Digital career: Global IT service provider wants to train millions of talents

According to IDC, 90 percent of companies will experience an IT skills shortage by 2025 due to digital transformation, at a cost of more than $6.5 trillion worldwide. The reasons include delayed product releases, dwindling customer satisfaction and lost business. Business leaders are currently focused on a select number of powerful platforms that enable rapid value creation.

Promoting digital careers

ServiceNow also offers such a cross-company cloud-based platform. What's more, the platform now wants to close an "opportunity gap" and create equal access to digital careers for all. "With digital transformation, our requirements for talent must also change. That's why ServiceNow wants to create new career paths," said Lara Caimi, ServiceNow Chief Customer and Partner Officer. "We believe it's time to focus on potential, rather than skills gaps, and to broaden the definition of a 'technical talent.' This will allow more people to benefit from the demand for digital transformation. We are providing new opportunities for both technical and non-technical talent, so that more people - regardless of their background - can rise to better-paying positions in our ecosystem. With 'RiseUp with ServiceNow,' people can build meaningful careers and customers and partners alike can find the exact talent they need to thrive in the digital economy."

Train skills in demand

"RiseUp with ServiceNow" expands the definition of tech talent by placing great emphasis on the competencies of the person as a whole and so-called "power skills" - for example, critical thinking, interpersonal communication and creativity, according to the company. The goal of the program is a more diverse, inclusive workforce. It meaningfully enables candidates to gain the skills necessary to fill coveted technical positions. "The need for tech change is great - but the opportunities to become skilled and find a job are not," said Karen Pavlin, chief equity and inclusion officer at ServiceNow. "'RiseUp with ServiceNow' opens new pathways for tech careers to grow a broader, more inclusive group of people in the digital economy. It's about valuing diverse experiences and connecting those unique skills to the great need for skilled workers so we can solve the biggest challenges of our time."

Three pillars

"RiseUp with ServiceNow" focuses on three pillars. First, the goal is to lower the barriers to continuing education. This is to be done with more than 600 free courses and 18 job-related certification paths. Already, 325,000 people have completed a total of 2.3 million such courses, according to ServiceNow. Second, it aims to expand opportunities for technical talent. Under the name ServiceNow NextGen in-house academies and training partnerships with nonprofits and government agencies are offered. The newly designed ServiceNow Community connects over 450,000 members with peer-to-peer networking opportunities, learning forums, virtual events and much more. And third, it's all about the placement of newly trained talent: The ServiceNow Partner Placement Program, newly created for this purpose, is designed to help customers and partners find, train and evaluate talent from diverse backgrounds. The number of partners is expected to increase to 25 by the end of 2023.

Companies such as Synoptek or Fujitsu have already successfully benefited from ServiceNow's NextGen program for employees' digital careers. Patricia Widmer, who heads the Women Back to Business certification program at the University of St. Gallen, is also convinced: "By combining strategic management knowledge with basic ServiceNow skills, our participants are in a very strong position to succeed in the rapidly evolving digital economy - not only today, but also in the future."

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