Every parent wants to see their child in the career of their dreams. Today, most better careers require tech knowledge, the ability to use technology solutions to improve business outcomes. Not just tech careers, but every career opportunity comes closer when your student has technology skills to offer. Here are great reasons for you to invest in leveraging their lifelong exposure to tech into marketable tech skills.

Parents, welcome back to the future.

Remember when you embarked on finding your first job? You were filled with enthusiasm and perhaps empty on experience. A world of opportunities was opening in front of you, and your worst fear was that you wouldn’t find one.

Now that your son or daughter is facing the same challenge the whole thing seems to be back, but thousands of times worse. The world is bigger, with more complexity, and automation seems to be eliminating some of the most accessible opportunities. If your child seeks a technology-based career you’re hopeful that they’ll find their way, but you’re not sure their education has adequately prepared them and, in many cases, that worry is well-founded.

What guidance, what help can you offer them?

Tech Seeks Skills

According to studies, there are a quarter-million or more open jobs in technology waiting unfilled. You wonder how that could be. The answer might be found in the title of a June 2017 New York Times article, “A New Kind of Tech Job Emphasizes Skills, Not a College Degree” which says that “a worker’s skills can be emphasized over traditional hiring filters like college degrees, work history, and personal references. And elevating skills over pedigree creates new pathways to employment and tailored training and a gateway to the middle class.”

Many technology-based roles require very specific skills that can most easily be taught in more vocational settings than the traditional university. With companies investing heavily in “cloud computing” services, specific training in how to best manage such environments is highly desirable in candidates and can be obtained locally or online for a fraction of what a college education costs in a fraction of the time.

Non-Technical Roles

Almost every job available in the market benefits from or requires technology skills. These should not be confused with “technical” skills in which the worker is called upon to perform repairs on electronic devices. “Technology” is far broader, including the ability to productively use such office productivity technology tools as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, online search, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and other software commonly used in just about all companies.

Just as important to hiring managers are training and experience in the practice of “safe computing.” This includes knowledge of how to properly observe and follow corporate data and network security policies, and how to help assure regulatory compliance in environments that are subject to governmental or other forms of regulations. Daily operations that involve technology also include having good data backup and protection habits informed by formal training.

Prepare your Student for the Real World of Work

Companies seek employees who can “hit the ground running” with the right skills to enable them to start making contributions immediately. The productive use of technology tools is high on their list of desired skills.

Companies are also challenged to better manage their technology. “Phishing” attacks and ransomware, which target untrained users to get them to make costly mistakes, are the most dangerous security threats in the market today. Your trained student’s ability to identify and avoid these traps is very, very valuable.

Whatever career your son or daughter is pursuing, technology skills are a major component of it, and the more they have the more likely they are to be successful early in their job search.

The best news is that all of these technology skills are readily available from New Horizons Learning Centers either in one of our centers located near you, or online from anywhere. They are far less expensive than a two or four year college degree, can be completed in just a few weeks or months, and are today far more marketable to prospective employers than ever before. Call a New Horizons counselor today to discuss your child’s future and how skills obtained at New Horizons can be of tremendous help to them.