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Google Starts Certificate Program To Fill Empty IT Jobs (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are 150,000 open IT jobs in the U.S., and Google wants to make it easier to fill them. Today the company is announcing a certificate program on the Coursera platform to help give people with no prior IT experience the basic skills they need to get an entry-level IT support job in 8 to 12 months. Why it matters: Entry-level IT jobs are are typically higher-paying than similar roles in other fields. But they're harder to fill because, while IT support roles don't require a college degree, they do require prior experience. The median annual wage for a computer network support specialist was $62,670 in May 2016 The median annual wage for a computer user support specialist was $52,160 in May 2016. The impetus: Natalie Van Kleef Conley, head recruiter of Google's tech support program, was having trouble finding IT support specialists so she helped spearhead the certificate program. It's also part of Google's initiative to help Americans get skills needed to get a new job in a changing economy, the company told us.
Those salaries for entry-level positions seem inflated. Double reality, actually. Those wages will also decrease as the supply of applicants increase.
I tried to get a it job, but even being trained at college i was stuck at a supermarket job now i’m unemployed.
I guarantee it's not Houston.
Skilled workers with years of experience have trouble getting positions with those kinds of wages here, much less entry level stuff.
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Ability to tell users to restart their system, reset passwords and unlock accounts, and how to delete an OST file.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
At one time, companies would actually do on-the-job training to fill these kinds of positions. The employee was grateful for the opportunity and would stick with the company. The company would realize the investment they had made in the employee and keep them around. After decades of down-sizing, out-sourcing and job-hopping; I guess there's not enough trust on either side for that to work now.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
All the laid off guys in my town now have jobs in the mine thanks to Trump!
This is why H1Bs need to be limited. Companies need workers. For medium skilled positions, companies could either import foreign labor or find a way to source that labor in the US. Make it more expensive and uncertain to import foreign labor and it begins to make financial sense for companies to train Americans for these jobs.
It’s just too bad the government education system fails to provide Americans with these skills. People in other countries get a better return on their tax money spent on education.
I wish the article went into a quick view of the details. For anyone that doesn't want to look into it:
* Expectation is that you are giving 8-10 hours a week for 8 months to achieve the certification
* This is a subscription based service at $49/month
* You can apply for financial aid for the courses you are taking to relieve the cost burden
* Once you achieve the certification, then you will receive job seeking aid from Google/Coursera
This is Google creating a cert to claim someone knows basic entry-level stuff in hopes other companies will bother recognizing it in some sort of fashion.
This is actually a valid opinion. I can see it starting as a trial balloon of sorts, to see if taking over a cert (therefore taking over mindshare) is worthwhile for the big "G".
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I donâ(TM)t like this for the same reason I didnâ(TM)t like the MCSE mills of a decade ago. Itâ(TM)s going to give people false expectations of a high paying job when the reality is no matter how educated or certified you are you have to learn by doing and that means working at an entry level job for a bit. Some may be promoted in 6 months others may sit at help desk for a few years but you have to gain experience and trust before you get real access and responsibility that comes with a high wage.
Yes, we can return to 2001 where any warm body can an A+ or Network+ or whatever after a week in "boot camp" and than we will know they are capable ready to help run the business with little oversight....
Oh wait that failed back than, just it and past few years of code academy nonsense is going to fail now.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Don't look in the usual places e.g. SV, SF
Have you looked in the basement?
Better yet, have you looked in abandoned properties, condemned buildings, former crackhouses, houses razed or burnt and slated for demolition, or even checked the basement with infrared scanners that locate heat signatures?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I would not be surprised if these programs involve micro-aggression spotting and other new age indoctrination weird stuff.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
This is on par for the course with electricians and plumbers. The problem is in the 90-00s "VocTech" became a dirty word and *everyone* had to go to college.
This left a massive gap of people to fill that portion of industry which has been backfilled by H1Bs.
