🎙️Episode 003 – The Truth About Tech Careers in 2024 (No Degree Required)
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“What do employers actually want?”
It’s a question that’s becoming harder to answer in today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape.
As Aaron Osmond, CEO of Knowledge Pillars, put it in the latest episode of the podcast, “Industry is not satisfied and has not been satisfied for decades about the quality of the education system.”
Ouch.
It used to be that a Computer Science degree was the key to the tech kingdom. Now, the path isn’t so clear-cut.
You’ve heard coding boot camps are the way forward.
But just when you think you’ve got it figured out, AI comes along and threatens to code us all out of a job. It’s enough to make you want to throw your laptop out the window and take up basket weaving instead.
But before you trade your keyboard for a loom, let’s take a step back.
The tech industry isn’t dying; it’s evolving – says Osmond.
And with that evolution comes a shift in what employers are looking for.
It’s not just about knowing the latest programming language or having a fancy degree. It’s about proving you can solve real-world problems.
As Aaron emphasized, “If you don’t learn problem-solving and critical thinking skills, you will not be successful in any career, regardless of whatever tool you want to use.”
Aaron and his team at Knowledge Pillars are pioneering a new approach to certifications. Forget multiple-choice tests about coding theory. These certifications put you in the driver’s seat, coding in real time and solving actual problems.
And like with learning to drive, reading the manual is good, but you’ve got to get behind the wheel. These certifications are the digital equivalent of a driving test – you can’t fake your way through it, and passing means you’re ready for the real thing.
“Isn’t AI going to make all of this obsolete?”
Not so fast.
AI, Osmond says, is nothing more than a tool.
“It does make things happen faster and more efficiently, but it doesn’t problem-solve everything for you.”
Understanding how to leverage AI is becoming a crucial skill in itself. It’s not about competing with AI; it’s about being the person who knows how to use it effectively.
“If you don’t have a fundamental understanding of how it actually works, you can’t make those connections work seamlessly, nor can you direct ChatGPT or OpenAI from AWS to build what you want to build.”
In other words, the tech industry doesn’t just need coders; it needs people who can think critically about how to apply these tools to solve real-world problems. It’s not about memorizing syntax; it’s about understanding the logic behind it and knowing how to apply it creatively. And that’s exactly what these new certifications are designed to test and validate.
“Isn’t it about who you know?”
Even the best certification won’t land you a job if nobody knows you have it. That’s where networking comes in. And I’m not talking about schmoozing at fancy tech conferences (though that doesn’t hurt). I’m talking about leveraging the connections you already have.
Remember that neighbor who works in IT? Or your friend’s parent who runs a tech startup? You don’t need a rich uncle or friends in high places. Everyone has a network. If you don’t know what all of your friends’ parents do for a living, you’re missing out on some of the best networking opportunities out there.
Building a portfolio goes hand in hand with networking. It’s your chance to show off what you can do, not just what you know. Whether it’s a GitHub repository full of personal projects or a WordPress site you built for a local business, these real-world examples speak louder than any resume bullet point.
Pro tip: when you’re applying for jobs, don’t just submit an application. Reach out directly to the hiring manager with a sample of what you can do for their company. (Trust me, it works.)
Take the Wheel
The days of following a predetermined path to a tech career are over. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to wait for the system to catch up. You can take control of your learning journey right now. Whether it’s through hands-on certifications, building your portfolio, or tapping into your network, the power is in your hands.
The opportunities are out there, and they’re more accessible than ever. So, are you ready to get in the driver’s seat of your tech career?
Knowledge Pillars is just one of multiple OpenEd Direct courses that offer hands-on, industry-recognized certifications in coding and web development.
And if your child is interested in their WordPress Certified Editor course, let them know we’re always hiring 😉
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Links and resources:
Learn:
- The importance of problem-solving and critical thinking skills in any career
- How certifications are evolving to meet industry needs for practical skills validation
- The value of hands-on, project-based learning in tech education
- Why networking is crucial for career advancement, even at a young age
- The role of AI in future careers and why fundamental tech skills are still essential
- How safe, curated learning environments can benefit students in tech education
- The importance of continuous learning and skill improvement in the tech industry
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
00:41 Meet Aaron Osmond: CEO of Knowledge Pillars
01:03 The Importance of Skills and Signals in Career Building
01:59 Aaron’s Career Journey: From Receptionist to IT Leader
02:25 The Power of Networking in Career Advancement
04:31 Building and Leveraging Your Network
05:35 The Role of Certifications in the Tech Industry
11:18 Industry vs. Education: Bridging the Skills Gap
16:06 The Future of Skills Validation and Certification
21:40 The Value of Certification in Coding
22:04 The Impact of AI on Learning and Testing
23:12 Creating Real-World Testing Environments
24:21 Engaging Students Through Practical Application
26:00 Identifying and Nurturing Young Coders
29:43 The Importance of Foundational Skills
31:28 The Role of AI in Future Careers
34:30 Effective Learning Methodologies
39:10 Safe and Secure Learning Environments
41:13 The Future of Knowledge Pillars
Transcript
Isaac: Welcome back to the OpenEd podcast. I’m Isaac Morehouse, the OpenEd CEO and occasional host of this show.
