our employers are making internally so that this is just one long funnel um and I think you know so far we I think we have 12 1200 or so students and and enrolled in the in the curriculum that Amazon has helped shape but there's you know in the hundreds of thousands there is opportunity to continue that particularly as as um these Tech scills become more and more important and I'll just um mention that in in New York City right now um about half of jobs are looking for some sort of of um Cloud component and about one in five are specifically looking for AWS skills so there is a huge incentive for um both employers but also these colleges there's a commercial reason for them too to make sure that their curriculum is strong Market driven and really connected in the classroom to what employers are going to value in the workforce afterward thank you for that and so Grant you're also in in Chicago we have a similar construct with p33 ist stars and with city colleges um so tell us a little bit about as you and as an employer engage with those local bodies both convener bodies as well as educational institutions to bring in Talent yeah I mean I think you know for us one of the maybe one of the of the first surprises we had is a lot of these organizations they don't actually know what skills you know corporations are looking for and so some of the first kind of Partnerships that we developed both with city colleges and then organizations like IC stars um and p33 was really doing a skills assessment and a skills map and mapping some of the curriculum in each of those um you know educational institutions and and private institutions to the skills in our organization and you know in many uh in many ways it was kind of a blank canvas um and a great opportunity for us to you know start to mold and and shape the skill sets that come out of those um capabilities and it flows right into the pipelines that we have United so that way um especially on the apprenticeship side you know that apprentices are coming in with some some base skills that are going to really be helpful and really align to the technology capabilities that we have I think the other thing though that was a little bit of a surprise is you know there's a misnomer around apprentices that they're going to focus on the help desk or they're going to be racking servers or things like that and with our focus on cloud we've had apprentices in Cloud working in AWS and it's been an opportunity as our organization has grown on that cloud journey to also bring a career path for apprentices through that skill set of full stack development Cloud work um and devops and so we've been able to expand the skills that we've had in the various tracks in the apprenticeship program um through our partnership with those organizations and then also through the experience of us moving to the cloud over the last couple years that's fantastic to hear so like it's it's some it's all very good news but there're also uh our challenges right and so one of the uh challenge with the siy Stars for instance is that they produce 50 apprentices and uh and United takes them all so how do you know how can we create more for the community of Learners as well as for the community of employers in Chicago I mean is there a scale mechanism that you're taking a look at there yeah I mean absolutely absolutely I would I would say you know two things within united we have a motto that we call inclusion propels Innovation and the concept there is both inclusive practices of allowing employees to take risks allowing employees to offer up ideas allowing employees to really extend themselves Beyond you know their job responsibility tends to take us to a place much higher than we would have planned and so some of our scale especially even in innovate Has Come From Amazing Ideas internally in the organization different Pathways different Partnerships um different organizations that employees were part of outside of United that they brought to us um but then on top of that to your point we're also stretching some of our partner organizations you know Partners you know maybe thought a class of 25 or 50 was sufficient because they weren't sure on the demand you know the tech job market right now can be a little iffy in certain markets and so when United goes and takes a full class of IC Stars it shows there's demand and so so we've been you know again we've got a a goal of growing three-fold we're sharing those plans with the various pipelines that we're working with and really helping them plan out that demand and Chicago just like New York is a huge Market there's a lot of Corporations like United and so the more that we band together and really you know make this a part of our core capability it's really a 1 plus 1 equals 3 scenario where all these organizations start thinking bigger start thinking at higher scale and know that we can accept that scale as well Val can I just jump on to such a good point um around the scaling to more and more employers I mean that's how you get to scale and I think that's also one of the benefits of working with the community college system or with existing systems is that there are some other amazing apprenticeship programs out there and ones that we endorse but are very expensive for the employer and so for large employers that might be fine but to really make it a system you need to have a solution that's going to work for midsize employers and small employers that may not have that internal training capacity um or or the ability to pay for someone else to go out and recruit and train these apprentices and so the community college system already being there and taking that and and enhancing it and having it involved to meet employer needs I think really is your your your solution to having it work for all employers yeah I agree and when we go outside the United States uh the