SkillStorm’s Innovative Approach to Skills-Based Hiring in Tech to Bridge the Education-Employment Gap

Good afternoon, listeners and viewers. This is Rob Stefanski with another episode of disrupt ed. As you know the drill, we talk to the do gooders that determined the dedicated people out there, the seemingly ordinary humans out there that are doing extraordinary human things having incredible impact. In this ginormously disrupted world, nowhere is the world more disrupted than the in the cross section of education, jobs, and ups guilling. And so this is a passion point for us on the show. And today, we're gonna welcome someone who lives that story. So I think oftentimes we think about, for profit enterprises, and we think about businesses, and we think they're about doing something to make money to serve their shareholders to grow their revenue, but not really true. As we all know, there are great people and great organizations out there, and those in the private sector, many of whom are doing powerful things. And I had the opportunity to meet a team of these folks at the recent JFF Horizons meeting. And these were the folks at an organization, a very interesting and incredible organization called Skilstorm. And they are creating stormers. People who may be underrepresented in the population at large may not have had the opportunities that many of us of privilege have, but they help them get to that next step. And we know the holy grail is getting people situated in life sustaining family supporting work that matters and brings purpose to their lives, And so I am joined today by one such do gooder. Someone who hails from the UK the chief operating officer of this enterprise skillstorm, and that's Joe Mitchell. Joe, I'm so excited to have you on the show today. Thanks for joining me. Thank you, Ronan, and re it's a real pleasure to be on here. Thank you for hosting me. And, Joe, you know, it's interesting as we were talking offline. And getting acquainted. I think your origin story is so powerful in and of itself because you live what many of us did the life of someone who didn't come from privilege and didn't have parents who, were in, who were beneficiaries of higher ed. And somehow you managed to get into that, and to take the leap of faith that it requires to be a college student and went to UNi in, the UK and then launched a successful career in, workforce development and skills training and education and working in higher ed. You know, I'm curious, Joe, with all of your background in the ed tech world, you know, what you're seeing, you know, you saw the beginning of Black board, WebCT, e College, the OPM Movement in higher education. And all these platforms have helped a lot of people get online and, curious about your perspective about how they assist and facilitate upscilling beyond the traditional four year degree so that more and more people can be career ready as well as college ready. Yeah. Thanks, Ron. It's a look. It's a great question. I think, when you look at today, I think there is a movement towards skills based hiring. With the cost of college education, almost spiraling out of control, and, you know, you're seeing more things like, you know, education benefits. So as as ways to afford education, I think there's now a shift to how can you hire people that have the right skills to be successful and productive today, and that's where we've focused on all of our efforts skillstorm is to really think about how we could help people be successful and give them the skills that many employers need, and we focus, particularly on the tech sector. You know, it's interesting. The tech sector is exploding right now. There's so many opportunities for people in cyber. I'm curious about your thoughts. You know, as we look at the attack and cyber industry in particular, we see more jobs than they have people out there. And so I'm convinced that it's not just do gooding, among companies to say let's go after those that are underserved. Let's go after populations that may not have been tapped into previously. But I also think it's driven now as a strategic a business imperative for companies. They're seeing the benefits from a business perspective of not only diversity inclusion, but also sustaining, retaining, and developing a workforce is become more, placed squarely on the shoulders of corporations. People need assistance and corporations are saying, you know what? We need to step it up and to provide education benefits. You mentioned the education as a benefits movement. And, I was, full transparency part of that with McDonald's with Walmart and developing an online high school program for those corporations which launched the education as a benefit. And I think there are a lot of powerful big companies that have recognized not only it's the right thing to do, not only is it good thing to do, but it's a strategic imperative. So how are you looking at the labor force specifically in tech and in the cyber sector? Because those areas seem to be exploding and having a tremendous skills gap to address while they're filling those, large numbers of openings. Yeah. So so let's say, Kim, a two pronged approach. Essentially, one is we're working with college graduates, transitioning service members, and military veterans, to help upskill them in the specific tools and technologies that the workforce needs today, in cyber, in cloud, in robotics, in automation, in applications like ServiceNow, and SAP and Salesforce. Based on actual demands and actual skill sets time employers need today. And we're hiring hundreds of college graduates and hundreds of, transitioning service members as part of that initiative to meet the this specific workforce need. The other thing that we're doing is to help upskill incumbent workers in large organizations. And as you mentioned, there are there are many people in these organizations that are are need to upskill and whether that's to get a college degree complete, you know, from your associates to