4. Creating an IT Talent Pool
in Unlikely Places...
Rural America
“In the Middle of Every Difficulty Lies Opportunity.” - Albert Einstein
Michael Winwood, CEO, Optomi Professional Services
5. THE U.S. TECH TALENT SHORTAGE DILEMMA
-
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
5,000,000
6,000,000
Jan00
May00
Sep00
Jan01
May01
Sep01
Jan02
May02
Sep02
Jan03
May03
Sep03
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Sep04
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May16
Sep16
Jan17
May17
Sep17
Jan18
May18
Sep18
The 1st Slowdown
Created by Talent
Supply
Recession of 2001
& Y2K Hangover
Mar – Nov 2001
GDP -0.3%
IT Employment -8%
The Great Recession
Dec 2007-Jun 2009
GDP -5.1%
IT Employment -7%
6. TH E U .S. TEC H TALEN T SH ORTAGE D ILEMMA
• 500,000 open information technology jobs in the U.S right now*
• Anticipated to grow to 1 million+ more IT jobs than applicants by
2020*
• 65,000 IT Graduates
• 13% of openings can be filled by those via our universities
• “Full Employment” in the high-end IT skillsets
* Code.org based on estimates from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
**
7. CREATING
NEW TECH
TALENT.
IDENTIFYING
TOP TECH
TALENT
RURAL ITO, BPO &
SUPPORT
SERVICES
HEALTH IT
THE OPS STORY – WHAT, HOW & WHY?
• Addressing the ITTalent Shortage Head-on
• Bringing Jobs Back toAmerica
• Positively Impacting RuralCommunities
• Creating NewCareers
• Veterans
• Women InTechnology
• Underemployed
• Disrupting Multiple Industries
• Offshore Outsourcing
• IT Staffing
• Giving Back
• Feeding Food-Insecure Children
WHAT?
HOW?
WHY?
8. IDENTIFYING A CITY TO CREATE 300+ JOBS
Why Brewton, Alabama?
• Committed City and State
• Relatively Educated Population
• Over 100,000Working Age Individuals Within a 1
hour Commute
• Little Competition in IT or Advancing Careers
• LargeVeteran Population
13. ITO BPO SUPPORT
Application Dev
Break/Fix
Mobile Dev
PMO Services
Lift/Replace
QA - Technical
Industry Tasks
Data Services
Lead Generation
QA - User
Tier 1 Helpdesk
Tier 2 Helpdesk
Call Center Solutions
Business Intelligence
Data Reporting Services
Knowledge Management
SOC/NOC
SERVICES & SKILLS
14. COMMUNITY IMPACT
Beyond Brewton….
• 1 New Rural Location Planned Every Year
• 300 New IT Jobs in Each Location
• COMMITTED TO ADDRESSING OUR IT
TALENT SHORTAGE & IMPACTING RURAL
AMERICA
HELLO - Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen
INTRO & HUMOR - My name is Michael Winwood and I excited to have this coveted spot between you and happy hour
WHY - I’ve been invited today to discuss our industry’s tech talent shortage but more importantly, some unique opportunities that our firm OPS (Optomi Professional Services) is creating to address this challenge
MY CAREER - I’ve spent most of my 25 year career in IT services internationally both is Europe and the US after starting my career as a highly mediocre software engineer.
FINDING TECH TALENT - More specifically, I have dedicated much of my career to finding great tech talent
LOOKING BACK TO GO FORWARD - In the spirit of sometimes looking backward to look forward, I asked Mark and the TechServe team how far back they could go with their IT employment index – thanks guys!
HUMOR - Hardly made me feel like a spring chicken when I realized I’ve been doing this 6 years longer than they’ve been keeping records
90s ANY Y2K - 1990 – Humor on 90s - Needless to say, the 90’s was a strong IT employment growth decade and culminated in Y2K and the first major supply challenge
OFFSHORE TALENT - Traveled to Philippines and Europe, hired over 1,000 mainframe (Cobol, CICS, DB2) and Client/Server programmers (Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, etc.)
DEMAND HAS HISTORICALLY DETERMINED GROWTH - We were all put in the penalty box after Y2K, but there has been steady increase outside of the couple of recessions
SUPPLY TAKING OVER - Over last 2-3 years, we began to notice a change……..
CURRENT & FUTURE - So, over the last 3 years, our concern has increased and looking at current and future projections does nothing to alleviate that concern
OPEN POSITIONS & GRADUATES - When you look at the number of current IT open positions, we are simply not generating enough IT graduates to keep up with demand
HIGH END DEMAND - Demand for Cybersecurity, Cloud, AI, Data experts and Software Developers continues to be most concerning supply
IMMIGRATION - visas are not the solution they used to be
CONCLUSION - Our conclusion is there needs to be additional feeder systems into IT careers in the US……..
OPS - So how is OPS evolving to deal with the supply challenge?
SIMON SINEK - For those that have heard of Simon Sinek’s What, How, Why or Start with the Why approach, we very much subscribe to his philosophy
THE WHAT – explain brands – What We Do
Optomi, established in 2012 – high end IT skills
HealthIT – focused practice – 17% CAGR 16-24 – Digital Health $152B by 24
Provalus – started in 2016
a whole new dimension creating new wave of IT talent in rural America
Identifying high aptitude individuals – underemployed, veterans
Train – intense practice 13 week coding bootcamps
Hired in graduation
THE HOW – Our differentiators
Identify Top Tech Talent
Skill set focused
Recruiting methodology to identify passive talent
Leading technology to identify and present talent
Consultant Care
Create New Tech Talent in Rural America, which does 2 things…
Enables us to compete with offshore outsourcing
Career opportunities with Optomi
THE WHY is the mission, it is the heart of what makes a company special, it’s what gets your teams fired up and believe me, when you’re asking your team to take a leap of faith and go build a team of new tech talent in rural America, you better have a WHY!!