You're right - it crashed hard. Certs have also become so worthless in tech that you rarely bother seeing a requirement for one nowadays. The only certs I see with any visibility (and possible worth in any industry) are the hilarious HR SHRM certifications and the occasional PMP (...and why that isn't dead by now I'll never guess.)
That said, I figure this could be a trial by Google to see if it has any worth at all, to maybe resurrect the viability (and more importantly, money-making potential) for a certification that they control.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I worked in IT for a long time, then I took a year break to travel. Then I started searching for a job six months ago. Most job postings lately for non-programming/non-networking IT jobs, want a ridiculous amount of experience, something that even my 10 years of time at Amazon doing everything under the sun never got me. Then the other part is, most of these jobs are contract jobs, any directly hired by real companies are usually being filled by internal candidates. Or the jobs that are available, like the contract ones with the India based firms, want to completely under pay you, and the recruiters talk to you in a very crappy tone. I personally have a burning dislike of the India based firms, due to experience with them over the last six months and would personally love to see them outlawed.
This is just another iteration of that. Nobody cares how many pieces of paper you have to show them all they care about is how many years of experience you have.
I quickly learned that any company I'd interview with that would ask "But do you have your A+ certification?" after being filled in on my formal college education and vast work experience wasn't worth working for.
"A+ = short bus". It's the Dane Cook of certifications.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
52K is carp in the bay area that is why they can't fill the rolls.
for profit schools filled the gap from the colleges that where too theory based to the what companies used to pay for.
H1Bs changed to the job / 80+ hours with no OT pay killed it as well.
IT needs trades like education not 4+ years of class room.
CS is not IT and that is your issue as well as need BA/BS.
Try at least AA/AS and IT classes as well as CS.
Why are carp coming out of the bay?
Exactly. Median rent of a 1 bedroom sets you back a cool $2K a month ($24K/year). Skim 10% off the top for state income tax ($5K) and another $6K off the top for Federal income tax/social security, around $200 month ($2.4K/year) for electricty/cell phone/internet, and you're left with around $15K.
Start talking about a car note and you get into $1K/month territory of take-home pay -- which just isn't worth it. Google plans on actively making the problem worse by creating thousands of jobs in San Jose with no city planning on creating enough housing units to hold that many people...which raises housing costs, because of supply and demand.
The housing problem has been bad for over a decade and no politician dares talk about a real solution as it would mean a depreciation in home prices (supply and demand again -- economics works whether or not you choose to believe in it) which is political suicide.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
After Google's anti-skill-social-justice bullshit in their own company I'll be sure to assume anyone with a Google certification doesn't know shit about the job and toss the resume as soon as seeing it. Even if they do well initially, there is no benefit to letting Google get a serious foothold in the IT industry's HR, they'll at best pull a bait-and-switch when they realize they have enough sway to control the industry and get a bug up their collective asses thinking there are too many white males.
Because it's obviously much more cost-effective to hire people in the U.S. to do tech support than it is to hire people in India with college degrees willing to work for one fourth the salary!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What kind of car are you buying that costs $1K/month? You can get a 2018 Camry or Corolla with no money down and $189/month, add $300/month for insurance, about $50/month for gas, another $50 for maintenance (mostly oil change every 5000 miles). My $300/month Prius came with a maintenance plan for 3 years, but then I pay $500/month for insurance because my 16-year old daughter immediately smashed up one car within days of getting her license, and the other car a month later... costing Farmer's insurance about $12,000.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I fear this type of certificate program will have the same results as many of the MCSE ones did: Over-saturation of people with the paper skills, but lacking in actual, hands-on experience coupled with the employers only offering minimum wage for those people.
After all, they'll be a dime a dozen. "If you don't take the minimum wage job, there'll be a hundred other who are desperate to pay off their student loans and put ramen on the table."
All in all, the first wave may be good, but them, it'll be just another money grab by "training institutions" and it won't actually help the employment situation.
