Expert panel: how to support women in tech to achieve their full potential

Women make up nearly half of the workforce, yet only occupy 20% of roles in the tech sector. This begs the question: how can employers leverage educational routes to rebalance diversity in tech? Furthermore, what more can they do to support women in tech to achieve their potential?

Dee Robertson (Senior Talent Solutions Manager, Robert Half) recently hosted an event alongside Robert Half colleagues in AWS and Protiviti to show how the free workforce development training programme AWS re/Start can prepare individuals to launch their tech careers.

Dee was joined by Claire Spiller (Lead, AWS re/Start Programme EMEA), James Fox (Director, Enterprise Cloud Transformation, Protiviti), Richard Bull (Head of Projects and Consulting for Cloud Infrastructure Services, and Head of Early and Emerging Talent, Capgemini) and Nethmi Wickrama (DevOps Engineer, S&P Global).

Women in STEM: an untapped talent pool

The talent crunch is in full swing, especially where tech roles are concerned. Despite that, research for the Robert Half 2023 Salary Guide shows almost one-third (30%) of business leaders plan to hire for new full-time tech positions. With that in mind, businesses should embrace diverse hiring to widen their talent pool, if not for better inclusivity overall.

“There's a huge, well-educated workforce out there in STEM technologies that don't even access the workforce in tech,” says Claire. “A report I was reading the other day says that only 23% of STEM-educated women find themselves working in technology. So as an employer, there's a highly educated workforce out there, but we're not tapping into it at all.”

Claire also believes that a diverse workforce is more likely to attract strong talent — almost two-thirds (62%) of candidates would reject a job offer from an employer who doesn’t support diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is also true for women, who are more likely to apply for roles with employers who have a strong female presence in the workforce.

Diverse hiring to address the tech talent skills gap

It’s widely known that teams with better diversity in their ranks are more adept at problem-solving, innovation, and decision-making, which makes the gender imbalance in tech a crucial stumbling block for businesses hoping to retain a competitive edge.

“Both men and women bring valuable assets to the table, and I think that's why diversity is so important — having that difference and embracing that difference within a team”, says Dee.

“It's often considered that women have higher levels of emotional intelligence and collaboration abilities. Women will have a different way of thinking about challenges and how to address finding solutions. I think different approaches are a vital ingredient in a business to produce the best outcomes in a workforce.”

Initiatives to rebalance diversity in tech

Richard Bull’s experience training tech talent has shown a clear business reason to engage with training programmes and initiatives — better retention rates and access to a wider talent pool.

“You want to fish in more ponds. There is a talent challenge, and you want to be able to attract people into your organisation — if you can give them the training, you're going to be able to retain them,” he says.

Richard says hiring AWS re/Start Cloud Foundation graduates provides a skills development ‘landing zone’ to push off from. He believes the qualification gives people the confidence to pursue a career they might never have considered.

“Robert Half was working with the company that I did my AWS re/Start with,” says Nethmi. “I wasn't really interested in going into DevOps, but Dee talked me into it. She was very encouraging. It was the first job that I ever applied to after doing my AWS re/Start programme, and then a couple of days later, she called me and told me I’d been shortlisted, and I was so excited. I felt like that was one of the highlights of my life.”

Retaining and supporting female STEM talent

Protiviti is currently a 50/50 split of male and female from a cloud perspective. For James, the key is to have female role models within the company and to give staff access to those individuals.

“When we have female candidates, we strive to get females interviewing”, he says. “I think that is beneficial, can provide better perspectives, can help to build better rapport during the interviews, and maybe put the candidates at ease.”

James believes that employers should support tech talent with initiatives like a parents’ network, an open-door policy to senior female staff members, and by implementing sponsors (male or female) who can champion women in the workplace.

“A piece of reporting I picked up recently from McKinsey found that, by hiring females and attaching them to a senior sponsor, women felt 70% more heard”, says Claire. “Their ideas were 200% more likely to be implemented. So, from a business perspective, they're absorbing so many more ideas, and utilising those ideas, and retention was also really good off the back of that.”

