As Trump Stifles Immigration, Expect Tech to Turn to Apprenticeships

Salvador Rodriguez | Inc.com | 11 April 2017

“A year ago, Shawn Farrow worked full time as a mover, hauling boxes for wealthy tech engineers in Seattle. These days, Farrow isn’t just lugging furniture for tech workers. He’s a tech worker himself.

Farrow is an apprentice engineer, writing code from the comfort of his desk at Avvo, a Seattle tech firm. He is a fresh breed of tech worker coming into the industry through a new type of training program that is designed to identify talented individuals from non-traditional backgrounds.

“It’s more rewarding for me coming to an office and using my brain rather than my physical abilities,” Farrow says. “It’s a different kind of fatigue, but it’s rewarding.”

Tech apprenticeships are a fairly new concept in the U.S., but as the Trump administration makes it more difficult for American companies to hire or attract foreign workers, experts predict that more U.S. firms could embrace this type of training program to fill entry-level technical roles.”

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Ten Things Your Resume Doesn’t Mention — But It Should

Liz Ryan | Forbes.com | 11 April 2017

“For fifty or sixty years job-seekers have been taught to write their resumes in the most opaque and unhelpful way imaginable.

Job-seekers have been taught to use terse, governmental language in their resumes, so that almost every job-seeker sounds identical to every other job-seeker!

That’s the worst possible approach. You are not a dry, dusty person — you are lively and creative! Why not show some of that creativity and spark in your resume?”

Read more here.

 

On the front lines of tech: Bunker Labs ready to help veterans move from military service to startups

Lisa Stiffler | GeekWire | 10 April 2017

“Not everyone has the work ethic to be an entrepreneur — the long hours, the commitment, the need to focus on the long game.

But Travis Stanley-Jones thinks one segment of the population is particularly well suited to the startup grind: military veterans.

“Veterans don’t have a 9-to-5 mentality. You’ll have months where you just work from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. on night ops. That is a normal course of business,” he said. “It’s not a 9-to-5 job, and entrepreneurship is not a 9-to-5 job.

Veterans’ openness to “putting in the work for minimal pay with a long-term perspective makes veterans a better bet,” said Stanley-Jones, who served with the U.S. Marine Corps for six years in the reserve, active duty and officer training.

And now there’s an organization that’s ready to help military veterans in Washington state who are eager to try their hand in business. Bunker Labs recently set up shop in the University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs @ Startup Hall. The goal of the nonprofit is to help people transition out of the military and into entrepreneurial jobs in the private sector.”

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Seattle: An epicenter for computer science education

Living Computers | The Seattle Times | 10 April 2017

“While Seattle is known as a fast-growing hot spot for the tech industry, some may be surprised to hear that computer science isn’t required to be taught in schools in our state.

According to Code.org, a local nonprofit working to change policy nationwide to support computer science education in schools, 93 percent of Washington parents want their child’s school to teach computer science while just 40 percent of schools here do. Learning computer science in school makes a big difference in communities like ours, with many open computing jobs. Students who learn computer science in high school are six times more likely to major in computer science in college – for girls that figure jumps to ten times more likely.

Preparing students through school for the computing jobs of the future is a nationwide problem, of course. Here in Washington, we’ve been addressing the issue from various angles for years.”

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Amazon creating 5,000 part-time, work-from-home jobs in its Virtual Customer Service program

Kurt Schlosser | GeekWire | 6 April 2017

“Amazon may be hiring thousands of people to fill jobs on its Seattle campus or at fulfillment centers around the country, but jobs in the tech giant’s Virtual Customer Service program — which allow for the option of working from home — are growing, too.  Amazon announced Thursday that it plans to create 5,000 new, part-time roles for the 5-year-old program over the next year. That number is on top of Amazon’s plans to hire more than 30,000 part-timers over the next year and 100,000 full-time, full-benefit employees over the next 18 months. Amazon says over 70 percent of part-time employees in Virtual Customer Service and Customer Fulfillment work more than 20 hours per week, which means they receive benefits.”

Read more here.