community college system is something that's fairly unique in to the United States um but in places like Spain there is an analog and that would be the Vocational Technical uh system and so OSI do you want to talk a little bit about how NTT is helping to bridge those uh those Tech gaps and take those Learners in um using that votch system which provides the basis for diversity and equity and inclusion in that base of of Learners yeah I would say um taking into account in all the countries where we operate um there are common challenges so I would not say there specific things from in Spain in Spain we have some mechanism as you mentioned U that allow us to well start that process earlier so we start merging all the education with the employers so that we can start working together and then find that that that solution and and we are um doing this in a let's say different way um so that we can even engage more the all the students uh for instance we created a jam session um in the region which is U kind of a hakon um which uh basically make some education schools to compete among them with a technical Challenge and that's a different way of uh learning uh AWS technology uh while they U enjoy uh and we have also the chance to know all these students uh to also see which are the ones which match more to uh to our core values uh so that we we can see which are the future employers that that could could fit better to to our company so uh that that's one example uh we are doing all the kind of programs especially for uh um woman in Tech or woman in the cloud um to to basically cover one of the gaps we see and that's in Spain and but in generally in all Europe we uh we see that we lack aot a lot of uh woman um talent in our in our teams and that's something we we want to invest in and also would like also to mention uh because you said div diversity right um diversity I mean that that's very important because what we see is that I mean we have diversity in our customers and our customers have diversity on their customers so if we provide Solutions which uh doesn't provide that ingredient of the diversity it lacks uh the well the the the requirements we uh well our customers are expecting to us so that that's why participating in restart program for instance with AWS is helping us to bring that diversity with people with uh different backgrounds not coming from technology but uh now starting in technology with um different uh experiences uh that's helping a lot to to make more diverse team di best solutions for for our customers so I mean that's that that's how we see it in his Spain as well that's fantastic and so for uh those of you who are not familiar with restart uh restart is a free program offered by our training and certification teams under our education programs uh that offers cohorts of about 25 diverse Learners at a time the opportunity to dive deeper into technology in a 12-week uh intensive kind of course that provides them the opportunity to then uh gain skills for jobs so that's that's a a great uh use case for for that um so ksten one of my favorite examples of how this has worked um was a learner whom we met at in April uh at the announcement of the um of the New York job CEO Council cuni New York mayor's office in AWS um launch of the tech Alliance and it was about Hector Rodriguez so Hector uh was working as a massage therapist if I remember this correctly and uh then rescaled at Queensboro Community College and was then um hired at a financial services company as an analyst and it was showed this really great pathway of being able to Res skill for a position that would provide him with a a much higher um job growth and and opportunity going forward um which is also a great example of how uh really focusing on a diverse set of Learners can move the needle so can you talk a little bit about the commitment of New York job CEO Council to work with the organizations especially in education to create that diversity and inclusion pathway for these Learners yeah and I mean Hector's a great example of a success story you know right now I feel we have a lot of proof points but probably our biggest challenge as a council is that the what's working is not what's worked in the past and so it is unfamiliar both to employers but also to job Seekers and sometimes I think we take for granted that if you build it they will come that is not always the case they only you have to meet um job Seekers where they are and your talent pools where they are they only know what they know um and so I mean for an example of what's working our our 30 companies over the past two years have hired 30,000 low-income New Yorkers into jobs that are family sustaining so this year I think that's $69,000 which is a great proof point so things are working at the same time just last week I was in a meeting around another partnership we have where we we didn't get the number of of stud not enough students to fill the seats essentially of of the employers um that had them open and which is such a shame because you feel like each seat there is life uh life changed how are they not all there and what we we hear anecdotally a lot um from a a student like that that maybe got an internship at JP Morgan and then turned it down is they're afraid to leave their job at CVS almost all Comm students are working part or full-time in addition to school and they think if I leave this job CVS or Starbucks to go do an apprenticeship program an internship program whatever it might be in three months what will I do and so some of this is education to say you know Amazon Bloomberg JP Morgan they pay better in their internships than what you're making right now so that gives you a little cushion when you get back um to to to get that next job but also if you don't do this you're it's going to be really hard to get those jobs so this these are the opportunities and this