Helen Young Hayes Founder of ActivateWork Helping People Get Tech Jobs
Helen Young Hayes and Ross Kaminsky on KOA Radio|Apr 12, 2022
"Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. ActivateWork creates a solution by developing a talent pipeline of competent professionals from overlooked communities."
Graduate Profile: Jenell Weitz
Before the pandemic put our world into shutdown, Jenell was working at a small translation services company as a Project Coordinator and Office Manager. Although she had enjoyed her job, she felt that it was time for her to try something new.
When her husband’s job search brought them to Denver, she seized the opportunity to make some big changes to her career. Jenell hadn’t always had an interest in tech, but through the Denver Public Library, she heard about a program called Code Forward sponsored by Devetry. Jenell was able to attend a free coding fundamentals course that provided her with some basic understanding of DevOps and how applications worked and were set up. She completed the full course and was even able to get some hands-on experience in coding projects.
As she completed the program and began her job search, Covid precautions began emptying offices and halting hiring processes. Despite that, Jenell pushed on, inquiring where she could, about possible opportunities to put her skills to work when she heard about ActivateWork’s tuition-free IT program from a friend.
Jenell joined ActivateWork and finished her full-time, 15-week IT support course in April 2021. On the day of her ActivateWork graduation, Jenell was able to meet with S&P Global and secure her current position as an IT technician, supporting the team’s financial applications to streamline processes and ensure compliance to company policies.
“I probably wouldn’t have gotten this job without them,” she recalls. “They really helped me develop my soft skills and the mock interviews were extremely helpful.”
Jenell says she loves that she can bring the skills she learns back home to share with her husband and children.
Jenell says she really enjoys working at S&P Global and that it is nice to have people whom she can relate to personally and professionally with. She looks forward to taking advantage of the educational programs her employer offers to upskill.
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Study: Denver a 'rising star' for rapid growth in tech jobs amid pandemic
Will the shift to remote work during the pandemic have a long-term effect on the geographic shift in tech employment?
Our Founder, Helen Young Hayes, was featured March 8, 2022 by the Denver Business Journal.
Denver has emerged as a rising star in the battle of the tech hubs, part of a trend of remote work expanding some urban opportunities that’s happening alongside the continuing dominance of coastal superstar cities.
While established locales like San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Austin, Texas, continue to rule the tech employment sector, Sun Belt and Heartland cities like Denver and Dallas also have seen a significant surge in tech jobs over the past five years, a study by The Brookings Institution found.
In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, tech sector employment growth slowed in the biggest, most dominant tech centers while nearly half of the nation’s 83 other large metro areas saw their rates increase.
Overall, nine rising star cities — Denver; Atlanta; Dallas; Miami; Orlando; San Diego; Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis and Salt Lake City — increased their share of U.S. tech job postings from 14.5% in September 2016 to 16% at the end of 2021. The report found that Denver, along with Miami, had particularly vibrant growth in hiring ads during the Covid-19 pandemic and added tech jobs at an annual growth rate in excess of 3%.
Tech sector employment in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro area grew from about 50,000 in 2015 to 64,000 in 2019, and despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, Denver's tech employment continued to rise at a steady pace from 2019 to 2020, climbing 4.6% to around 67,000.
The metro area has proven its ability to attract tech talent. Commercial real estate and investment firm CBRE’s 2021 Scoring Tech Talent report ranked Denver No. 12 overall in tech talent across North America based on an analysis of 13 metrics ranging from tech graduation rates, tech job concentration, tech labor pool size, and labor and real estate costs.
The CBRE study found that Denver’s tech sector employment gain was driven by young talent moving to the city, and that local employers have been able to keep tech wages competitive, with an average pay of $107,481 ranking ninth highest in North America.
Still to be seen is whether the shift to remote work during the pandemic will have a long-term effect on the geographic shift in tech employment. Some large tech employers such as Google are asking some employees to return in-person, with Google planning on a hybrid work week involving two days remote. Brookings cited forecasts that show that work patterns at least in the near future will likely follow a hybrid pattern requiring that tech workers appear in-office two or three days a week, limiting their ability to fully exit from established hubs.
The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that one-third of companies increased remote work for some or all of their employees during the pandemic, and that 60% of those companies expect to make those changes permanent after the pandemic ends.
But Brookings said that while more widespread acceptance of remote work in the tech sector over time could lead to greater dispersion of workers and tech activity, and the shift to remote work during the pandemic may have played a slight role in job growth in the rising cities, the flow of workers away from high-cost metro areas has been modest thus far and does not seem to forecast a wholesale decentralization of tech.
Graduate Profile: Randy Cordova
Randy Cordova graduated this spring from ActivateWork powered by Per Scholas with his IT Support certification. Randy had been interested in tech all his life but only became involved in the field in recent years. He had previously worked a variety of jobs, including construction, plumbing, and customer service.
While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems, Randy realized that his education was not actually providing him with the experience he needed to secure a job. All of the jobs Randy looked at also required specific certifications he wanted to earn, but he found it difficult to find the motivation to pursue them alone. Randy joined ActivateWork’s IT Support cohort and found it to be exactly what he needed. Randy credits the structure and discipline provided by a classroom setting and the support from his colleagues and the team at ActivateWork for helping him complete the course.
He enjoyed the diversity of his cohort and was overwhelmed by the support that the program provided for him.
“The whole program – the professional development, the mock-interviews — it gave me the confidence that I needed,” Randy recalled. “It changed the way that I think. Instead of being intimidated, I had confidence, and I had a whole team of people helping me with what I needed. Doing [ActivateWork] was probably one of the best choices I ever made.”
Since graduating, Randy has begun working full-time as an IT service desk analyst at Centura Health. He is interested in potentially pursuing Networking, Cloud Support, and Cybersecurity certifications and is currently taking an alumni NET+ course through ActivateWork.
“I feel like my path is on the right track for everything I need to do, so I’m very excited,” Randy reflected. “My confidence is up! This was a great opportunity. My whole cohort was so intelligent, and the teachers were great. I think this really changed my life.”
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APEX 2021 Talent Champion of the Year
APEX Awards Talent Champion of the Year Award - Helen Young Hayes
Helen Young Hayes on APEX Awards as the 2021 Talent Champion of the Year |Feb 5, 2021