Guest Author: Ola Ayeni<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s no secret: The Silicon Prairie has a workforce<\/a> problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It isn\u2019t just us, either. Employers across America can\u2019t find enough qualified workers. With a historically low unemployment rate, qualified, talented workers aren\u2019t just sitting in front of a screen browsing ZipRectuiter and CareerBuilder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This talent shortage hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed by workforce developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That said, the public discussion around a shortage of workers often focuses solely on the skilled trades\u2014and that really is a crisis. For years, the number of vacancies for plumbers, electricians, and carpenters have far exceeded the number of applicants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, workforce developers have tried to increase interest among young people in the skilled trades, reminding them (and their parents) that the surest path to a stable, middle-class life may not come with a degree on the wall and a tie around your neck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, it may come from a protractor in your front pocket and a toolbelt around your waist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But what about America\u2019s other talent crisis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last decade, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, and cities across America have placed technology, startups, and entrepreneurship at the core of their economic-development strategy. Whether it\u2019s supporting tech startups through organizations like KC SourceLink<\/a> or Arch Grants<\/a>\u2014or 2017\u2019s nationwide recruitment of Amazon HQ2\u2014economic developers have realized how important technology-based businesses are to cities and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, workforce development and economic development are often unaligned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That isn\u2019t an opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The St. Louis region responded to Amazon\u2019s RFP with an incentives package worth more than seven billion dollars. It\u2019s debatable whether giving the world\u2019s biggest retailer taxpayer money for a new headquarters is a good idea, but that\u2019s beside the point. Using incentives to recruit employers and create local jobs is<\/em> an economic-development strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, an economic-development strategy increasingly focused on technology companies is at odds with a workforce-development strategy that isn\u2019t creating nearly enough qualified developers and coders. In a recent survey<\/a> of 1,246 St. Louis companies, more than 60 percent of technology firms were dissatisfied with the skill level of job applicants. Amazon itself cited a shortage of tech talent as the number one reason why St. Louis did not make the final cut of cities under consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t the lack of a large, world-class airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t governmental fragmentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t the troubled national brand St. Louis suffers from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a lack of talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what\u2019s the solution?<\/p>\n\n\n\n To begin with, economic developers, workforce developers, and civic leaders need to get input from on-the-ground entrepreneurs who deal with this challenge on a daily basis. Workforce- development initiatives and committees are often stocked with public-sector officials and the local business establishment\u2014including CEOs who haven\u2019t been a part of employee recruitment or day-to-day hiring in years or even decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While voices and perspectives from the public sector and the C-Suite are important, it is just as important to include entrepreneurs who actually recruit and hire developers on a regular basis. Many Silicon Prairie communities have made recruiting entrepreneurs and startup founders a priority. But as soon as those founders arrive, they run smack into the same talent shortage Amazon avoided. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What do those innovators do when that happens?<\/p>\n\n\n\n They solve their own problems. They are entrepreneurs. That\u2019s what they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s what we did at Claim Academy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2014, I arrived in St. Louis to start Eateria, a platform designed to help restaurants improve their marketing. Unfortunately, I also faced a shortage of programming talent. In response, we began to train our own full-stack developers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Claim Academy grew from that effort, and today our graduates have a 93 percent job- placement rate and a $60,000 starting salary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n