is where you need to get in the funnel and so educating students but also families um we do a lot of that with high schoolers uh advisers faculty these are the people anyone that's influencing their decisions um is incredibly important especially when you're dealing with most Community students are first gen um College College off of first gen American and so this uh I just I often feel like I'm playing whacka for a job you saw for one thing like we've built this great program and then you have these great proof points like Hector but then you also have these examples of where it's still not working even though it's built so that is you know our our biggest challenge but also our biggest opportunity to drive change and I think that's where our government comes in to so we've seen um and Chris I'm throw this back at you we've seen a huge amount of activity with the New York mayor's office um and their Skilling uh groups to you know really make a commitment but we've also seen it now with the governor right of New York um and she has uh she has now initiated a few really creative programs to make sure that Learners have an opportunity to at least know that they can enter a system and um and gain an education so you want to talk a little bit about that too because I think that's important to know that it's not just employers on our side or these convenor organizations but governments really need to be involved in this as well it is I think you really need a trifecta and at the right time in or and it's not something that you can fabricate or make you know um we are lucky that right now the jobs council is two two three years old um and right now we have the Adams ad Eric's Adams Administration in in the mayor's office um which is an Administration very focused on Workforce Development very forward thinking um he's made a commitment to 30,000 apprenticeships over the by 2030 and that includes trade that exists but a big fuel um fueler of that is going to be increasing professional apprenticeship so what we're talking about today and making that mainstream because again there are proof points but they're not mainstream yet um and you cannot do that I really do feel we are lucky and the success we've had it is because we had we had local government we've had employers that are incredibly engaged and really committed to this at the highest level with their CEOs and then we've had education that's been a really receptive um uh partner as well in in helping um change the needle so without that I I think it is is really hard to you can make progress but you really can't change the system without all three of those players very aligned um and then it's also nice that while our local and state government aren't always aligned on everything they are also quite aligned when it comes to Workforce Development and the importance of of um of Skilling talent and in particularly to keep employers um in the state in the city so so we feel lucky for that there's more funding coming in to help supplement um that you know what our employers are already doing um but yeah it is uh it it's It's never enough it's still it's still you still always take more so yeah but it's interesting I mean so so this year though the governor's office uh initiated a program where um the students throughout this the state of New York are getting invitations to either City University of New York or State University to apply uh with a guaranteed position and they had the opportunity to do that before but they just they weren't solicited right so they might not have known and so the on-ramps into education are be becoming much more clear uh just by opening the mail which I think is really important that's a great point but back to what you only know what you know to look for um and particular when you look at high school students um same thing for the first time this year Cy sent every high school student a letter their advisor handed it to them and then they also sent one home to the m of families that said congratulations you're accepted to one of the CI schools now that's always been the case the community colleges cannot turn people away so like that is that is you have to be able to do that but the change in the application rates they also said well wave the application rates if you apply by October trying to get students to do this early here's information on how to fill out your FAFSA form I just dropped an earring um and so anyway making sure that that was right in front of them it it changed the whole perception thank you on um on particularly for families that weren't as familiar to say oh wait look my child could go to college and oh wait it's also probably going to be free things that again that have always been there but but you have to meet people where they are they don't know to look for it so back to you um Grant about city colleges the pritsker foundation Governor pritzker so you've got a it I I feel like we're maybe not quite as ahead um but where can United and employers like United really compel governments to do the kind of work and think through some of these really urgent needs of getting new Learners into the system so that we can then get them out and into jobs so talk a little bit about how United is playing in that world yeah I mean I think you know for us highlight a couple things one is you know it's about opening the aperture we've talked a lot about getting more and more um uh opportunities for alternate Pathways into these programs and I think that's a huge role for government both in terms of government LED higher education but then also policy um the other thing I'd mention is you know there's plenty of needs outside of apprentices and actually those entry level workers for wraparound services in the organization and in organizations that support companies like United and so the more that we've talked about you know opportunities