CHARLOTTE – One of the key workforce development trends in North Carolina this year is a skyrocketing demand for IT talent. Statewide, IT job postings have increased by nearly 25 percent since last October, surpassing national averages.

With the job market rising to new heights, it naturally follows that an increase of IT job listings would be seen in Charlotte, North Carolina’s most heavily populated metropolis and newly-knighted “Tech Town.”

Last year, this increased demand prompted national IT trade association CompTIA to expand its flagship IT-Ready training program to the Charlotte market.

After securing partnerships with Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, Charlotte Works and TEKsystems, and running a successful pilot class, CompTIA has established its presence in the Charlotte area long-term.

Meeting a need among Charlotte employers

Like many tech industry stats, the increase in IT talent demand is mirrored across U.S. regions, also seen hundreds of miles away in CompTIA’s home state of Illinois. Several years ago, CompTIA tasked its nonprofit charity, Creating IT Futures, with the initiative to create a program that would offer hands-on, face-to-face training opportunities for incoming workers in this field.

The result is Creating IT Futures’ signature tech training program, IT-Ready. Since its 2012 launch in Minneapolis, the program has cultivated a pipeline to unlock the potential for tech-savvy individuals to enter IT careers.

Last year, after running part-time popup classrooms in cities around the U.S., IT-Ready kicked off the effort to establish permanent full-time locations in east and west coast states, choosing Portland and Charlotte as cities to launch pilot classes.

Upon opening the registration for its first class in Charlotte last year, IT-Ready drew in a volume of 800 applicants, ultimately selecting 25 to participate. All graduates of the pilot program received offers from local companies after completing the class.

After the pilots proved successful, IT-Ready secured Charlotte and Portland as full-time hosts for the technical support training course in a long-term capacity.

IT-Ready aims to serve populations that are underrepresented in the IT sector, particularly minorities, women and veterans. In the pilot class in Charlotte, more than 74 percent of the students were people of color, 35 percent were women and 26 percent were veterans of the military.

At no cost to students, the eight-week course teaches them how to install and upgrade operating systems, disassemble and reassemble hardware, install image virtual machines, manage data storage and operate peripheral devices, as well as broader concepts such as safety and maintenance, computer networking, cybersecurity and troubleshooting. Upon passing their exams, students will receive a CompTIA A+ certificate, a qualifying credential for IT and tech support positions.

IT-Ready Charlotte’s employer network includes a cross-industry mix of companies in search of IT workers, such as Spectrum, TIAA, UNC Charlotte, Unisys, Atrium Health, the North Carolina Department of Commerce and Four Points by Sheraton.

Programs like IT-Ready align with the efforts by the North Carolina government to provide more tech talent supply for local companies and firms eyeing expansions to the state.

After the success of the pilot program in Charlotte, IT-Ready garnered recognition from state officials in the Governor’s NC Works Awards of Distinction in October, alongside five other programs helping connect local talent to available jobs in the tech sector.

Nationally, IT-Ready has gathered support from a diverse mix of organizations with different goals, speaking to the broader demand for tech talent supply across industries.

Back in April, Creating IT Futures landed a philanthropic investment from staffing firm TEKsystems, which also assists with placing the program’s graduates (including those in Charlotte) into open positions in the field.

IT-Ready is also supported by the Wounded Warriors Project, a nonprofit charity and provider of veterans services. Just last week, Cognizant U.S. Foundation announced a $4.5 million cash grant to fund increased services and locations for the IT-Ready program, in partnership with the Wounded Warriors Project.

Charlotte presence boosted by community partnerships

Creating IT Futures CEO Charles Eaton says IT-Ready Charlotte’s partners are driving interest on the ground in the area, which helps fuel more growth.

Linking up with community partners was a core strategy in Creating IT Futures’ plan before expanding to Charlotte. “We didn’t want to come in and set up shop without relationships,” Eaton says. “We like to first understand the local area as we team up with partners and funders.”

Eaton added, “I go around the country and I see organizations working to tackle issues like poverty and lower wages. There’s a decent amount of employment, but many jobs don’t have the growth potential like a tech job does. We try to partner with organizations that have a footprint in these cities so we can bring tech training to them.”

Talks of expanding to Charlotte began a few years ago when Creating IT Futures secured a partnership from Charlotte Works, a nonprofit workforce development board serving Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. The organization provided connections to potential funders and hosts for classes in Charlotte.

