April 20, 2010

Where to go to find financial help for tech training

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In this era of bank failures, high unemployment and shaken confidence in Wall Street, the common wisdom is that new federal stimulus packages and tax breaks are needed to revive our workforce. While government will certainly play a big role in getting us out of the deep economic hole we're in, it's not necessarily ARRA funds that will do all of the work.

In fact, if you're in the technology field -- or are thinking of switching into a high-tech career -- there's a well-funded government program that's been on the books for about a dozen years that can give you at least $3,000 to be spent on retraining classes. No bailout required!

Born during the Welfare reform battles of 1998 under the Clinton administration, the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) was created to help displaced workers in certain industries make the leap into new careers via vocational re-training in fields with high demand for new workers, such as electronics or information technology.

"It's amazing how many people are not aware of the money available to them," says Gretchen Koch, director of workforce development programs at the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a global organization that represents IT professionals.

To help spread the word about this sometimes overlooked source of funds, CompTIA launched a program called Getting America Back to Work, which helps match IT workers with new jobs and provides training and certification to help make IT candidates more attractive to hiring managers.

"We got the notion about the program about a year ago, when there was a lot of concern about the economy going down the tubes," Koch says. "We thought, were there really no jobs to be had out there? We should do something about this."

After conducting research in 2009 on job opportunities, CompTIA discovered that there were actually about 450,000 open IT jobs nationwide, even as the unemployment rate soared past 10 percent. "The problem was that many of the displaced workers didn't know where to find these jobs," Koch says. "We were aware that people in the IT workforce had a lot of general technical aptitude, but they were not as skilled at obtaining higher-level skill sets."

Through a partnership with the various WorkSource OneStop Career Centers around the country, CompTIA's four-step program provides:

1) Skills assessment - An aptitude test to identify those unemployed workers who have basic technical skills, even if they were previously trained in non-technical positions.
2) Training - Those who score high enough marks are put into extensive training programs (paid for via the $3,000 WIA grants) at community colleges and other training firms such as New Horizons.
3) Certification - Once training is complete, individuals can verify their new skills through CompTIA's many certification programs, which help increase their chances of getting hired..
4) Placement - CompTIA works with the now-certified IT professionals to match them with local companies that are hiring.

A recent search on CompTIA's job placement tool for downtown Seattle listed more than 2,000 IT-related job openings that are covered by CompTIA's certification program. I read that figure with a grain of salt, as many dozens of listings in the first few pages I viewed were first posted in 2009. Still, even if only half of CompTIA's listing are legit, the figures do suggest that demand for skilled workers in the local IT sector is slowly growing.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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education, IT, technology, training

1 Comments

Lisa Fasold on April 23, 2010 9:15 AM | Reply

The One-Stop program and CompTIA's IT training are excellent in helping recent unemployed workers get back to work. If your unemployment benefits have run out, and you're disabled, a vet or a dislocated worker, CompTIA also offers the Creating Futures program through its Educational Foundation. Creating Futures provides free IT training and certification to help those that are disadvantaged or disabled join the IT workforce. Applicants can apply online at www.comptia-ef.org.

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