Today I’m joined by Aaron Osmond, CEO of Knowledge Pillars, one of our curriculum partners at OpenEd. Aaron has over 25 years of experience as a leader in IT training and certification. Aaron, welcome to the show.
Aaron: Great to be here, Isaac. Thanks for the invitation.
Isaac: I’ve always told young people looking to start their careers that they need two things: the ability to create value and the ability to prove it. The relationship between these can be tricky. Sometimes people chase the signal – maybe a college degree – without getting the skills to back it up, or vice versa. In the fast-moving tech space, certifications have become crucial. Degrees are expensive and don’t necessarily signal skill, but you need some way to demonstrate your abilities.
Aaron, I heard you started your career without what most people think you need – a degree. Yet you got a job at WordPerfect, which was the predecessor to modern word processors. How did you break in from the start?
Aaron: One of the first pieces of advice I’d give to both kids and parents is that connections still matter in this world. I had the benefit of a mother working at WordPerfect in their customer support division. She connected me with their HR department, and I got a job as a receptionist. But what I did next is what really matters. I dove in and started self-teaching, building my skills around DataPerfect, a database coding software. I built trust and credibility by developing technical skills on the side while doing my HR work, setting myself up for the next career step.
Isaac: That’s interesting. You’ve highlighted two aspects of networking. On one hand, everyone knows people who work places – your network is better than you think. On the other hand, your network won’t do all the work for you. It can get you a chance, but if you show up and you’re terrible for three months, your network won’t help you anymore.
Aaron: Absolutely. Over the last 30 years, I’ve focused hard on my network. I have over 7,500 contacts on LinkedIn that I’ve earned over the years, maintaining connections with many of them. This network matters for creating opportunities, not just for me but for friends and colleagues too. That’s one piece of advice for students and parents: build your network, start now, and maintain those relationships.
On the career side, you’ve got to practice continuous learning, constantly developing and refining your skills. It’s never over, especially in the technology industry where skills are constantly changing. Even in a year’s time, you’ve got to be reinventing yourself. And that’s fun, not a burden – it’s exciting to be constantly learning.
Isaac: That’s great advice, especially for those doing homeschooling or alternative education. How do you network if you’re not in a traditional setting?
Aaron: You have to realize that within your own environment – your neighborhood, friend group, family, and family friends – there are professionals working in industries you might be interested in. Be proactive and confident about asking for information. Learn about various careers through people you already know, and they’ll connect you to others.
For example, my son was interested in a career in Homeland Security. I had a friend who worked in the FBI, and through that connection, my son was able to network with individuals across different U.S. government security groups. He’s now building his own network of people in the careers he wants to pursue. The same principle applies whether you’re homeschooling or in a college environment – you still need to build those networks, and you have resources all around you.
Isaac: That’s a great point. There’s both a vertical and horizontal aspect to networking. Finding peer groups who are also tinkering and experimenting, and then vertically connecting with professionals in fields you’re interested in. I always tell young people, if you don’t know what all your friends’ parents do for a living, find out. I guarantee one of them will do something you’ve never heard of before that sounds interesting.
Aaron: Remember, your educational networks are also valuable. For example, if you take a Knowledge Pillars course and obtain a certification in coding or web development, you can network with other students across the country who have the same certification. Connect with them on LinkedIn and start building your professional network that way.
Isaac: It’s funny how LinkedIn is secretly the most valuable social media network for careers. People don’t realize how valuable it can be.
Let’s move from networking to your experience in tech companies. Before Knowledge Pillars, you worked at places like Amazon Web Services and WordPerfect. In those corporate roles, you focused on certification and training. What are tech companies looking for in terms of skills and signals?
Aaron: For the last 30 years, I’ve been connecting the tech industry to students in education for a specific reason: industry is not satisfied with the quality of potential future tech workers coming out of the education system. While college and high school degrees prove that students can do hard things and finish tasks, they don’t necessarily demonstrate proficiency with the tools and technologies that industry demands.
That’s why certification is crucial. Certification is simply industry defining the technical skills required to be successful in the workplace and validating that independently of the education system. We’re not relying on the educator or school to test it; we’re providing our own certifications from industry to validate skills competency.
This has been a critical project for decades, trying to meet the insatiable need in tech for candidates with proven skills in specific technologies. That’s what my job has been for almost 33 years now, and it’s why I’m now the CEO of Knowledge Pillars, focusing specifically on coding and web development technical skills for students.
Isaac: I love that approach – going to industry and asking what they need, then educating to that standard, rather than hoping that what we teach will be valuable to employers.
Aaron: Exactly. Most tech companies globally have reached a saturation point with standard bachelor’s degree qualification requirements. They’re finding that students with these degrees often lack practical skills, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking skills. Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year retraining or training graduates for the first time for skills needed in entry-level positions.
