Washington D.C. (September 9, 2016)– TechHire, an initiative created to expand local tech sectors across the country has received thriving support from communities, partners, and employers committed to help close the opportunity gap by training, supporting and hiring underrepresented and overlooked tech talent. Since its start in 2015, TechHire has very quickly expanded and attracted the support from individuals and organizations across the board looking to fill unfilled tech jobs with talented individuals across the country.
“TechHire began in 21 pilot communities in 2015- and now it’s grown to 51 communities, over 1000 employers, and over 400 partners who together placed 2387 people to jobs in 2015.” said Tess Posner, Director of TechHire at Opportunity@Work. “Communities are planning to double that placement this year. Many new cities, employers and partners are joining the TechHire movement to expand job opportunity and economic growth in their regions.”
To amplify TechHire’s success and best practices, Vice President Joe Biden visited LaunchCode- one of TechHire’s first partners- today to praise the program and spoke with the heads of Mastercard, Express Scripts, and Boeing on how the TechHire movement is making waves in changing hiring practices for IT. “We have 500,000 open IT jobs today and by 2022 it’ll be 1.2 million,” Vice President Biden told the crowd for more than 100 people, “and 40% don’t require a college degree.” The TechHire movement focuses on helping Americans who can do the job, get the job- regardless on whether they have a college degree or not. To further the efforts of getting underrepresented and overlooked Americans into the tech field, Vice President Biden also announced the Tech Opportunity Fund, a partnership created by The Iron Yard, Code Fellows and Operation HOPE, to award $100 million in full-tuition code school diversity scholarships.
To join the TechHire ecosystem, visit www.techhire.org to sign yourself or your community up.
Vice President Biden’s speech and roundtable discussion at LaunchCode can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgbUGVOqDSk
ABOUT TECHHIRE
TechHire is a national initiative creating pathways for more Americans to access well-paying tech jobs. TechHire is currently comprised of 51 states, cities, and regions across the country who, through civic aggregation, are working to build an ecosystem where governments, employers, training providers and other stakeholders work together in collective action to achieve a unified goal – developing a pipeline of diverse, non-traditional talent to meet employers’ rapidly growing IT demands.
Media Contact:
Tari Linda Lau
tari@opportunityatwork.org
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