for training around coaching and mentorship opportunities around really how you support those leaders um I think there's an opportunity to kind of give more organizations the right financial support to be able to provide those and be bigger leaders um with that obviously the more that we're hiring and looking for that capability the more it'll grow you know a bit organically as well yeah I agree with that so there's also a really interesting uh world that you know kind of surrounds the uh the the extension the expansion of AWS cloud services and that is the world around U around the regions that we build um and so there are these wraparound uh opportunities for Learners there too so uh for instance our public policy team actually has a fusion splicing program that they uh that they uh sponsor with local community colleges to help to bring in more Talent into the data centers and we actually just launched a center in Aragon um in Spain and it creates opportunities for people in region to upskill and to Res skill and so you know from an NT perspective uh can you talk a little bit about the continuous learning and that cycle that uh your company goes through especially when you have these you know really big events that happen around you like a region launch um which then extends the capacity for cloud around uh your organization exactly well uh I would say I think you you properly said it's it's not uh something you do one time this is something that I mean we need to continuously invest um especially in technology in technology we need to be continuously learning technology as I said before is evolving so fast uh no one knew about the jni one year back and now everyone is a specialist or says they are a specialist um so so we need to to be continuously learning so that that's something that needs to be part of the system it's not uh something uh one time um and then if we have a special triggers like uh opening um a region in Spain that that was uh generating a lot of U jobs um in the country and it's a great opportunity uh to accelerate the pace of uh of that risk killing um as far as we have seen especially in the region of of Aragon where we have a a huge uh branch in there with almost 1,000 employees already uh we have seen a lot of people risk killing from a different kind of jobs um non-technical ones to to start working in technology so that's I mean again another excuse so having a huge investment in a region uh pays back also um in the reskilling part okay yeah fantastic uh so Nasi and I uh also were playing with the geni tool before we came uh on stage just to check out a couple of our stats which were correct by the way we didn't believe them and then we ran it through perplexity which is one of our partners and and it said yes 15% compounded annual growth on cloud jobs in the US so this is true so we've been we are experts now too exactly uh so anyway if if if you haven't heard about gen we we'll be happy to fill you in uh so so so what other question to you I guess it's more of a comment Kristen for for us to uh think through is um experiential learning so we talked a little bit about bringing um bringing the skills needs to education we've talked about the throughways for Learners to jobs uh we've talked about the soft skills that they need apprenticeship programs um but many times uh Learners are stuck in in what you talked about working at CVS I don't want to go work at JP Morgan because I'm worried this internship is not going to lead anywhere but that experiential learning is so important um so you know talk a little bit about some of the creative ways um New York job CEO council is bringing that experiential learning to those Learners so that they can have an entrance point and not feel like they're you know they're risking their incomes and yes I mean if you're going to work all through college it would make sense to work at something that's aligned you know marrying the Practical with the theoretical of what you're learning in the workplace if you look at countries like a Switzerland with very successful apprenticeship programs across the board are not purely vocational and are very mainstream it is that you know the students are going to school two days a week and they're working three days a week but it's in the same in the same vein um that also when you think about why vocational apprenticeships in this country have been so successful a lot of it is that reason so this model of learn practice learn practice makes so much more sense than just learn and then go try it in the workplace it also helps students figure out if or Learners figure out is this the right pathway for me am I interested in this we rather have them discover that they're scared of blood when they're a nursing student before they've gone you know two years in so I think that that for some reason our system just hasn't supported that to date but um it is a huge priority of ours both because our companies think it makes for better employees you get employees that know they want to be there they've already had some experience um but you also get employees that that have had that um on the job training whether or not it's it's in their workplace or not and so while that can happen in the workplace and we do have apprenticeship programs um starting in high school where they they come to employers Amazon is is one of them that also can happen uh remotely so you can have you know virtual internships um and some of those can be far more scalable or working on projects um you know marketplaces if you will where you're taking taking projects from different companies doing it in the classroom whether it's um high school or col College those are more scalable because you can it requires Less on an employer's time um you can do the same project across say you know 20 high schools um and so I think you need a combination of both