這種辦法也許能填補美國的高技能人才缺口
Anne Fisher
2019-09-09
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2008年底全球經濟崩潰時洛伊達·維拉特正在愉快地打造自己的建筑師職業生涯。她所在的芝加哥公司原有100名員工，后來包括他在內的40人被裁掉了。接下來做什么呢？維拉特說：“當時我想找一份更有保障的工作，所以我決定回到學校去學些新東西。我問了一位科技行業的朋友，她告訴我，‘做網絡安全吧。這方面的技術人員一直都緊缺’。” 實際情況證明這是一次很好的職業轉換。如今，維拉特成了埃森哲負責內部客戶的網絡安全團隊中的一名分析師。她在芝加哥威爾伯·萊特社區大學考信息技術證書時和埃森哲簽約，并在2016年加入了學徒項目。 到目前為止，已有約350名技術新手以“邊學邊干”的方式加入了埃森哲。這家公司主要通過社區大學來招募有潛力的人才，支付他們工資，并在他們求學時掌握的基礎技能之上，針對具體工作加以培訓。經過六個月到一年的學徒期，他們就會成為正式員工。 這種做法正在流行開來。埃森哲已將其學徒項目從芝加哥擴展到了亞特蘭大、波士頓、哥倫布、底特律、圣安東尼奧、西雅圖和舊金山等地。該公司預計到2020年將在美國20座城市培訓450名學徒。朱莉·斯威特曾是埃森哲北美業務首席執行官，今年9月1日成為整個埃森哲的CEO，同時也成為全球500強女性領導人群體的最新成員，這個群體很小，僅有15人。斯威特說：“我們已經證明學徒制可以擴展。” 斯威特策劃了埃森哲學徒項目的基本模式，她說學徒項目“不光可以用于IT職位，還適用于所有大公司都需要的一系列其他工作崗位。”除了網絡安全、數據分析和軟件工程，埃森哲目前還在人力資源、財務和營銷等其他領域培訓學徒。 斯威特認為學徒制有可能同時解決兩個問題。第一個問題最為明顯，那就是培訓有助于填補技能缺口，而正是這個缺口讓用人單位陷入招聘困境。在此之外則是一個范圍大得多而且更棘手的社會問題（更不用說是個政治敏感話題了），人們經常將其稱為數字鴻溝，意思是技術把經濟一分為二，其中大多數“知識型工作者”都一帆風順，而且變得更為富裕，那些地位較低的人則被甩得越來越遠。 斯威特指出：“我們人口中的某些群體完全被數字經濟拒于門外。因此非常有必要提高包容性。”為解決這個問題，埃森哲的學徒招聘人員把重點放在找到背景不同的出色人士上，他們想跨越數字鴻溝，但未必負擔得起大學本科學費。 當然，長期以來學徒制一直主要存在于建筑和制造業的技術人員間，但斯威特說，白領人士中的學徒制“仍剛剛起步”。她已經成為這種觀念的傳播者。2017年，斯威特和再保險巨頭怡安CEO克雷格·凱斯共同組建了名為芝加哥學徒網絡的團體，該團體僅去年就發展了25名新的公司成員，其中包括麥當勞、蘇黎世保險集團、沃爾格林和摩根大通等重磅企業，并且計劃在明年底前至少和1000名學徒簽約。 與此同時，埃森哲和怡安還出版了一本學徒手冊，其中有深度解析、最佳方案和具體而微的提示，任何公司都可借此設計并推出自己的學徒項目。 對有志于打算跨越技術鴻溝的技術人員和其他人士來說，獲得拿得出手的技能可以為堅實的長期職業發展道路奠定基礎。但學徒也可以在短期內做的相當好。大家可以考慮一下：剛剛結束學徒期的新員工的平均工資約為5萬美元，而且沒有學生貸款，這是美國勞工部的數據。而最近畢業的本科生的平均薪酬水平為4.4萬美元，但他們平均還負擔著大概3萬美元的學生貸款。 有鑒于此，我們就很容易理解為什么通過學徒制進入公司的員工往往都是熱心的招聘者。在埃森哲，曾經的建筑師洛伊達·維拉特正在催促三名社區大學同學申請成為學徒。她還通過全國性非盈利組織Girls Who Code輔導那些對技術工作感興趣的高中女生。維拉特說：“對女生來說，在技術領域找到女性榜樣很重要。有些東西她們是不會問其他成年人的，比如父母，但她們可以問我。” 誰知道呢？隨著時間推移，學徒制或許能成為一條有用的途徑，不僅填補一些技能缺口和技術鴻溝，還會把惡名在外的IT性別鴻溝也填上。（財富中文網） 譯者：Charlie 審校：夏林 |
Loyda Villate was happily building a career as an architect when the global economy collapsed in late 2008. The Chicago firm where she worked laid off 40 of its 100 staffers, including her. What was her next move? “I wanted a career with more job security, so I decided to go back to school and learn something new,” she says now. “I asked a friend of mine in tech, and she told me, ‘Go into cybersecurity. There are never enough skilled people to go around.'” That proved to be a good career change. Fast forward to the present, and Villate is now an analyst on a cybersecurity team that works with internal customers at Accenture. The company signed her up while she was studying for an information-technology certificate at Wilbur Wright Community College in Chicago, through an apprenticeship program Accenture launched in 2016. So far, about 350 novice techies have joined Accenture as "earn while you learn" apprentices. The company recruits promising talent mainly through community colleges, then pays them while they add further, job-specific training to the basic tech skills they've acquired in school. After six months to a year as apprentices, they're hired as full-fledged employees. It's catching on. Accenture has expanded its apprenticeship program beyond Chicago to Atlanta, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, San Antonio, Seattle, San Francisco, and elsewhere. The company expects to have trained a total of 450 apprentices in 20 U.S. cities by 2020. "We're proving that apprenticeships can be scalable," says Julie Sweet. Formerly CEO of Accenture North America, Sweet took over as CEO of all of Accenture