FRONT END
WHY A CAREER IN TECH IT careers cut across all industries, and Arkansas makes it easy to find your path to success BY BILL YODER
F
or too many years, Christina Eichelberger had been stuck in some form of “the call center.” Whether she was phoning customers of State Farm with their claim results, or calling potential car buyers to come in for a test drive, or contacting truck drivers all over the country to help them get the most out of the J.B. Hunt 360 mobile app, she was still at arm’s length from the kind of career she wanted. “When I hit 30,” says Christina, “I said, ‘Something’s gotta give. I need to pick up a skill.’” She vowed to get into tech by any means necessary. Her first step in that direction was to sign up for a certificate program in front-end development at the University of Arkansas Global Campus. Then, while she was in that course, one of her classmates came in one day talking about his new apprenticeship with Affirma, the business solutions company. “His apprenticeship came with a salary and benefits,” says Christina. “I didn’t know that was a possibility. I thought my options were just internships or entry level. Until then, I hadn’t heard the term apprenticeship in this capacity. When I thought of apprenticeships, I thought of plumbing.” Christina immediately got in touch with Affirma and went through the interview process with them. “That’s when I found out there was this really great program from the Arkansas Center for Data Sciences—ACDS—that was helping people get into tech here in Arkansas,” says Christina. Soon she, too, was an apprentice for Affirma, learning the SharePoint skill set. When her apprenticeship training is over, she’ll be calling on Affirma’s customers to help them make their businesses more successful. Christina is finally on her path.
THERE’S A LOT more to learn about Registered Apprenticeships, as they’re formally called, and I hope you’ll read ACDS Apprenticeship Director Lonnie Emard’s piece on that subject on page 40. Meanwhile, I want to tell you a little about tech careers in Arkansas and the various routes to get you there. First of all, you should know that ACDS was formed as a result of Governor Asa Hutchinson’s 2017 Blue Ribbon Commission on “advancing the economic competitiveness of data analytics and computing in Arkansas.” We’re a nonprofit, and our job is to work with our partners—government, education, and corporate Arkansas—to prepare our state’s workforce for well-paying 21st-century careers. Today, every company is a tech company to one degree or another. J.B. Hunt isn’t a trucking company, it’s a technology company with a focus on logistics. Tyson Foods feeds the world, thanks to their algorithm-driven supply chain on either side of the production line. Walmart is the original data-centric retailer. And orbit-
ing around the big boys is an increasingly wide range of smaller businesses that provide all kinds of tech services to these and other companies. Information Technology is not just the future, it’s the present—even in agriculture, one of our state’s key industries. Last year we profiled an Arkansas farmer in our ACDS newsletter. “You may think that tractor of mine is just a tractor,” he said. “But it’s not—it’s a computer on wheels.” All of the above is why we at ACDS are working with the folks at Arkansas Times and East Initiative to publish ITArkansas. And why we especially want to get it into the hands of young people who are, or soon will be, entering the working world. We want you to know that you don’t have to wait until you’re 30 to get into the tech world. No matter where you are or what your situation, there’s an IT career just waiting for you—right now. In Arkansas, we have 10,000 tech jobs to fill and only 700 tech grads a year. That means we have to get creative, and I’m proud to say that ACDS and our partners are thinking outside the proverbial box. In the past, when companies wanted to hire new people at a professional level, most HR departments insisted on a minimum of a four-year degree. If they couldn’t find the person they were looking for through the usual channels, they turned to an outside staffing firm to fill that unique need. It was slow, and predictable, and it solved one hiring problem at a time for a surprisingly long while. Then Information Technology knocked the business world off its axis, and suddenly the old model wouldn’t cut it anymore. The demand for IT talent is just too great. So where is all this needed tech talent going to come from? Our answer is, Look around you. Look in the mirror. It can, and will, come from anywhere.
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