be a bachelor's degree, or in many cases what's more beneficial for the employer is to get some specific skills and industry certifications. So what we've done wrong is essentially partner with large universities like UCF, FIU, cal state fullerton, university of Nevada, Las Vegas, and and offer online industry recognized credentials in cloud in AWS in Salesforce and in cyber security and robotics and automation so that, organizations can upscale their workforce in a part time basis. So you don't have to take the hop the whole day to upscale or weeks to upscale, you can do this part time, and you can get industry credentials that will have an immediate impact within four to eight weeks on the business, improve the professional development of people, and help productivity within that organization. You know, I think that's interesting because for higher ed, I think this is a real innovation, and I think it's a real recognition that they don't have to have all the tools available to provide everything. And so they're brokering more and more, with, organizations that have done that work and have and have the training resources available, but the university partnership is important because when you have the university as a venue, when you're centered in that space. I think that's where opportunities happen. And, you know, it's interesting offline. Joe, you and I were having an opportunity to get acquainted and we were talking about our own origin stories, and both of us grew up at a time when, it was difficult to find a job. And, people were not looking at our resumes. And we had to be devilish and clever about getting our resume to the top of the list. And so I think that it sounds like that informs a lot of the work you're doing is helping to become that accelerant. So in other words, you find someone and ultimately hiring a lot of cases is about looking across the desk and looking at an individual and saying, you know what? I think I can help you and I think you can help us. I think you can contribute, and I can also contribute to giving you a chance. And I think that's that's where it begins and ends, and that's the ultimate upskilling, transaction really is getting that connection going. And it sounds Like, that's where a lot of the work of creating stormers as you guys like to call them is happening. Sure. It is. Know, I was mentioning to you, look at my first generation college graduates. So I'm super passionate about being able to provide first generation college graduates like myself with opportunity and essentially access one to gain the skills that the workforce needs, but two to be connected directly through our very strong relationship with some of the world's best companies. Now many of these organizations will typically, you know, they'll hire from the same universities and have done for many for a long period of time. And what we're doing is we're working across, across the country with all manner of universities and especially universities with very diverse student bodies and they typically have a lot of first generation college graduates that we're able to work with likewise in the military, very diverse body in the military. So being able to afford access to gain the skills for people who are interested in a career in tech to be able to help provide them with very specific skills is something I'm deeply passionate about. And then once you have those skills, it's a pathway to multiple careers. Right? You don't have to be a software engineer. For the rest of your life, right? Having that technical knowledge could take you in many different directions, whether that's an entrepreneurial direction, whether that's into sales, whether that's into being a CIO, or into being on either, of any organization. You know, I feel like I'm aging myself by saying this, but I remember, and you and I both share, a career history with Pearson. But two things came out of that experience as we were getting equated. One is we both, have leapfrogged into various, not only various companies, but various careers. You started out as a software developer be be before you came into the ed tech world and then came into the sales and business development arena. And I have similar, lead frog from different, not only different, companies with different roles. And I think more and more, upskilling is an opportunity for people to connect the dots and to say I had this experience But now I need a little bit more. And I don't have to go back to the beginning and start all over, but I do need to have something to round out my experience or my education in order to do that. You know, the question that came up, at JFF Joe, as you may recall from the Horizon conference is an indictment of our current system. As much as we've made a lot of progress across higher education, and the education space, overall, as much as we've engendered a lot of innovation with technology and with ed tech in particular. Our workforce and education upscaling system is still broken. So, we had the opportunity in this short conversation today to solve the problems of the world. So I'm gonna throw it over to you. What do we need to do to fix this problem? Well, I I honestly believe we need multiple on ramps and multiple off ramps. So going to university or college may not be a choice for everyone. It may not be the right choice at the right time in their lives. We've talked about the the shift to skills based hiring too. So depending on where people are at. And even if you do go to university, whether you take liberal arts, humanities, or social sciences, That shouldn't preclude you from getting into the tech industry and understanding technology very deeply. So the ability to either find your own pathway from high school, or from a community college into, you know, a a really productive technology role or to pivot once you've actually gone to college and you've graduated to get some industry credentials. And I think, you know, Jeff Silingo, he talks a lot about a degree plus