Dive Brief:
- Google.org and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring our Heroes program launched a new initiative to provide tech training to 8,000 veterans, the organizations announced last week.
- The program, Career Forward, will offer veterans free Google certificate training, as well as 12-week fellowships at over 400 employers, job placement support, financial stipends and additional training for the job search process.
- Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, will support the program with $20 million in grant funding and in-kind donations. Google hopes the program "can ease some of the challenges our military community faces in reaching economic mobility," said Jacquelline Fuller, VP at Google and president of Google.org, in a blog post.
Dive Insight:
As businesses expand their reliance on digital, the need for tech skills grows. Tech training programs connect veterans with job opportunities while helping organizations meet their technical needs. Nearly 80% of veterans transition out of service without a clear career path, a gap these programs are aiming to fill.
Google isn't the only big tech provider working to connect veterans to careers in tech.
In September, Microsoft partnered with the City of Los Angeles to create a free training program called the Los Angeles Veterans Technology Training Academy, a four-month program to connect veterans with software engineering, cloud application development and cloud administration roles.
Amazon, which currently employs 40,000 veterans and military spouses, said in July it plans to increase that number to 100,000 by 2024. The company offers veteran employees access to upskilling initiatives like the Amazon Technical Apprenticeship Program and AWS re/Start.
In the cloud space especially, vendors are also motivated to lower the barrier of access to tech training. With more workers in the market skilled to operate their platforms and services, companies can expand tool use and lock more companies into their services.
