INNOVATIONS FOR BUSINESS
TECH NOTES
Arizona Emerging as New Tech Hub with 25% Job Growth by Jacob Hess
A Barron’s study projects tech jobs will grow at twice the national jobs rate in the next decade. The largest growth will occur in the Southwest, Arizona alone growing 25% as folks — no longer tied to a Silicon Valley cubicle — flee California. Phoenix’s growth has increased year after year as one of the hottest hubs for job growth in the tech sector as more companies relocate their headquarters to the Valley. Our labor force is changing as the digital economy and workforce rapidly transform, fueling the demand for tech-related jobs, including information technology, network engineering and cybersecurity. Right now, there is a high demand for IT engineers, and the astounding prediction by Cybersecurity Ventures back in 2014 that there would be 3.5 million unfilled cyber jobs in the United States by the end of 2021 actually came to be. The need for networking engineering overall is important because that’s the core of a cybersecurity professional, indicating that we need more trained talent in this space. Headquartered in Phoenix, NGT Academy, a cybersecurity and network engineering online training platform, is solving this large demand in the IT market by providing its students with the capabilities and knowledge necessary to succeed in the industry with zero to little experience. Through their affordable, immersive and militarystyle training platform, NGT is looking to bridge that gap, with a mission to help 1 million people get tech jobs by 2030. In addition to its main programs — Network Engineer and Cybersecurity Accelerator — NGT Academy has launched its newest course: the Sales Engineer program that trains students to work on the leading edge of technology IT solutions and mastering the art of selling techbased products and services. —Jacob Hess, CAO at NGT Academy, which he co-founded with other former tech instructors from the U.S. Air Force who trained thousands of engineers for the military with top security clearances
AUG. 2022
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INBUSINESSPHX.COM
Understanding Social Media for Business Social media is one of, if not the, most popular ways companies communicate with their audience. With that in mind and the fact that social media is so visible, companies need to be careful when navigating these platforms. However, it’s far too easy to decide to have a voice on social media that misses the mark. A neutral voice for general information and a catered voice for specific demographics is important. How companies often mess up is crafting a catered voice based on stereotypes, which can backfire quickly. This might result in an offensive message or campaign being put out to the public that does more harm than good, as happened earlier this year to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis when it offered a “Juneteenth watermelon salad” it is food court. Most issues pass quickly, and the internet has a short attention span. However, if a company regularly offends its customers on social media, that can follow a company around for years to come. One of the biggest mouthpieces for companies is Twitter. It’s quick, fairly simple to post and generally used for quick announcements and updates. Unfortunately, once something is put on Twitter, there’s no edit button. This means that businesses should have a team to check what is going out before it is released and treat messages as they would an article headline or general press release, with checks and edits. Companies don’t have to stick to just promoting the business. In fact, if that’s all their social media consists of, they might begin to lose their audience. Social media is a place for content and engagement. One option to consider is communicating with the audience via polls and surveys. Surveys and polls are also a good way to avoid saying potentially offensive things that might not resonate with the masses, since they enable
the business to see what they like and don’t like. Businesses can shout out and tag other brands they are working with to expand their audience and symbiotically collaborate beyond the general affiliate relationship, for instance going live via apps that allow it, such as YouNow, which has a number of brand-safety measures in place that include live moderation. I went live not too long ago to poke fun at some of the bad reviews our app had gotten, similar to a Celebrity Reads Mean Tweets. Surprisingly, this resulted in a material number of downloads for us, and that is saying something given that we have 55 million users. Depending on the company and product, businesses may not need to spend any energy trying to monitor their employees’ personal social media. Generally speaking, there should be a separation between work life and personal life, and it’s more important that employees come to work ready to go. If an employee is found to be engaging in harmful content on their social media and they have a very public connection to their employer’s organization, the employer does need to address it. The internet might have a relatively short attention span but its sleuthing skills are impeccable, and employee-based social media tends to take on a life of its own.. If an employee broadcasts or posts on their behalf they need to know a lot about the product and services. That sounds obvious but it’s surprising how often that’s not taken into consideration. They should not fall back on scripted talking points if live, as it becomes inorganic and consumers can pick up on that. —Jon Brodsky, CEO of top 40 social media app YouNow (www.younow.com), one of the world’s largest live-streaming social networks, ad-free, algorithm-free and with more than 55 million users
There were 817 publicly reported data compromises in the U.S. in the first half of 2022, a 4% decrease compared to the same period in 2021, according to the data breach report released last month by the Identity Theft Resource Center. idtheftcenter.org/post/h1-2022-data-breach-report-shows-decrease-in-compromises-victim-rates/
