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ARTICLE | December 17, 2024

IT’s hunt for nontech talent

Companies are looking farther and wider to find people to fill the growing IT skills gap

By Melanie Warner, Workflow contributor

Seven years ago, Isela Phelps couldn’t code and hadn’t heard of ServiceNow. That didn’t stop her from applying to the ServiceNow developer apprentice position at Utah State University.

Today, she is a senior developer and business analyst in the school’s IT department, where she works with university leaders on how best to use ServiceNow’s platform to digitize the school’s operations. The advanced IT role has allowed her to give up a second job.

Phelps exemplifies a good-news labor trend that has largely flown beneath the radar. Despite the headlines about downsizing in Silicon Valley and fears of generative AI (GenAI) making knowledge workers expendable, companies outside of the tech sector are desperate for people with IT skills. According to ServiceNow’s 2024 Global Skills Research Survey, the U.S. will need to fill an additional 1.8 million IT jobs over the next five years. A lot of these are entry-level positions, and the only way many of them can be filled is by people like Phelps, says Martin Hill, a senior director within ServiceNow’s global learning and development team. “The talent gap in technology is getting wider, and as a result, companies are having to get creative in filling different types of roles,” he says. “They recognize that not everybody working in the tech space is a traditional ‘core techie.’ For example, at ServiceNow, we’ve created learning paths for less technical roles such as help desk agents, project managers, and change specialists.”

To help people make the transition to tech, a vibrant ecosystem of training and placement programs has emerged. Along with ServiceNow, companies such as Microsoft and Amazon have launched ambitious programs to make sure there are enough skilled IT workers to run their products at corporations, schools, governments, and other enterprises. Big companies from AT&T to Walmart also have programs to develop tech talent for their internal efforts. Community colleges, for-profit boot camps, and a variety of nonprofits have also stepped in to prepare students for IT careers. 

The World Economic Forum’s Reskilling Revolution program is working with 370 such organizations, aiming to provide 1 billion people with the skills to prosper in the AI age. These opportunities, typically free or low cost, provide a way for people in nontech jobs, particularly those from underserved communities, to level up to well-paying careers in IT.

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Phelps immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico at 14 and worked hard to achieve her dreams. She learned English, worked in a factory, graduated from high school, and earned a business degree from Utah State. After stints as a PE teacher and academic advisor, she was about to start pursuing a master’s degree when she discovered Utah State’s ServiceNow apprentice position. “They took a shot on someone who barely knew how to turn a computer on,” she says. Phelps landed the app developer job, receiving online and in-person ServiceNow training. Through ServiceNow University, the company’s training and credentialing initiative, she’s since earned certifications as a flow designer and system administrator.

Newly trained IT professionals have access to a deep pool of job opportunities. By 2027, U.S. companies will need 169,000 new systems software developers, 82,000 computer and information systems managers, 63,000 computer programmers, and 67,000 technical project managers, according to the Global Skills Research Survey.

These numbers even account for potential job losses at tech companies, as well as those due to the rise of GenAI, which can handle tasks such as writing ad copy and computer code. Rather than displacing workers en masse, GenAI is more likely to augment their abilities, boosting productivity by generating first drafts, summarizing lengthy studies, or explaining existing code structure in seconds. Any job losses in industries such as retail, manufacturing, and financial services will be more than offset by gains in sectors such as healthcare, telecommunications, and professional, scientific, and technical services.

The talent gap in technology is getting wider, and as a result, companies are having to get creative in filling different types of roles.

Human resources experts say that companies are widening their hiring lens for entry-level positions to prevent otherwise talented people from being screened out for not having traditional qualifications. “There’s been a lot of attention on removing university degrees as a hiring credential for many jobs. This can open up populations that have traditionally been overlooked,” says John Boudreau, professor emeritus of management and organization at USC’s Marshall School of Business.

This is creating expanded opportunities for people in underserved communities. Organizations are stepping up to leverage this trend. The national nonprofit Year Up United, for instance, offers tuition-free job training for 18- to 29-year-olds who might not otherwise find their way into IT careers. More than three-quarters of program graduates are people of color and 60% are female. A trainee spends three to six months at one of the organization’s three dozen campuses around the country, studying a specific technical or business pathway. They then complete a three- to six-month internship or receive work-based experience at one of the more than 250 companies the nonprofit partners with. 

“These are people who are highly motivated,” says Gary Flowers, Year Up United’s chief information officer. “We have a great track record of people being promoted at a higher level than their peers, and our retention numbers are higher than the norm.” 

