How to hack your way into a tech career — no coding required

There's no better time to get into the tech industry and a new course will help you get there, without coding skills 
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Amelia Heathman20 August 2020

You might be one of the 730,000 people who have lost their jobs since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Or maybe you’re eyeing up your current industry and think it’s time to get a shift on before things go sour.

Business is booming in tech. Demand for digital services, from the likes of Zoom to Deliveroo, have demonstrated the impact tech has on the world around us and people want in.

One of the biggest barriers to a tech career is often seen as a lack of coding knowledge. People don’t think they can work for a tech company if they’re not a software engineer. But this is a big misconception says Oliver Beach, UK general manager for co-learning provider Jolt. “80 per cent of jobs within tech companies are not within coding or technical roles. There is a real barrier where people think 'I can’t get into tech because I don’t know how to code' and actually there are so many opportunities.”

Jolt recently launched a new course at its London school to take advantage of these non-tech tech roles. Called Switch, the five-week-long bootcamp, 20 for those part-time, gives people the skills they need to succeed in a tech start-up, whether in marketing, sales, or operations.

What Switch does is leverage the existing experience someone may have from their current role and help them transfer these skills to the start-up world. Students go through 160-hours of learning, covering topics such as data visualisation, market research and targeting operations. Each class is small, up to 18 in total, so learning is maximised. At the moment, everything takes place remotely.

The course costs £2,500 in total and there’s a serious application process — one stage includes a presentation on how a struggling industry should switch to tech to become more commercially driven. But the results speak for themselves: since Jolt launched Switch in its native Israel, it’s hired three graduates from the programme. Other graduates have gone on to work for the likes of Amazon and Gett, with 72 per cent landing a tech job after graduation and 95 per cent in jobs within three months of finishing.

During the course, students receive CV consultations with former recruiters at Airbnb and LinkedIn, and present a final project to a panel of recruiters at the end. Five weeks is a lot less than the standard coding bootcamp, but this is because people aren’t being taught from scratch. “There’s a huge opportunity to retrain people to become digital leaders who may not realise they have those skills," says Beach.

These commercial skills are more important than ever. “There’s a pressure for companies to be commercial and drive revenue towards profitability. The way they’re going to do that isn’t by hiring loads of developers buy by hiring more sales people, marketers, people in operations who can help drive businesses to become more efficient, drive revenue and drive more customers,” he adds.

Once you’ve gained your specialist skills, you need to find somewhere to put them to good use which is where Otta comes in, a recruitment platform that helps you to find jobs at the top start-ups and tech brands in London. Whilst software engineering roles make up the dominant area of hiring on the app, 10 per cent of the roles on offer are in sales and business development across a variety of seniority levels. The main skills employers are looking for include communication, analytical skills and the ability to develop and maintain strong relationships.

It’s not just start-ups that are keen to hire non-technical skills, but the larger tech companies too like Ericsson. “Greater use of automation and machine intelligence has delivered more for our customers but no amount of automation can replace human skills,” explains Peter Sheppard, Head of Global L&D Ecosystem. “A technical company like Ericsson is only as successful as the innovation of its employees. Creative and innovation are vital skills for areas such as R&D but we also see it as key in enabling success for our customers and for our entire business.”

Within Ericsson, the company encourages its employees to skill up using online learning provider Degreed. Ericsson creates its own classes on the platform — it re-designed over 600 classes so they’re engaging and effective in a virtual environment — and has seen three times more people utilising the digital content. For future hires, Doug Goodge, head of HR digital services, for Europe and Latin America says it’s important to emphasis the softer skills such as creativity, flexibility, adaptability, communication and team working. “All these attributes are transferable across industries so are important to any employer.”

Skills aside, Goodge says now is a fantastic time to be working in the industry, particularly somewhere that is focusing on 5G, which will revolutionise healthcare, fast track the development of driverless cars, not to mention improve gaming. “The possibilities are huge and that’s why tech really is the most dynamic industry to be in and one that you will have real opportunity to innovate and see how your work has a real impact on business and society.”

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