Seemingly every day we read about another hack on corporate data and personal information. In an increasingly networked world, our data has never been more at risk and, quite frankly, we are ill-prepared for the threat. Experts estimate that there aremore than 300,000 cybersecurity jobs vacant in the U.S., 60,000 of which could be filled by individuals with proper training but not necessarily a four-year college degree.
The skills gap in cybersecurity points to an underlying and systemic issue in our country, namely that our broad access education systems struggle to produce talent at the speed and volume the market demands. That’s where Year Up comes in. Working with community colleges, Year Up invests in highly motivated and talented low-income young adults, Opportunity Youth, who receive six months of market-specific technical training and professional skills development followed by a six-month internship at one of our country’s leading companies.
Our young adults develop in-demand skills that directly reflect the job market, and our corporate partners gain access to a strong and diverse pipeline of talent. In a world with growing cyber threats, there has never been a better time to train Opportunity Youth to become the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Year Up is addressing the workforce gap in cybersecurity in partnership with theSymantec Cyber Career Connection initiative and LinkedIn. This past year, Year Up students from the Bay Area and Baltimore received industry-specific training and are now filling critical roles at companies like Symantec, eBay Inc., Juniper Networks, Gap Inc., UCSF, NCC Group, and Macys.com. Year Up was able to move so quickly in creating this pipeline of cybersecurity professionals because of Symantec’s leadership and the LinkedIn Economic Graph. Through the Economic Graph, we were able to quickly and precisely identify the required technical skills as well as the markets that had the greatest need for such cybersecurity skillsets. It is this kind of nimbleness that will be required for us, as a country, to close the skills gap and connect talent to jobs at scale.
On July 25th, the Year Up community will celebrate the next wave of technology professionals to enter the market. Apropos of our partnership, Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, will deliver the keynote address at Year Up Bay Area’s graduation. Our students came to Year Up with the grit, determination and persistence to succeed; and now they will leave with the in-demand skills required to launch a career and keep cyber attacks at bay.
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