Opportunity@Work and AWS Educate Accelerate Career Opportunities for a Diverse Talent Pool

Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit social enterprise, is aiming to empower individuals and enable more Americans to work, learn, and earn their full potential. Opportunity@Work  launched TechHire.Careers, a new kind of recruiting platform built specifically to help employers fill entry-level tech positions with talented individuals from diverse backgrounds with the help of AWS Educate.

On TechHire.Careers, every candidate completes a skills challenge demonstrating they have the skills to do the job, regardless of how they obtained those skills or where they’ve worked. Opportunity@Work believes if someone can do the job, they should be able to get the job. But not every job seeker who comes to TechHire.Careers is able to successfully complete a skills assessment challenge—that’s where AWS Educate comes in.

Any user on the site who does not pass a challenge will receive access to AWS Educate for hands-on educational modules. After users complete an AWS Educate pathway, they can return to TechHire.Careers and retake the skills challenge. Once they’ve passed the challenge, they go through a practice interview. Candidates that have completed both the skills challenge and practice interview are then matched by Opportunity@Work to entry-level tech positions, in areas such as software development, QA, or IT Support.

“AWS Educate was designed to help learners all over the world build the knowledge, skills, and abilities essential to cloud computing,” said Ken Eisner, AWS Educate Global Lead. “AWS Educate is providing the content and resources for learners to get job-ready, while Opportunity@Work is creating a powerful pipeline of diverse candidates and a platform for companies to find and hire them.”

Opening Up New Pathways to Opportunity

AWS Educate will complement TechHire.Careers by offering the site’s users an integrated online experience and access to skills development. AWS Educate’s cloud-ready tools and curriculum will help prepare these individuals, at no cost, for jobs in cloud technology and other fast-growing fields.

“Since launching TechHire.Careers, we’ve seen that many of the individuals we serve aren’t aware of job opportunities available to them, both with and without additional skilling,” said Papia Debroy, Vice President of Hiring Solutions at Opportunity@Work. “We believe it’s really important that people learn more about other pathways and the skills necessary to pursue them. Working with AWS Educate is exciting because it allows us to open up a variety of new pathways to skill seekers.”

Job seekers, learners, and hiring managers are invited to visit TechHire.Careers to sign up for a Job Seeker or Employer account and unlock new possibilities for career advancement and talent sourcing.

We Power Tech is AWS’s diversity and inclusion initiative, which aims to include underrepresented groups throughout AWS efforts. The goal of this program is to build a pool of AWS technologists that is as diverse as our world. We are currently seeking nominations for the AWS Diversity Speakers Bureau. For more information, please contact us at wepowertech@amazon.com.