Automation is opportunity for a career shift into tech

Automation will displace millions of workers, according to the Brookings Institution, particularly in the areas of retail, healthcare, accounting, and finance. These displaced workers have valuable experience and skills that can be adapted, augmented, and applied to tech jobs to help address the labor shortage. RiseUp with ServiceNow can help workers pivot to new careers through reskilling and transition support.

Teresa Ko is an excellent example. After working more than 20 years in customer service, running a call center, and operating her own restaurant, she had developed broad skills, including project management and customer service. Although her resume didn’t show it, she had an interest in tech and took time to learn from the IT teams in her workplaces, such as how to build simple websites.

Ko considered making a career shift, but she didn’t want to go back to school or lose income to do so. “You get to a point in your life where you’re like, it’s too late for me to change because I’d have to start all over again,” she says.

Then she heard about RiseUp with ServiceNow, a program to skill 1 million people from all backgrounds, experiences, and career paths on the Now Platform by 2024. A tech career seemed possible after all.

Real-world experience

Ko signed up for the ServiceNow NextGen Professionals Program, which provides skills training and certifications, combined with on-the-job work experience and job placement. She jumped at the chance to work and learn simultaneously, excited at the opportunity to change careers while keeping her bills paid.

Close to finishing her NextGen program, Ko has found the experience invaluable. She especially appreciates the on-the-job training. “Being able to work in a real company with real clients on real projects has been, I think, the best part of being able to learn,” she says.

Kabria Holmes has a similar story. Working as a contract executive assistant and program coordinator while earning her bachelor’s degree in business administration, she too had an interest in tech but no formal training. Then she heard about a free ServiceNow boot camp hosted by TechBridge, part of the NextGen program, and eagerly enrolled.

In the four-month course, she learned ServiceNow fundamentals, implementation, and IT service management—just what she needed to kick-start her IT career. Holmes’ newly developed tech skills, along with her previously gained business skills, helped her land a job at NewRocket, a ServiceNow Elite partner, as a ServiceNow business analyst.

Today, Holmes helps clients make their businesses run more smoothly and gets a lot of fulfillment out of it. “I feel like a void has been filled and that my new ServiceNow career is everything I had hoped for,” she says.

Breaking barriers to IT jobs

These stories don’t have to be unique. Companies need tech talent. Workers like Ko and Holmes have a wealth of skills and experience to bring to the table. There’s a wide array of untapped talent that simply needs the right support to enter the IT field.

RiseUp with ServiceNow offers affordable and flexible learning models to lower the barriers to entry into IT. The program includes skills academies and training partnerships that target underrepresented groups in tech, such as veterans. In addition, placement programs connect newly skilled workers, such as Holmes, with tech jobs.

Ko encourages anyone given the opportunity to make a career shift into tech to do so. NextGen “gives you real-world experience,” she says. “You already have your foot in the door while you’re learning. If it’s a fast-track career change that you want or need, then this is definitely the type of program you want to get into.”

Find out more about how RiseUp with ServiceNow helps open tech careers.

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