because because there's not there this is not a one- siiz fits-all thing it's not one siiz fits-all for the talent and and and particularly not this Talent um nor is it for the employers and so but it is an incredibly important um thing to solve for making sure that you're you're having that practical and and workplace based learning one other thing I will mention that we're doing we we have a faculty fellowship program um for for high school and and college faculty um every summer where they come and learn about how to embed EXP experiential and practice Based Teaching and learning in their classroom uh it's been amazing to see the changes at the end they actually present on how they're going to be changing their curriculum and this is without even saying here's an apprenticeship to embed I mean this is what they're doing on their own so again the awareness there of of we can't assume that faculty would would know to do that or would think about the what employers are looking for um that driving awareness is also a huge driver of the change that we're looking for it's a really good point about making sure that faculty and Educators continue to educate themselves so that they can uh then build into their curriculum the most relevant skill sets and that they're willing to do that right and so we happen to have some very willing participants on the cuni side City University of New York um which is is really a gift to us so that we can you know really help to extend those Pathways to students really quickly um but for virtual internships if that's of interest there are several companies that do it uh we are piloting right now with a company called virtual intern ships uh there are also companies like forage and Parker Dewey who do those virtual internships for community colleges and for employers around around the world so um it's uh we've got about 85 students I think um going through that program at cuni right now um and we're very hopeful that that'll uh bridge that Gap too between I can't quit my job but I really would love to have the experience of an internship it's really good point um so you know moving to you grant just a little bit um I do want want to talk a little bit about um some of the work that you're doing just to make sure that your teams both continuously learn as well as create that diverse profile of learner um you know we've talked a lot about your apprenticeship program about innovate which has been um a really great program for you uh but where do you go from here like how do you make sure that this continues to scale and that your teams continue to grow uh with these programs so it's not just one and done yeah 100% I want to hit on one thing related to reskilling um and then I'll talk a little bit about where we go um one thing we found with reskilling is you know internally United we're 100,000 person organization and so in many ways we don't even have to look externally when we talk about reskilling and so that could be a technology professional that maybe has technology skills but they're not modern day and going through a program that we call skill buer to get them uh training on the job experience special projects um or it could be an example that I love which is we had a flight attendant who was flying for United and said you know what technology seems really interesting I'm going to spend some time take a boot camp get it get in and immersed into it and that flight attendant joined our innovate program through the early career leadership development program and not only is he thriving in the organization he's one of the best people to go when we have user requirements and user stories around flight attendants we go out and talk to flight attendants he speaks the language um coming from that skill within our organization and so it's been an incredible uh pathway for us to be able to do that even before we look externally um in terms of diversity and kind of where we go from here um I'd say early signs that things are working uh innovate is far more diverse than our kind of traditional Pathways um we're 78% people of color as part of the innovate program we're 43% women um both of those metrics far exceed kind of what we see in the stem uh the the stem mix of diverse candidates and so it's really showing us that those pathways are are leading to Great Heights for us and so you know for us I mentioned we're going to continue to grow kind of all aspects of the Innova program um and grow that across United but you know one of the things we talked about in preparation for today was also you know as an organization we're continuing to grow and adopt we had to kind of change some of our traditional methods and traditional practices so part of it too is re rethinking our job descriptions rethinking our job requirements even rethinking our job levels to make sure that um really successful candidates that come through programs like innovate have a really clear uh career path since most career paths previously had been kind of developed for more of that traditional path so changing the structures within our organization is helping us to adopt and scale internally um and that's one of the big first next steps for us as well that's a really great point when you acquire skills doesn't necessarily mean equate to a two and foure degree uh it can equate to micro you know micr badging credentialing uh work-based experience and apprenticeship um or a combination of all of those things with some college and so there's lots of different ways for a learner to come in and be complet you know hugely productive in your organization rethinking those I think is uh not for the faint of heart sometimes because those those rubrics are really ingrained right so uh so it's incumbent on all of us to really press you know pressure test that that's uh so I think we were talking when when we were um we were preparing too