Where Will Your Future IT Workers Come From?
Finding the right IT people with the right skills is critical to keeping your business running smoothly. So what are you doing to groom the next generation of IT workers for your future hiring needs? It's time to mentor some kids through groups like Teens In Tech and TechGirlz.
Great IT people don't just appear at your door when you need them. Actually, it's often hard for enterprises to find just the right IT staffers with the perfect skills and temperament to do all the hard things that have to be done to keep your business processes rolling along.
Recruiting can be difficult and expensive and take a long time, depending on the qualifications and certifications that you are seeking in your new hires. You need people with skills in ERP, CRM, BI and other enterprise apps? What are you doing about it?
Given those realities, I can't help but wonder why more companies and IT executives don't look for innovative opportunities to grow their own future IT workers.
What in the world am I talking about?
It's simple. Have you ever thought about investing in people like you do for hardware, software, buildings, office equipment and everything else your business needs to run?
All over the country, there are nascent groups out there that are working to encourage pre-teens and teenagers to pursue their loves of technology, video games, computers, cellphones and more, so that they will pursue careers in these fields.
Yes, I'm talking about teens and pre-teens, some as young as nine or 10 years old.
Am I crazy? I don't think so.
Just ask Daniel Brusilovsky, the CEO and founder of Teens In Tech Labs, a three-year-old start-up that is working to encourage teens to develop and grow their best ideas in technology.
Oh, did I mention that Brusilovsky is 18 and that he started Teens In Tech when he was 15?
Daniel Brusilovsky, CEO and founder of Teens In Tech Labs
His idea is simple — to provide tools and resources to young people around the world to encourage entrepreneurship, even among kids who are too young to vote or drive.
The idea happened after he started his first company at 14, a media group that created podcasts and helped other young people create media content.
"It was originally started as a social network for young media producers, bloggers and podcasters," he says. "I was one of those people and I wanted to find other like-minded people who were interested in that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, there weren't that many young media producers to connect with" back then.
That's when he expanded his networking idea to a larger group of young people — young entrepreneurs. "We originally focused too much on a niche audience," he says. "We took a step back and looked at the industry as a whole, to young people who have great ideas and need to jumpstart them. Young people come up with great ideas and don't know what to do with them."
It turns out, according to Brusilovsky, that "they just need to know the steps to follow."
And that's how Teens In Tech Labs came to be.
"I have a ton of friends and we started talking and we all realized that we had similar struggles," he says. "We had ideas but didn't know what to do with them. We began to look at how to fix it."
The process began with finding mentors and advisers who could help them give some of their fledgling tech ideas some legs.
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