residential is gonna help you stand out in the crowd. So the the way I look at this is there are people from all backgrounds and you can provide on ramps for them to learn the very basics of technology. And off ramps to get entry level jobs in IT through to becoming, you know, whether you're a cyber engineer, a cloud engineer, a full stack developer, depending on your trajectory and where you are in your life, there need to be different off ramps. Those off ramps are different jobs. That could be into an apprenticeship. It could be into a graduate program. It could be multiple different pathways that enable you to continue your professional development. And I think in the tech industry, as we know, technology is changing so fast that you have to be a learner for life. You have to continue to constantly upscale because the tools that you're using today in five years time yes, there'll be some transferrable skills, but you will not be using them. Right? There's a good chance that they've moved on. So that ability to constantly learn an up skill and advance your career is so important. And I think today the challenge that we have with university is is that curriculum committees can take two years to make your decision on what change. By that point, the shift has sailed. So how do we think about, you know, bringing in, you know, really in demand industry recognized credentials, not just in tech across, health care and across multiple fields so that people can constantly advance their career. And that universities, if you think about land grant universities, they wanna be you know, essentially sparing economic development, in the region and in the state. And and in order to do that, we need to be better connected to, what the blend force needs are. And I think working with organizations similar to Skillstorm that can really you know, adjust and be agile very quickly and adjust the industry demands, I think, is a is a great connection for universities and colleges. And it's a great on ramp for people who are looking to get into a specific industry. I agree. You've been touching on the fact that a lot of this involves keeping up to date on the tech and keeping up on, learning and the education and so revising things. I don't know if you recall this, but in my days at Pearson and at McMillan, you know, we had our textbook programs and our solutions on a three year Revision cycle. So you're talking about the slow pace of a curriculum change at a higher education institution. And people were telling us then as the price of textbooks were growing up that these additions were coming too fast and too furious. And now you're looking at creating training programs and revitalizing and refreshing that curriculum on a three month based It's not three years. I mean, so I think you're right. I think the speed of this is all, quite striking and quite different than for you or I, as we began our careers, I think I think a lot of it is just speed, how fast developments are moving. And I think that creates stress in system. You know, if you have people that are seeing these things happen virtually overnight and you're seeing a generative AI, we weren't even talking about generative AI six months ago and now with the onslaught of GPT chat GPT, you know, this is a topic of conversation and some anxiety all at a returns. You know, it was interesting. I was, corresponding with the CEO of Sendgate Michael Hansen, great leader, worked with him for over a decade, and he was talking about AI from a different lens, which is Yes. It's gonna create these challenges around authenticity and and work and whether or not someone's really giving their work or they're just plugging in a question and having GPT chat, you know, send out an answer. But Michael challenged his team at Cengage, and I think other leaders are gonna be doing this as well. To look at AI as an opportunity to enhance the learning experience, to enrich the experience. And so I'm curious as you at Skillstorm look at where you're going as an organization, where this mission is taking you, how is AI informing what you're doing and where do you see it taking you? It's interesting you say that one. I've actually been spearheading a AI in it's called ten x meet dot ai, at Skillstorm, and this is essentially a cross departmental initiative with marketing, with finance, with our tech training team, to to really think about the ways in which we can use AI to be more productive. And essentially, it it's like a lab environment we've created, so that we can think about how we work cross departmentally. To improve productivity to get more done because our our our belief is family that, you know, AI is not going to replace jobs. In fact, it's gonna create a lot more opportunity, but the people who are not using AI are gonna be left behind. Can I stop you right there for a second, Joe? Say that again because our audience and people out there on social media need to hear what you just said. Ai is not gonna take away job. Say it again, Joe. A AI is not going away. Right? And it's the people who embrace AI are going to be the people who are gonna be the change agents of future. It's actually AI is gonna create up a lot more new jobs with a lot more new industries that we don't even know of today. There are many jobs today that didn't exist five years ago, and certainly didn't exist ten years ago. So the the challenge here is to embrace AI. And to use it as a tool to be far more productive and to get more things done. And and guess what we've actually done in our our organization, we've done some things with AI. And we've measured the time it's taken us to do it with AI and it's been extremely productive. And then we've done other things that, and our tech team will tell you that they could have done it faster on their own without using AI. So it's a learning tool. Right? And we know AI is gonna get AI is gonna get exponentially passive. Right? And, an exponentially more useful. But we've got to embrace it like any