How to break down barriers to tech careers

The UK tech indus­try might be one of the country’s fastest-grow­ing sec­tors, but it is fac­ing an unprece­dent­ed tal­ent short­age, with a loom­ing gap between the jobs of the future and the skills we have. Research from Sales­force sug­gests that 90% of the entire UK work­force will need to retrain by 2030.

A 2021 gov­ern­ment report into dig­i­tal skills gaps found tal­ent short­ages across all tech­nol­o­gy areas, with sig­nif­i­cant short­ages in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, big data and analy­sis and data archi­tec­ture. In fact, two-thirds of dig­i­tal lead­ers in the UK said they were unable to sus­tain growth and meet cur­rent demands due to the lack of avail­able tal­ent, with a lack of skilled devel­op­ers third only to HGV dri­vers and nurs­es as the most in-demand role in the UK.

Part of the prob­lem is the lack of young peo­ple tak­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions in dig­i­tal sub­jects, with the Learn­ing & Work Insti­tute claim­ing that the num­ber of teenagers tak­ing IT sub­jects at GCSE lev­el has dropped 40% since 2015.

Alternative routes to tech

How­ev­er, there are many alter­na­tive routes into careers in tech beyond the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al route through uni­ver­si­ty. One solu­tion is on-the-job train­ing, with the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of appren­tice­ships encour­ag­ing school leavers, grad­u­ates and old­er employ­ees alike to move into the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try. Ama­zon recent­ly cre­at­ed 1,500 appren­tice­ships across the UK, with Vir­gin Media O2 also among those grow­ing their appren­tice­ship intake. 

Anoth­er route is to tar­get career chang­ers, who are increas­ing­ly look­ing for new roles in the wake of the great res­ig­na­tion – but can also come from some sur­pris­ing places.

Mar­tin Cor­ry has worked for Sales­force for more than sev­en years and is cur­rent­ly region­al vice pres­i­dent of real estate and con­struc­tion. How­ev­er, he’s prob­a­bly bet­ter known for his pre­vi­ous career as a rug­by play­er for Leices­ter Tigers, the British and Irish Lions and Eng­land, with whom he won the World Cup in 2003 and cap­tained in 2007. So what moti­vat­ed him to move into tech, and how did he adapt from the pres­surised world of pro­fes­sion­al sport?

“At first when I fin­ished rug­by, I did a num­ber of dif­fer­ent busi­ness devel­op­ment types of roles, but there was no own­er­ship to them,” he says. “For a year this was great, but after that, I felt I lacked pur­pose. In sport, you spend your whole time being under pres­sure in a results-dri­ven envi­ron­ment and sud­den­ly, that’s gone.” 

Cor­ry took a role with Sales­force which was the right blend of per­for­mance-dri­ven cul­ture and learn­ing to enable him to suc­ceed. “As I tran­si­tioned, I faced a new set of chal­lenges. It became clear that I need­ed a mind­set shift – from cul­ti­vat­ing a new sup­port net­work, learn­ing new dig­i­tal skills and being strong enough to ask for help in the first place,” says Cor­ry. “Busi­ness­es and ath­letes can learn a lot from each oth­er when it comes to upskilling and resilience in the face of adver­si­ty. I found that with rug­by, I could draw on skills I’d honed over years to tran­si­tion to a suc­cess­ful career at Sales­force.” 

Cor­ry also found the sup­port he need­ed to devel­op his under­stand­ing of the indus­try and the tech­nol­o­gy used, admit­ting that he knew lit­tle about the sec­tor before enter­ing. “I didn’t have the innate knowl­edge of this new chal­lenge I had with rug­by. So I looked back to the begin­ning of my rug­by career and re-cap­tured that ‘day one’ mind­set: be a sponge for knowl­edge, scrap for every­thing, look with fresh eyes. There was a key moment where I pressed reset and things start­ed to improve.”

“I nev­er thought the sec­tor would be for me. I didn’t come from a tech­nol­o­gy back­ground, so the tech­ni­cal bar­ri­er was huge. What helped was the onboard­ing and ongo­ing train­ing on how our soft­ware works. Once I start­ed to immerse myself with­in Sales­force tech­nol­o­gy, it slow­ly start­ed to make sense. That’s now one of my go-to say­ings: If I can learn how to use Sales­force, com­ing from a noth­ing base, then any­one can,” he smiles.

Attitude over aptitude 

Now, Cor­ry encour­ages oth­er peo­ple that find the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor daunt­ing to try and break into it. In his role as a team leader, he pri­ori­tis­es atti­tude over a tech­ni­cal back­ground when hir­ing, believ­ing that the onboard­ing process pro­vides the skills need­ed to be com­pe­tent enough to start a role. Online learn­ing plat­forms, such as Salesforce’s Trail­head, can be great tools for upskilling and reskilling, open­ing up path­ways to new career oppor­tu­ni­ties. Trail­head can take par­tic­i­pants from a low lev­el of tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to a job in the Sales­force ecosys­tem in as lit­tle as six months.

As part of Salesforce’s Equal­i­ty Groups ini­tia­tive, employ­ee-led organ­i­sa­tions at Sales­force that sup­port under­rep­re­sent­ed com­mu­ni­ties in a com­mit­ment to find­ing untapped tal­ent and cre­at­ing a diverse work­place, Cor­ry also set up Ath­lete­Force. Ath­lete­Force helps retir­ing ath­letes move into roles in the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try. As with so many peo­ple con­sid­er­ing chang­ing careers, pro­vid­ing a new pur­pose and direc­tion is key.

“A lot of ath­letes are so suc­cess­ful because they’re dri­ven and have a pur­pose. As soon as you retire, you lose your pur­pose and it can be dan­ger­ous. The tech­nol­o­gy indus­try can give you anoth­er pur­pose. It might not be play­ing in front of 90,000 peo­ple, but it’s a pur­pose where you can build some­thing and achieve new things,” he says.

Find­ing untapped tal­ent from all of soci­ety, such as ath­letes with trans­fer­able skills, is an impor­tant step towards clos­ing the dig­i­tal divide. Sales­force, and its net­work of part­ners and cus­tomers, will cre­ate 271,700 new jobs alone by 2026. 

Cor­ry’s expe­ri­ence is a case in point that with the right oppor­tu­ni­ties and sup­port, tech careers can be acces­si­ble to ambi­tious indi­vid­u­als from a range of back­grounds, not just those who set out on a tech­nol­o­gy path from the begin­ning. By break­ing down bar­ri­ers to tech careers, organ­i­sa­tions are open­ing them­selves up to an excit­ing, diverse and untapped tal­ent pool.

To find out how Sales­force is pow­er­ing the work­force of tomor­row, vis­it trailhead.salesforce.com.