This led to a partnership with Goodwill Opportunity Campus, a facility that offers job training and certification exams, interview prep and job placement services, among other resources for locals seeking employment. IT-Ready Charlotte classes are hosted in the facility, alongside several other education programs which have served 12,600 individuals in the Charlotte region in 2017 alone, according to Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont.

The Opportunity Campus is supported by a $300,000 grant from Google as well as a $1.5 million grant from Cognizant U.S. Fondation to help fund the operation and expansion of tech training initiatives at the facility.

Goodwill Opportunity Campus in Charlotte. Source: Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont

Dana McDonald, VP of talent development at Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, says the partnership with IT-Ready allows locals to build marketable skills that help them achieve family-sustaining employment, which also meets the needs of employers in the Charlotte market.

“We know that skills-based trainings like the ones Goodwill and IT-Ready offer can lead to long-term economic mobility for individuals, their families, and this community,” McDonald adds. “With average annual wages for IT careers ranging from $35,000 to well over $100,000 in this market, this high-quality, no-cost training opportunity we’re making available together will launch students into a top income-earning field—in a region where their talents are highly sought after.”

This community connection, Eaton says, is why IT-Ready Charlotte is starting to see a consistently high number of applicants to pull from.

The IT-Ready training experience first-hand

Since the pilot, IT-Ready Charlotte has launched several more cohorts—all of which also have high success rates among graduates.

One of those graduates, Isiah Rafos, received a job offer for an IT analyst position at information intelligence firm DiscoverReady just a week after graduating in June.

Rafos had first discovered the program while searching for jobs online months earlier. He’d been left unemployed after taking a medical leave from the Air Force when he broke his leg during a firefighting training exercise.

While he hadn’t formally planned to enter the IT industry, Rafos always had a passion for technology. “Growing up I’ve always been a tech kid,” he says. “My father inspired me with books and any technology we had laying around the house. He set me up on my first computer at the young age of 6 and I’ve been toying around with PCs and PC parts ever since.”

Once being accepted into IT-Ready Charlotte and beginning the course, Rafos found that the hands-on curriculum ignited these passions even more.

“It’s the perfect environment for anyone looking to get in to IT from any walks of life,” says Rafos. “My favorite curriculum has to be when we picked up a husk of a PC and worked together as a team to bring it back to life. The trial and error method is one of my most preferred ways of learning and a technique used in troubleshooting quite frequently.”

Rafos is primarily interested in areas of cybersecurity, passions he was exposed to as a teenager from his best friend, who introduced him to the concept of ethical hacking in high school.

“Cyber warfare in my opinion keeps the brain ticking and makes everything around you much more interesting,” he adds. These are areas Rafos would like to pursue in the future as he advances his skills.

Creating IT Futures Workforce Solutions Manager Natasha Pender, IT-Ready Charlotte graduate Isiah Rafos and CompTIA Instructor Brandon Steel. Source: Creating IT Futures

Currently at DiscoverReady, Rafos’ day-to-day tasks involve database management, data formatting and field mapping.

“The most valuable part of my experience in the IT Ready program is being able to experience a class that makes dreams become a reality,” Rafos says. “I am truly blessed to say that I graduated from the best IT class I’ve ever experienced.”

Plans to add more course offerings

IT-Ready Charlotte currently offers four CompTIA certification technical training courses per year.

The latest local cohort graduated back in October. Out of the 23 adults that participated, almost everyone completed the program, and many have already entered jobs or are in the interview process.

The next round of students will begin training in February. Applications are due January 1:

https://wraltechwire.com/event/application-deadline-it-ready-charlotte-training-program/

In addition to the technical support class, IT-Ready has also introduced a quality assurance training course to the Charlotte location. The plan for the program’s future is to continue to expand course offerings to even more fields.

On the road map to achieving that plan is to continue strengthening relationships with community partners and getting more funding to expand, Eaton says.

“In Charlotte we are committed to working with Goodwill to have all the elements and infrastructure we need to expand our courses to meet more skills,” Eaton adds. “We’re in constant conversation with Goodwill and Charlotte employers to design a curriculum around the types of jobs available for entry-level students.”

McDonald says Goodwill of the Southern Piedmont is on track with meeting the demands of local companies that are hiring.

“Through deeply-rooted partnerships with area employers, we know that there is a huge need in our community for these professionals,” McDonald says. “Our new courses allow people to make themselves more marketable with in-demand skills that coincide with high-demand careers in our area.”

She adds, “Over the next three years, hundreds of people in our region will receive free training through Goodwill and our partners that will lead to industry-recognized credentials in the IT field.”