Welcome everyone to the Washing Tech Workforce Coalition’s Washington Jobs Initiative Newsletter! We began work this year on the WJI grant and are excited to keep you in the loop on the work that the Coalition has been up to for the first quarter of 2024.
The Coalition is the tech sectoral partnership for the Washington Jobs Initiative (WJI), the Washington State implementation of the federal Good Jobs Challenge (GJC), which aims to bolster priority industries to recover from the COVID pandemic and assist those under-served, underrepresented, and most impacted to establish a Good Job. The Coalition is led by Computing for All, a Washington nonprofit, selected by Washington Student Achievement Council to provide 1,000 job placements in IT and Cybersecurity roles across all sectors by October 2025.
Coalition Activities
In January, Computing for All began a collaboration with Business Higher Education Forum (BHEF) to ready employer and educator engagement. To prepare for this engagement, BHEF provided a summary assessment of 2023 jobs data regarding technology roles in Washington via a reporting platform called Lightcast. Some interesting trends in the data that BHEF found were that most entry-level tech roles were in non-tech sectors, with 65% of the 12,000 entry-level tech jobs in Washington in the past year outside of the tech industry. For example, finance, retail, and health care had large numbers of tech positions posted. BHEF also found that the highest numbers of job postings were for Software Developers and Computer Support Specialists, which echoes what we’ve been hearing from our placement providers.
The Coalition plans to continue working on understanding industry needs via ongoing employer engagement and industry analysis. We are working with employers to understand their current hiring needs and how to align training and job seeker preparation to best fit those needs.
WJI Partners
Our main focus in Q1 was bringing together a group of 14 partners who will be working with us to place 1,000 workers in tech jobs by September 2025. Our partners include a broad range of organizations such as regional networks, community-based organizations, educational institutions, and training programs, involved in outreach to under-served students and communities, alignment with education, employer engagement, and expanding the tech employment pipeline across Washington State.
Placement Providers: Ada Developers Academy, CodeDay, Per Scholas, PNW Cyber Challenge Games, Riipen / North Seattle College, Saint Martin’s University – Washington Vets to Tech, Year Up
Subrecipients: Career Connect Southwest STEM Regional Network (ESD 112), Center for Excellence for Information & Computing Technology, Evergreen Goodwill, King Pierce RN / Washington Alliance for Better Schools, North Central Regional Network (NCESD 171), Seattle Jobs Initiative, Washington Technology Industry Association.
Read more about our partners and the work they’re engaged in for the WJI.
WJI Partner Spotlight: Per Scholas
At Per Scholas, we believe that a thriving workforce starts with equitable access to education. Per Scholas connects individuals to promising technology careers through our immersive, full-time training program – offered at no cost to learners.
Our learners can choose one of several training tracks including: IT Support, Cyber Security, Cloud Computing and Software Engineering. Our intensive programs are all full-time from 12 to 15 weeks and include professional development training…ie. resume building, networking, interview preparation and job search support. All learners are assigned a learner support manager and a financial coach who provide additional support in helping our learners remove any barriers while in program; all of which continue up to two years post-graduation as our learners establish themselves in most cases their first role in tech.
To qualify for our program, learners must come from low-to-moderate income households and populations typically underrepresented in tech; people of color, women, refugees/immigrants, formerly justice involved and those with at-most a high school diploma, who have the talent to thrive yet lack the qualifications to enter the industry.
Learner Success Story
By all accounts Sam Tessema is living the dream as a software engineer for Heroku at Salesforce. His journey there wasn’t typical. He didn’t have prestigious internships at tech firms during his university’s summer breaks. As a high school graduate and part-time Nathan Hale football coach, Sam set about teaching himself coding skills especially from YouTubers. There was one phrase that played a bigger and bigger role in his life and career. “The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.”
He brought his thirst for knowledge and drive to Per Scholas Seattle. As a part of the first in-person Software Engineering cohort, Sam quickly demonstrated his drive and growing ability to exceed expectations in the classroom and outside of it by earning the first ‘Do More Award’ for consistently going above and beyond. He continued to grow his network and demonstrated his ever expanding skill set in his class projects, with outside projects with classmates and in a professional peer group called Mentor Mesh. He embarked on 100 days of code on LinkedIn and before it was over, he had accepted his role at Heroku. True to his mantra and journey, Sam will no doubt continue to learn.
To collaborate with Per Scholas, please reach out to:
Funder and Employer Partnerships: Brian McRae
Recruitment Partnerships and Admissions: Cassandra Yabes
CFA Career Services
In addition to the work that our WJI partners are doing, CFA Career Services has also been providing career development opportunities for tech students and job seekers. In Q1 of 2024, we ran 15 workshops and events, serving almost 200 students from 17 high schools, community colleges, and universities across Washington State. We had 32 industry volunteers who led workshops, participated in panel discussions, and worked 1:1 with students to provide mentorship and support for their careers. Thank you to our volunteers from Bank of America, Blackbaud, Brooksource, Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, Google, JP Morgan Chase, Mechanical Orchard, Microsoft, Okta, Seattle IT, and WaTech.
We collaborated with the Bellevue College Computer Science Department to create an interactive industry-volunteer-led workshop series centered around career success. These workshops covered navigating career fairs, behavioral and technical interviewing, and a panel on finding your career path in tech. Read more about this workshop series.
As part of our work with the Microsoft Discovery High School Internship program, we also ran a series of nine workshops for high school seniors to help them write resumes and prepare for interviews with the Microsoft Discovery Program, leading to six students being offered placements in the program.
Currently, our team is working to develop more opportunities for students to improve their career readiness and skills. In addition to workshops and events, we are creating a program where students can gain project-based experience through working on open-source projects.
Check out our website news page and LinkedIn to stay up to date on all our activities.
Upcoming WJI Partner Events and Opportunities
North Central ESD STEM Summit
August 19-21, 2024, Wenatchee Convention Center
The STEM Summit provides professional learning opportunities for teachers and educational staff members in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics taught by experts and specialists in their fields. Register here.
Tech Talent Boost Washington powered by Riipen
Tech Talent Boost Washington (TTBW) provides students and recent alumni the opportunity to engage in employer-led project-based internships as a pathway to job placement. They support Washington based employers to expand their hiring practices to test-drive talent. If you or an employer in your network is interested in posting a digital tech project in areas such as web application design & development, mobile application development, cloud computing, or data analytics, reach out to TTBW to find out more.
Per Scholas and TEKSystems – Special Event!
Industry Roundtable: Workforce Disruptors: AI and Inclusion
July 11, 2024, 9AM to 11AM
Contact bmcrae@perscholas.org for more details.
Per Scholas – Software Engineer Graduation Ceremony
at Seattle Jobs Initiative
August 1, 2024, 1PM to 3PM
Contact bmcrae@perscholas.org for more details.