on September 1st, making her the latest addition to the tiny list of just 15 women who head Global 500 companies. Accenture's basic model for apprenticeship programs, which started as Sweet's brainchild, "can be adapted not only for IT jobs but for a range of other roles that all big companies need to fill," she says. Besides cybersecurity, data analytics, and software engineering, Accenture is now training apprentices in other areas like HR, finance, and marketing. Sweet sees apprenticeships as having the potential to solve two problems at once. First, and most obvious, the training helps narrow the skills gaps that make it tough for employers to fill jobs. Beyond that, though, is a much broader and thornier social issue (not to mention a political hot button) often referred to as the Digital Divide: technology has split the economy in two, with most "knowledge workers" thriving —and getting more affluent— while the less privileged fall further and further behind. "There are whole segments of the population being left out of the digital economy," notes Sweet. "So there is a pressing need for more inclusiveness." To address that, Accenture's apprenticeship recruiters focus on finding bright people from diverse backgrounds who want to cross the Digital Divide but can't necessarily afford a four-year degree. Apprenticeships have long been a staple of the skilled trades in construction and manufacturing, of course, but the white-collar kind is "still in its infancy," Sweet says. She's become an evangelist for the idea. In 2017, with Greg Case, CEO of reinsurance giant Aon, Sweet cofounded a group called the Chicago Apprentice Network that has brought on board 25 new members in just the past year. Those companies, which include heavy hitters like McDonald's, Zurich Insurance, Walgreens, and JP Morgan Chase, plan to sign up at least 1,000 apprentices by the end of next year. In the meantime, Accenture and Aon published an apprenticeship "playbook" that offers insights, best practices, and nuts-and-bolts tips that any company can use to design and launch its own program. For aspiring techies and others who want to leapfrog the Digital Divide, getting marketable skills can lay the foundation for a solid long-term career path. But apprentices do pretty well in the short term, too. Consider: The average salary of a new employee who has just completed an apprenticeship is about $50,000, with no student debt, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Median salary of a recent graduate of a four-year college: $44,000 —with an average of roughly $30,000 in student loans to pay off. Given stats like that, it's not surprising that apprentices-turned-employees are often enthusiastic recruiters. At Accenture, erstwhile architect Loyda Villate urged three of her former community-college classmates to apply for apprenticeships. They did and were accepted, so she's now an informal mentor to all three. Villate also mentors high school girls interested in tech careers, through the national nonprofit Girls Who Code. "It's important for girls to have female role models in tech," Villate says. "They can ask me things they wouldn't ask another adult, like a parent." Who knows? In time, apprenticeships might be one way to help narrow not only some skills gaps and the Digital Divide, but the infamous IT Gender Divide as well. |