tool as you as you start to use the tool and learn how that works. Then it's going to be a more productive tool for you, in what you're trying to do. So we've also included, you know, a number of our training programs that we have for clients today is obviously using Genative AI because that's what they need. Right? They need their developers to be coming in more productive, right? So how can we make Skillstorm and our stormers more productive. So how can we ten x our developers? That's what we're thinking about today. How do we make our stormers ten x developers? How can we leverage AI to do that? You know, I was thinking about Skillstorm and some of the work you're doing there, and it occurred to me that one of the goals I had was to ultimately be labeled a stormer because I feel like I'm an old dog at sixty two learning new tricks. And, you know, during COVID, I learned, on my own and through the help of a lot of people and, coaches and and some additional courses, how to use social media, which I had had not really done on a professional basis. And then I look at my own two millennial sons, both of whom went through a traditional liberal arts education and got into the workforce, but they entered the workforce taking on jobs that didn't exist when they began their college career. And so it it it caused me to speculate. You know, as you were talking about, the way you're informing and enriching, the curriculum and the program offerings of, of our higher edge system You know, maybe we're gonna see as a potential trend. The idea that people are learning skills first And then as they progress in their career, as they acquire more assets, as they acquire more perspective and insight, The college experience becomes later in their educational pathway instead of right at eighteen. You know, so interesting listening to some of the non traditional students that end up in programs like the ones you're offering or that are out there for upskilling. And I hear this from adults taking classes all the time. You know, I started out in college at eighteen and I didn't appreciate what I was doing. I was going through the motions or I really didn't understand it or I was working for a grade. Now I just wanna learn this stuff. And so maybe that's what Maybe that's what all this technology is telling us is that higher education is not gonna go away, but it's gonna be in a different form and fashion part of our lifelong educational journey in some cases? Yeah. So Ron absolutely agree. I think it should be you know, it it should be woven into continuous professional development far more than it is today, today, can continue in head departments kind of sit in the corner of the of the university and are not really used in a way that's conducive to really upscaling workforces at scale and at pace, and that's why many organizations, many, for profit organization sit outside because they're more nimble and more agile and can, and and can actually, perform those tasks more efficiently And I suppose what we're trying to do at Skillstorm is bridge that gap by saying, look, we're we're an organization that realizes there's an evergreen pool of talent coming from universities and colleges, right, with great, you know, skills and great acumen developed at university, but how do we then give them the skills that the workforce needs? So we're creating that bridge in onrun to do that but what we want to be as part of that lifelong learning and professional development journey, which is to keep people upskilling and keep their skills relevant to the evolving workforce needs. And I think that's a super important thing that many universities today haven't really got a great grasp of. And I think the pivot to education as a benefit is a reaction to skills based hiring to a certain extent where they're seeing the puckering. Right? So the puck is going to you know, essentially work with organizations so that they will pay for a college education in my opinion. But what I think needs to change fundamentally is that these big organizations, they will negotiate much more fiercely on price and there'll be certain universities that benefit as a result of education as a benefit. The ones that are nimble agile offer skills as well as degrees Right? Masters and all of that. Rather than ones that are just offering your traditional four year degree or your master's degree, Because, again, you know, what I mentioned earlier, I genuinely believe from, organizations want productivity and they want more productivity as they onshore and in the US and and other countries domestically as they onshore more and more talent it's very important that people are productive in the workforce. And in order to, you know, get a a two year degree, you know, the productivity of that might not be realized for, you know, eighteen months to two and a half years, you can learn industry credentials and gain the skills and be immediately productive within four to eight weeks. And I think I think you're gonna see that shift because those skills are gonna make you even more employable. So all their organizations are also going to compete for someone with your skills and your talent, to be productive in their organization rather than a degree. And, you know, the I think there's an old saying that, you know, a degree gets you a degree can get you a good first job, but then what you do in the organization is gonna get you you've got second job, third job, and fourth job, if you get a good first job. Right? It's the important thing. Right. As organizations move to hiring skills, how important will the degree be? Well, I think one of the things that's interesting, Joe, and I wanna go back to something you said a little bit ago, and that is I I think economics fit into this quite dramatically. I don't think we'd be having nearly as much of this conversation if it weren't for the fact that education costs in higher education have outpaced inflation for over two decades. And so we have to be mindful of the