AAW partners with Udacity to transform lives and business capabilities with tech apprenticeships.

Today’s tech industry offers some of the fastest-growing and most in-demand employment opportunities. But as US businesses across all sectors digitally transform, the need to fill jobs that require these same tech skills is rapidly expanding outside of tech. 

According to the World Economic Forum, by 2025, technological advancements and automation are projected to create a staggering 97 million new jobs in the technology field. Today there are not enough skilled workers to fill these new positions, and traditional talent pipelines cannot keep pace with the needs of industry.

With skilled talent in short supply, this increased demand makes competition among employers even greater. Compounding this talent gap are the wide-ranging barriers many sectors of society face in attaining these skills - where opportunities to gain education and experience have been unequal and exclusionary. This is why women and people of color are underrepresented in tech jobs.

AAW and Udacity are teaming up to create change. This apprenticeship program aims to give learners around the US a pathway to develop lucrative digital skills that support lifelong career opportunities regardless of background or social status.

This unique solution provides upward economic advancement for Americans and unlocks career progression opportunities.

This partnership leverages Udacity's expertise as a leading provider of hands-on technical upskilling programs. Working closely with Udacity's talent transformation consultants, AAW and Udacity developed a comprehensive five-step framework. 

A scalable platform that includes real-world projects reviewed by expert practitioners who provide personalized feedback to every learner.

Learners gain practical data skills to drive value across the organization.

Customized projects apply knowledge to real-life use cases to showcase the business impact of newly acquired skills.

Program success is supported by reporting that captures individual and cohort-based progress with data-driven insights to track, manage, and enhance learner engagement.

Technical coaching with expert industry practitioners who support learners by connecting curriculum to their projects and on-the-job requirements.

Through Udacity’s customized program in Business Analytics, Miller’s apprentices learned to analyze data and build models with Excel, query databases using SQL, and create informative data visualizations with Tableau. This program enabled Miller to train entry-level candidates from diverse academic backgrounds and no experience in data roles into valuable data professionals.

Miller is delighted with the program, and celebrating significant impact in:

• Employee engagement & retention
• Skills development and business capability
• Operational effectiveness from the application of new skills

The impact of this program extends company-wide by enhancing a culture of learning and talent development that further stimulates digital transformation and employee engagement across the business. 

Miller’s apprentices work in roles across HR, IT, Finance, Marketing, and Project Management, all functions with significant data in their day-to-day operations.

Embedding these skills across diverse organizational functions unlocks potential by taking the business capability out of the silo and meeting the opportunity to gain value from data wherever the business has it.

Another critical aspect of the program is the real career opportunities it provides to apprentices, empowering them with skills that drive increased pay and greater career potential with skills that are transferable wherever they may go in the future. So far Udacity have observed:

• 100% retention of apprentices in the program
• 100% of apprentices got salary increases
• 10/10 of apprentices already using new skills on the job
• 10/10 apprentice rated that technical training supports skills growth
• 100% apprentice felt supported on their learning journey