Is Google leading in any tech that's administered by a traditional IT department? Why would having a Google certificate be indicative of any knowledge? Are they supposed to be authoritative in certifying qualifications of people in other vendors' tech?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Free for 7 days and $60/mth there after. I'm failing to see the free side of this. I curiously went to the site .
Google is charging money for the courses while sitting on a huge fortune of cash? If they are serious about helping people, why not make the courses free (as in beer)?
Unlikely. They require a better level of English.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can't speak to all certifications, but the Cisco, AWS and RHEL ones are far from worthless.
There are also a lot of subject-specific (generally compliance related) certifications that are important for management roles and contracting.
Most Certs are worth about what it takes to print them.
Personal Anecdote:
During the 90s, I started a cert program (takes about 2 years) for Novell, because Novell was the top tier Networking system out there. Sometime during my program, Windows NT was released. No biggie, right? As I approach finishing the program, and getting my CNE, NT takes off, even though it pales in comparison to Netware, which is more complete. I have my CNA (lower level cert) and now can't find any work with Novell, as all the businesses are going with Microsoft and NT (Which still sucked). All that training and certifications is now basically worthless.
By the time you get certified, the technology has already changed to the point of being worthless. It is much much better to just stay up on things yourself, and teach yourself. When I hire, desire and ability to learn is the only thing I care about. My #1 question I ask, which is really telling ... "What is the last thing you learned?" The insatiable desire to learn is key to surviving in IT. It doesn't matter what.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
that was basically starting wage 20 years ago and inflation doubles costs every 20 years
love is just extroverted narcissism
Auto insurance is $300/mo in CA? In Virginia, I'm paying $50/mo with State Farm. Of course I'm 43, so I'm well above the 'risky, young-dumb-and-full-of-cum' age where you get clobbered paying sky-high premiums.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
If you had the need for a low level tech person, would this certificate be enough for you to hire them?
The problem with certificates is that they were very poor learning quality. Instructor reads notes, you study notes, you regurgitate them in test. All this does is prove you can retain information for at least two weeks, not demonstrate an actual skill. I imagine workers who hired people with these certificates found that these people were not exactly premium and so rejected certifications.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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"... $49 USD per month to continue learning after trial ends..."
"Whatever you can let be will let you be."
I'm a Canadian. Google's offer to help US residents pay the $49 a month does not apply to Canadians. Is the Google office in Toronto or Kitchener interested in hiring Canadians to fill entry level IT support roles from graduates who take this certificate program? I checked using Google's jobs portal and did not see any open positions matching this criteria (Overlooked?) (Kitchener offices). This certificate program is pitched as an experiment, but my $392 or $490 is not an experiment. Based on today's exchange rate, $487 is what it takes to pay for 8 months of this program if the cost is $392 USD. It's not 'free'. Am I paying to participate in an experiment that doesn't lead to any realistic job prospect or does this certificate program actually go anywhere? Each US company has a different set of qualifications for their new hires and I have not seen "coursera certificate" as often as "Comptia A+". (In addition and not mentioned: 1) 160k salaries for Silicon Valley staff (Twitter) that can't afford San Francisco rent; 2) Offshoring; 3) The IT certification hell; 4) Trumps America and how the perspective for US companies hiring Canadians might be changing (Work visa, relocation expenses, etc.); 5) How this experiment benefits Google and Coursera more to help them achieve 'completion rates' with my cash in their pocket despite claims MOOC's would change the world with free access to education from top tier American universities; 6) And as another slashdot reader commented - does Google really want to enter the IT certification racket?; 7) Don't Silicon Valley workers live in trailer parks? But I'm optimistic if this certificate could lead to some virtual assisting job. Dunno. Thoughts?
"There are 150,000 open IT jobs in the U.S., and Google wants to make it easier to fill them." This doesn't specify what percentage of the open IT jobs are entry level, IT support/trouble shooting jobs.