fact that, you know, college in a traditional sense as you and I participate in it has become a very expensive proposition in this country And so I think about, you know, my alma mater where your wife happen to go as well, the University of Michigan, grade school, and I was able to go there and leave virtually debt free by working in a factory over the summers. That's not at all possible when you know, when tuition is now approaching fifty, sixty thousand dollars a year, it's not possible. And so I think the economics are really driving a lot of this disruption and this innovation because, at the same time, the costs have gone up, You know, we've seen a a a decline of the amount of funding that, state institutions are getting from state government. So since two thousand eight, I found this statistic very interesting. Since two thousand eight, we're spending at the state level six point six billion dollars less than we were in two thousand eight. So where does that six thousand find itself? It finds itself plucked in and allocated into tuition increases. And that means that the financial burden is expressed more squarely on the shoulders of individuals. And so I think I think the economics are driving in. And I'm curious how you're looking at that as you develop further programs to work with higher ed, and and make this affordable for people. It's interesting you say that because, again, shift to skills based hiring, what we're seeing is that people want to earn and learn. Right? So if you can earn and learn at the same time, get skills and then get credit for prior learning. That becomes a great opportunity. So I'll give you one example. We have a Department of labor approved, IT apprenticeship program. It's designed for transitioning service members who don't have a degree and don't have any prior tech experience. They can enroll in this three year apprenticeship program. Go from a level one help desk to a level two help desk to maybe a Salesforce administrator to a Salesforce software developer engineer over that three year period. And obviously during that time, there's a lot of learning that happens both in terms of skill development, get industry recognized credentials, as well as all of the job learning. Right? And so we're working with a number of schools now to give credit for that learning. So if a a service member comes out with an associate's degree, the opportunity to get an another twenty to thirty credits for the learning that they've done on the job during that period so that the most much closer maybe a year away thirty to forty credits away from completing the degree. And then that's where I think, you know, education as a benefit comes in for those people too in order and and the companies who wanna keep the talent to make sure that they can complete the degree as well as gain the skills that they need. So I do think there's this massive shift to to skills based hiring. Like anything, it takes it's it's it's taken time. Right. Well, as we wrap this session, another episode of disrupt debt here, I wanna ask you, Joe, any closing thoughts about what you see is the future bright spot in, this upskilling saga we've been tracking on? Yeah. I I I really believe organizations and certain innovative schools are looking to help solve this problem. And by working with communities across the country and on the served communities across the country, we can give more access to more people to get into tech. And and that to me is something that I'm very passionate about. And I hold a lot of hope for the fact that people can access many courses at no cost, right, dip the toe in the water, and then There are also grants out there for apprenticeships. There's money available so that people can get instructor led courses. And then I think, you know, from there, you've got some basic skills and companies are more inclined, to pay people who have skills and then help them, continue their professional development over time. So I'm super excited about that. I think that's where the book is going, and I think a lot more companies are investing in that model. I think at a time when there's a lot of disruption going on and it's producing a lot of anxiety, Joe, I wanna thank you for being on the show today because I think it's important to our listening and viewing audience listening to disrupted, becoming part of our disrupted community that there is a light at the end of the tunnel that for all this disruption that's occurring that's inducing some amount of anxiety, upscilling remains a strong and potent force for, but providing this access to more and more people to have the opportunities that they're looking for and to pepper their experience with continuing education across their lifelong learning path. So it's great to talk with you, Joe. You know, On this show, we talk about the do gooders, we talk about the determine, we talk about people with a high GSD index, those thought leaders that also get shit done. And I think what I wanna do in closing out this episode is give that designation to the company of Skillstorm because I think the work you guys are doing to create more stormers out there and create access really makes you guys a do gooding organization that more people need to know about and plug into. And I think a lot of corporations that have been working with you, have seen the benefits of plugging in training at the point of need training at the point of developing skills rather than credentials first so that people can enter the workforce and continue to grow and be successful. So thank you so much, Joe, for joining us. I'd like to invite you and your team to come back because I think they're doing some really important and exciting things. And for those of you listening and viewing, join us. Tell us what you think of the work that Joe and his team are doing. Tell us what you think of the disrupt ed. Community and what you wanna hear about. Get disrupted with us. Thank you so much for joining us, Joe. Thanks again.