Tech companies and corporations with large IT departments are developing their own approaches to reskilling non-IT staffers for technology jobs. Much like ServiceNow University, these efforts seek to make IT or software development careers accessible and appealing to nontraditional candidates. Amazon’s Technical Academy, for instance, provides tuition-free training for Amazon employees who want to transition into software engineering. Similarly, the company’s Associate2Tech program gives fulfillment center associates the opportunity to move into IT support technician roles, regardless of their previous IT experience. The 90-day program provides on-the-job training and job placement within Amazon’s vast operations network. Target’s Emerging Engineer Program takes individuals who have an entry-level knowledge of computer science, perhaps through a coding boot camp, and provides training for them to become Target software engineers. 

This more inclusive approach is part of a skills-based hiring movement that seeks to emphasize a candidate’s actual ability to perform job-related tasks, rather than their formal qualifications or prior job experience. At Verizon, for instance, HR executives realized that the 11,000 job codes in its human resources management system were far too reliant on degrees and other factors that may not impact a person’s ability to do a particular job. The company spent more than a year breaking down individual roles into specific skills. As a result, job codes were whittled down to 2,400, with many requirements for advanced degrees or prior experience eliminated. Says Samantha Hammock, Verizon’s executive vice president and chief human resources officer: “We are very excited about how this is opening the door to the hidden workers—those who would have previously been overlooked.”

Medtronic, the medical device company, undertook a similar process. Now, half of Medtronic’s IT roles no longer require degrees, which the company says has led to greater diversity in applications and hiring.

Despite the progress, surveys show that most companies still have a way to go. In a December 2023 survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) and UpSkill America, only a quarter of HR leaders said they perceived workforce development to be a strength of their organizations. Kevin Oakes, co-founder and CEO of i4cp, says, “Focusing on skills can help companies not only understand what’s needed for a role, but really widen the talent pool.” But, he adds, less than a tenth of the more than 100 private and public company boards of directors polled were very confident in their company’s ability to effectively upskill their employees for the future. 

The U.S. will need to fill an additional 1.8 million IT jobs over the next five years.

Over the next few years, companies will increasingly rely on GenAI tools, making IT reskilling and upskilling efforts more critical than ever. IT departments are becoming big users of GenAI, so IT leaders need to focus on making sure their team members know how to use it in their jobs. Long before any IT jobs are displaced, workers will be using assistants and copilots to delegate some of the more time-consuming, repeatable tasks to help get their jobs done more efficiently. 

GenAI will give IT workers more time to focus on the tasks that AI can’t—and likely never will—do. Training programs will need to focus on helping students hone skills such as interpersonal communication, problem-solving, and strategic planning. In the Global Skills Research Survey, communication skills showed the greatest growth in popularity among employers. “With AI, it’s important to make sure you’re a lifelong learner and are collecting as many skills as possible,” says Year Up United’s Flowers. 

In the long run, GenAI will pave the way for more people like Phelps to join the IT workforce. Boudreau says that the automation of basic tasks such as coding, data entry, data analysis, and threat detection will make it easier for those without tech backgrounds to get into IT roles. “If AI can bring an untrained or inexperienced person up to the level of a moderate performer virtually immediately, instead of in a year or two, then you can tap into a population of people that may have almost none of the entry-level skills you thought you needed,” he says.

To help people make the transition to tech, a vibrant ecosystem of training and placement programs has emerged.

Early in her career, an AI coding assistant certainly would have made Phelps’ life easier, she says. When she was new to her role, becoming a skilled coder and learning to understand others’ code was one of the most challenging and isolating parts of the job. In that first year, Phelps thought about quitting almost every single day. Being able to get up to speed much more quickly with AI would have allowed her, a naturally outgoing and communicative person, to enjoy the more creative and collaborative parts of her job much sooner.  

“I think it is not so much that [an AI coding assistant] would have made the project go faster, but it would have made my frustration a little less,” she says. “I would not have had the fear of like, ‘Oh, heck. Am I doing this correctly? Am I going to make a mistake?’ I think that would have made me feel a lot better.”

As GenAI becomes a larger part of the job, she’s not worried that the technology will replace her anytime soon. “Is the knowledge of coding still essential? Absolutely,” she says. “Not only must you know how to code, but you also need a deep understanding of it—how to read, analyze, and deconstruct it thoroughly.”

Especially for new developers, it’s possible to rely too much on AI assistance. “Often you need to remind the AI that it missed an important component, or [you] need to be extremely precise about your instructions,” Phelps says. AI is a valuable tool, but it is not infallible. The human component remains indispensable.

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Author

Melanie Warner is a writer and editor based in Boulder, CO. A former staffer at Fortune and the New York Times, she is the author of Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took over the American Meal, and The Magic Feather Effect: The Science of Alternative Medicine and the Surprising Power of Belief

Articles by Melanie Warner