Dive Brief:
- Walmart’s senior vice president of global HR suggested Thursday that companies that lack IT talent simply aren’t looking hard enough, according to CIO.com.
- Speaking at the STEMconnector conference, Sharon Wibben said Walmart now views its own employees as a great source of IT talent and said "we have to recruite from within."
- Some groups have argued that they don’t buy into reports that the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of tech talent.
Dive Insight:
Walmart recently reached out to all of its 2.4 million workers to inform them that the company was seeking people who graduated with certain STEM skills in the last 24 months, according to Wibben. As a result, the company found about 1,000 employees with STEM skills.
"We were stunned at the number of STEM graduates working at our stores and distribution centers," Wibben told CIO.
Some groups, like the Economic Policy Institute, say they don’t believe reports claiming there is a shortage of tech talent in the U.S.
But others wholeheartedly do believe there is a shortage. Earlier this week, a number of technology, business, government and education leaders announced they are working together to push Congress to increase federal funding for technology education. The group has a petition in place asking Congress to provide $250 million in funding to school districts in order to give K-12 students an opportunity to learn to code.