that uh as a hiring manager I have the option of removing some of those impediments and making sure that the pathways to Learners is is a little bit smoother and so you know for us we have lots of jobs at Amazon that don't require T forear degrees but many that are um are we have a lot of latitude in how we we then promote them externally and internally so it's a great Point um but talked about measurement um and measurement of success you know 78% 53% I those are great stats so gasi how do you know you're headed in the right direction with the programs that you're adopting I mean we we don't have the let's say the the magic U receipt for for this so we need to try an error so I mean uh we know um things work well when we can integrate um the students and the new employees into the project so that's something that we see easily um we also learn from that process so it's not that uh in the first time we do it um we we succeed so that's something that we need to adapt and and keep learning um I think that's that's something that in general we need to take into account so we we we cannot uh stay um as we are doing things the past years we need to to continue change to to adapt to the new realities so the how I know I think when uh we have a customer which is uh satisfied with our job um this is the way I see um this is working that's great when you're a Consulting organization you have like real feedback from from your your clients is for sure um another another um another discussion that we've had sort of off of this stage is uh is Tech alliances as you can imagine with all of these different component parts can be a little tricky right so bringing together education government employer Community convenor bodies um and often many convenor bodies uh you know it's it's a lot of moving Parts um and so you know the question is how do we scale right like how do we make sure that Tech alliances can uh can propagate not just in in the European countries and we just announced in Singapore um in New York in Illinois in Washington state but in other places um so Kirsten you know as the as kind of like the the you know the the nent um Tech Alliance in April that has now kind of sprung these other Tech alliances um how do you see see scalability in the future to make sure that employers continue to um to really impact how education sees Skilling and that we continue this process moving forward yeah so I mean I think one of the things that attracted us to this partnership in the beginning was that we could see the long-term sustain ability of it without additional philanthropic funding again it's built into a system um we have you know successful proof points and so the ability is there as far as the model and then that's always our our criteria to begin with I think what I have seen with with both Us and other organizations where some of the challenges come to play is you have a successful model but if you aren't and this sounds kind of in congruent if you aren't really close in the weeds to identify what some of these pain points are and a lot of that is through data but some of that is also just through real life experience you can have a successful model that fails and so and you know we don't know what we don't know employers don't know what they don't know talent doesn't know what they don't know a great example of this that doesn't directly relate to the tech Alliance but is is recently my husband came home and said Kirsten you have to have coffee with Mark our Bank of America teller said why he he said well I see him every week he's a great kid and he told me he's applying to baroo one of the CI schools and I told him you knew the president like great honey thank you and uh but so I go out to coffee with Mark and what do I learn about Mark in 20 minutes well I learned Mark is incredibly personal so no wonder my husband knows him he was amazing he's a uh three years three years ago graduated from a four-year Cy school with a double degree 38 average finance and um I can't remember the second one was and uh Mark also worked during college 40 hours a week at a Starbucks the whole time and then he got this job and so I said to mark first of all why do you want to go to grad school because I used to work at Bloomberg and I said I can tell you at Bloomberg you could go there tomorrow and make 7 ,000 the main three criteria they're looking for right now is foure degree interest in financial markets and customer service experience and now you have Starbucks and you have um what you've done at Bank of America but second of all I think Bank of America would be really disappointed to know that they're losing this Talent so there are so many disconnects there and and one of them is teaching talent to show up and to know to say it's not just employers looking at skills differently Talent has to look at them too so they come in and say I'm going to put that on my resume because getting yelled at at Starbucks for four years is customer service experience that's way more demonstrative to me than an internship so I'm like that that's amazing um and so that's one the another one is then you know if you're Bank of America how do you get all a massive company how do you make sure that managers are incentivized the whole way up to continue to upskill and promote and um their employees into other opportunities um and so the the i i and then there's again all the other advisers and and families and people that go into influencing these decisions but I just I say that because I'm very excited about this proof point because the model is there but it's also given that its early days it's important to us to make sure we're we're close enough to this the same way we are with others um to identify some of those things that we may not know that need to be fixed I agree with all of that and and then there is um you know such an intersection of what