FIRST, LOCATION - So how do you go about building this tech talent pool in rural America. First, identify a location
100 LOCATIONS - We looked at over 100 locations before picking Brewton, AL
CRITERIA - What you need….
Committed city and state – I’ll explain more on the next slide
Educated population – only district in the state with a private funded public school system. Those families also fund 2-year college scholarships for anyone who graduates with a B+ average. The college system is also ameniable to collaboration on future IT cariculum.
100,000 working age individuals within a 1 hour commute
Little competition for IT or advancing careers
Veteran population – Alabama has on of the largest veteran populations per capita of any state (over 400,000) and Pensacola is one of the largest navy bases in the country. This aligns with our long term of 40% of our Provalus employees being veterans.
PROUD CITY - The city needs to be proud of their heritage and willing to take risks for their future, easy to say, not so easy to find. As I mentioned, we looked at over 100 cities and kissed a lot of frogs
MAYOR - The mayor needs to be forward thinking, often times with a business background
STATE - The state needs to be passionate about driving new professional careers
OPENING CEREMONY - We had 300 locals and state officials at the groundbreaking ceremony, including Governor Kay Ivey.
FUN BI-PRODUCT - This is one of the fun bi-products of what we are trying to accomplish
INITIAL NEW BUILDING - In our negotiations with the city and state, it was agreed that together we would build a new 30,000 square foot campus just outside the city and you can see the architectural mock-ups here on the left
FOCUS ON MAING STREET - As we got to spend more time in the city, we asked what was going on with many of the buildings right on main street
VACANT/DISREPAIR - Most were vacant, some were in disrepair
AGREED TO 15 ADJACENT - We have agreed to take over 15 adjacent buildings on main street, renovate and combine them into our new corporate headquarters for Provalus
RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD - This is where the rubber meets the road
CORP RECRUITING - We have a corporate recruiting team that is generating interest at a grass root level in the community, social media, etc.
TESTING PROCESS - Heavy behavioral interviewing and aptitude screening up front. Wonderlic and Computer Programmer Aptitude Battery (CPAB), specifically designed to determine an individuals aptitude success as a computer programmer or systems analyst – verbal meaning, abstract reasoning, number ability and diagramming
BOOT CAMP - 13 week Boot camp - .Net and Java – intense – weekly tests. Culminates in Pinnacle project
GRADUATES are offered a position on the team
GRAD RATIO - 10 graduate for every 200 applicants – 5% hit rate
ONGOING - Major culture of ongoing learning, mentorship, continuing education, small but regular incremental career growth steps
PHOTOS - This is a couple of photos of our growing team of employees who have graduated and are now working with our national client base.
SURPRISED BY 3 THINGS - When I look back over the last two years and building this business from the ground up, I have been surprised by 3 things.
NOT SURPRISED - I was not surprised by the aptitude or ability, I had always sensed there was a pool of underemployed talent that could do so much more. I was surprised by:
APPRECIATIVENESS
DEDICATION & WORK ETHIC
An example….One of our first employees was working the overnight shift at Walmart during bootcamp to make ends meet. In between bootcamp and his night shift, he slept 3 hours. During his graduation project, he put in for a leave of absence to ensure he succeeded with Provalus!
WHERE WE UNCOVER TALENT…
One of our most talented employees couldn’t pay a speeding ticket fine and was informed by a court clerk in Jackson, AL who had seen our news story on Channel 15 about Provalus hiring 300 people. He got in his car and came to interview. He scored the highest CPAB score to date and is now over a year into his new career as a software developer.
COMPETE AGAINST OFFSHORE - Compete against traditional offshore outsourcing firms, bring jobs back to the US in the process
200 HAVE ALREADY BROUGHT BACK - Over 200 of fortune 1000 have brought back services onshore
COSTS CLOSING - Closing cost differences and TCO
OTHER REASONS FOR ONSHORING - Trend of onshore extension - Improved quality, data security, enhanced privacy, increase scalability and agility, cultural alignment and market aptitude
CAREER PATH - Careers typically start in service desk, QA and testing and evolve into application support and ultimately application development
CHALLENGES - Clearly, like any business, this is not without it’s challenges
IMPACT OVERCOMES ROLLER-COASTER - When we’re going through the day-to-day entrepreneurial roller coaster ride of establishing and growing this business, it is the impact that we are making that keeps us motivated and fired up
$18M IMPACT - We have estimated that when we reach our goal of 300 new employees in a city, it will have an approximately $18-20million annual impact on that community.
ALREADY SEEING IN BREWTON - We are already seeing this in Brewton with the need for more housing for our young professionals, new retail businesses, even hotels
MAIN STREET - The impact on the main street of Brewton is very real as we renovate 15 adjacent buildings
GROWTH PLANS - And, this is the first of many. Over the next 5 years, we plan to open 1 new rural location every year and commit to 300 new IT jobs in each market. We are currently already looking in Texas.
MATH GENIUS - You don’t have to be a math genius to see that this impact starts to add up
ALONE NO, TOGETHER YES - Clearly, we alone at OPS are not going to solve the tech talent shortage, but as an industry, if we work together on new solutions, we can create opportunity in the midst of these supply challenges.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your time today.