That’s why building your own portfolio of skills and proven projects – whether websites, e-commerce capabilities, or technical skills demonstrated on GitHub – is super important to employers right now. We’re also solving the problem of validation. Even with portfolios, employers still need to verify if the student actually built what they claim. That’s where third-party certification comes in, providing evidence that the student can actually code or build a web application.
Isaac: That combination of portfolio and third-party validation is powerful. It’s like saying, “Here’s what I did, I can show you, and I have this third party verifying it.” If you’re looking at job applicants, you don’t have time to validate everything yourself.
Aaron: Exactly. Another challenge with college degrees and some certifications is that they’ve been focused on knowledge transfer and memorization. But that’s not enough. An important change taking place is the shift to practical, competency-based assessment. We’re assessing students in the technology live during the exam. Can this person actually code in Python in a time-sensitive, high-pressure environment? Can they develop on WordPress? This kind of hands-on testing in real-world environments significantly increases the value of the certification in the eyes of an employer.
Isaac: That’s fantastic. How are you adapting to the rise of AI tools in this landscape?
Aaron: AI is just another technology tool. It makes things happen faster and more efficiently, but it doesn’t solve every problem for you. If you don’t have a fundamental understanding of how it actually works, you can’t make those connections seamlessly, nor can you direct ChatGPT or OpenAI from AWS to build what you want to build.
You have to have the fundamentals to maximize the use of these tools. AI isn’t going to completely take over all the human elements required. If you don’t learn problem-solving and critical thinking skills, you won’t be successful in any career, regardless of the tech tools you’re interested in. That’s the power of learning coding – it helps you master those problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
Isaac: Absolutely. When new tools emerge that can do what humans previously did, the answer isn’t that there’s nothing left for humans to do. The question becomes: Who’s building the tool? Who’s maintaining it? Those become the highest leverage roles.
Aaron: Exactly. As human beings, our capacity to innovate is what differentiates us from technologies and tools. We are constantly innovating. If you can learn the value of continuous learning and always improving your skills, diving deep on the newest technologies, not only is it super fun, but it keeps you relevant and highly valuable in the marketplace.
Isaac: Let’s talk about methodology. When it comes to learning these tech skills, you offer courses on WordPress, CSS, Python, and more. Are these self-paced, online courses? What do you find to be the most effective methods for learning these skills?
Aaron: The reality is that we all learn a little differently. Some are more wired for self-study, some prefer following an instructor, and others enjoy collaborative learning in a classroom. It’s about understanding what works best for you.
The power of the MyTechHigh model is that it’s self-directed. You can create groups, leverage your mentor, or work at your own pace. We have several third-party curriculum resources that we recommend, but the key is reinforcing hands-on experience using the actual technology tools through our practice exams and labs.
Ultimately, you come back to Knowledge Pillars for hands-on experience in the platform and tools through our practice exams and certifications. This is where most students excel because the practical use of the software creates the most engaging learning experience.
The next step is to teach someone else. If you can do it as a group and teach your colleagues or friends, you learn even more. Teaching others is one of the most effective learning methodologies there is.
Isaac: That makes sense. It’s like learning to drive – studying the rules is good, but you’ve got to get behind the wheel and practice.
Aaron: Exactly. We’ve enabled the WordPress lab option specifically so students can iterate on their own website over the course of the class. They can then show that website to a potential employer or higher education institution as proof of their skills. It’s a completely self-contained, safe environment where they can practice without risk of any security issues.
Isaac: That’s really cool, especially the safety component. Every parent is concerned about their kids getting addicted to screens or encountering inappropriate content online. It sounds like you’re providing a curated, safe environment for learning these skills.
Aaron: Absolutely. We’re giving them an opportunity to practice in a safe environment without any risk. It’s password protected, and only the student and educators can access it. They have all the relevant tools without any of the risks.
Isaac: That curation role is becoming more important than ever. Instead of just telling kids to look things up on YouTube, which can be risky, you’re providing vetted materials in a safe environment.
Aaron: Spot on. Couldn’t have said it better.
Isaac: Well, Aaron, this has been so much fun. Any teasers about where Knowledge Pillars is going next? What’s your focus?
Aaron: The key thing to know about Knowledge Pillars is that we’re providing a complete learning solution – curriculum, lab, practice test, exam, certification, and validation from industry. Our goal is to support both educators and students, making it easier for teachers and more engaging and valid for students to qualify for jobs in the marketplace.
And as parents, I encourage you to study and understand the market opportunity around coding and web development. Give your child a chance to explore this and see the multiple career paths available. There are literally dozens of career paths with that basic coding and web development foundation that they can pursue in high school, college, community colleges, or on their own through bootcamps and other resources. Your child will be grateful that you gave them that opportunity. That’s what we’re here to provide.
Isaac: I love it. Aaron Osmond, thank you so much for joining us on the OpenEd podcast.
Aaron: It’s been a pleasure, Isaac. Talk to you later.
Isaac: Until next time.