we need as employers um in the middle of that you know working at a cash register you know all of that hyperfunctioning that you have to do to talk to a customer to solve problems to you know really you know function publicly and externally and uh and bringing that to the four is really important and when you think about taking a risk on Talent which we all always are I think about myself who had internships and if I put myself next to the community students we work with now and many of them now work at our organization I was the bigger risk if you have someone who has worked for four years you know they've had a boss you know they know how to show up on time they have time management skills um accountability so in many cases have already been a manager and then you have someone who's done a few internships I'm not knocking internships they are incredibly valuable experiences but I'm just just saying I think that that it really is um when you think about the skills that are when we talk about aside from technical skills just the skills that are needed in the workplace today to be a successful employee and a successful leader a lot of those are things you can learn in other jobs outside of intership agree I agree uh so you know as we're kind of winding this down I want to make sure that we leave everybody here with some actionable steps and um you know because you guys have made it work uh and made it seem so easy and um and we're seeing great results and so I'll start with you Kiron and then I'll I'll go to agosi and then Grant so what kind of actionable steps can this this group take uh to really change uh you know to bridge the skills Gap and also change the trajectory of early crew Talent so that they can enter the work force as you had mentioned Mark I mean I think taking advantage of of looking at if you're if you're not an Amazon employee another employer looking at if there are degree programs out there designed by industry leaders like Amazon if like it's kind of if it's good enough for Amazon it should be good enough for you and and that's the talent that you need I mean that's a no-brainer to me again of the training progam think of it like a training program they have you know two-year degree and a train and the training that you're looking for over another one which might be a risk and so I think the the I know I keep driving home the importance of of education and business being aligned the whole way through with the curriculum but that also is a stamp of approval I think to show to employers and they can use that as signaling as far as if you aren't going to build your own programs and go out and help and build curriculum yourselves at least you know where you can find really strong skilled talent in your backyard great andasi on your side advice yeah I would say being here I would say we need to reinvent ourself uh and that's uh on the employers the organizations um and all the education institutions we um I think we we discussed a lot so we no longer have to be in separate CEOs uh so we need to work together towards uh a unique objective so my AC actionable um recommendation in here would be to let's work together um towards U that that objective that we have in common so yeah and I think it's important one of the things that uh Grant brought home too is it's important for employers to communicate uh very clearly what their skills needs are right uh and to make sure that when you have that when you're breaking down those silos uh that what you need is clearly understood by all of those convening bodies so they can make sure to produce the the exactly we we need to reconnect uh all this because uh well it was somehow disconnected and needs to be connected again yeah completely agree and I'm going to give Grant the last word here I love the last word uh well first of all I'm a plus one on both of the points that were already made what I would say is get started you know start somewhere and get started I think the best day to start was yesterday the second best day to start is today yeah so if your organization isn't on this journey we've already talked about so many resources that you can use and start small we all did you know we all started with really humble beginnings and so I'd recommend that I think the other thing that I'd talk about that we didn't really cover a lot during this discussion is you know it becomes a winwin win and the third win is around our business objectives you know we all have to continue to grow and Thrive as a business to support these programs and what we've seen in every facet of early career programs is not only do we get new talent in the organization not only does Talent get developed and in the opportunity for that individual person but we're able to get our business objectives done these people are doing amazing projects they're delivering value for our customers you know they're helping the top line and the bottom line and so if there wasn't a good enough reason to get started that's a third reason to get started because your business is going to thrive and those proof points also potentially help with any naysayers that might live in the organization that are still kind of attached to that traditional method um you can use those proof points to say hey look we're doing something different and it's actually working that's great and um and it's the reason why we do it right so your last proof point is exactly the reason why the tech alliances exist we do it uh because it's the right thing to do for early Learners it's the right thing to do for our communities but it's also the right thing to do for our employers um all of whom uh have great demand uh for cloud-based skills and need this talent to continue to grow their businesses so on that note I want to thank so much our panelists who came

2023-12-09 18:13

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