Supporting diversity in the tech sector: watch the full webinar here

in the tech space right now and and hearing from leaders in these spaces in in in technical spaces but specifically in Cloud teams um to give their kind of uh expert opinions on the matter um so I think firstly what would be useful oh here nephew's joined as well brilliant so just in time for the introductions lovely so I think what would be best is let's do a a round of introductions um firstly I'll introduce myself so I'm the uh senior Talent Solutions manager at Robert Half and my specific focus is um on the AWS restart program who um I work very closely with uh with Claire on and um and have worked with with Richard James and and place nathani as a result of the restart program but that is what I do across UK and Ireland to support underrepresented groups into the technical space for entry-level cloud and it roles um Claire let me hand it over to you you okay thank you for inviting me Dee and hi to everybody so my name is Claire Spiller I work at AWS I'm a senior manager running the AWS restart program across the emea region so very Hands-On role and I also have a team of really talented program managers that deep dive into multiple regions I spent the last couple of decades in Tech reskilling so very well versed in this topic and it's certainly a topic that changes over time as well so really looking forward to our discussion today thanks Dee uh thanks Claire and and James James Fox yeah thanks Dee uh just a quick intro for myself so director here at productivity in our technology Consulting practice I lead our UK Enterprise Cloud Consulting practice so helping our Enterprise clients across a range of Industries strategized for migrate to and then optimize in the cloud across a range of cloud providers prior to productivity I did work for AWS in their Professional Services uh Team Pro surf um so I have experience from both the vendor side as well as independent Consulting side and uh yeah looking forward to discussing today great thanks James and Richard thanks Dee and um thanks for the invitation today um hello everyone my name is Richard Ball I I work for capgemini and my job is not too dissimilar to James actually as he was as he was describing it so I run our projects and Consulting practice in what is cloud infrastructure services that includes cyber includes our Cloud migrations and and and also a number of other infrastructure-based projects we work across all sectors public Private Financial um and I also sponsor our early and emerging Talent program in um in in NCIS in capgemini um because it's a subject close to my heart I think um the more opportunities we can create for people the better we are as an organization and we don't make boxes we only work with people and deliver through people so anything we can do to enhance that capability the better thanks Richard and net me gently give an introduction thanks Steve um my name is I am a devops engineer at SMP Global and I'm just here to share my story I know how I got here test it thank you thank you very much um so I'm I'm going to hand the Baton over as it were to Claire um who's going to be our our mediator for the day so um over to you Claire and um yeah thank you thank you today right before we dive in I'd just like to say to everybody that's joined us that's obviously not on camera because there's so many of us uh please feel free to join in with the discussion so if you have a question and you feel brave enough please raise your hands and I'm sure Dee will moderate those and if anybody's got a question that they don't want to speak out loud and want to put that in the chat as we go that would also be welcomed we'll we'll leave some time for general questions and answers at the end but if there's any commentary as we go through the next hour please join in on the on the comments as well so let's dive into our discussion then so James I'll come to you first how has Cloud developed over the last years and how have businesses changed and adopted new ways of working when using Cloud Technologies thanks for that so I was just quickly Googling that when um when AWS was founded or launched which uh surprisingly was back in in 2002 which is uh crazy to really think that cloud I guess from an AWS specific way has been around 20 21 years now which is quite surprising uh for most people on the call and particularly people in Industry I think there was probably a a fairly long lead time of the origination of the infrastructure as service Services which was the the building blocks essentially where AWS started through to really where we see the large-scale Enterprise adoption now I think originally it was it was primarily um leveraged or taken uh advantage of by startups and it's probably in the last probably 10 15 years where we've really seen that adoption within the Enterprise space across a range of of Industries I think it'd be fair to say cloud was originally seen as quite a technical thing it was kind of seen as a bit of a play thing by the techies from a lot of Industries and again we're seeing that that's really evolved from a maturity perspective but also an awareness thing across the business landscape so Cloud was historically owned by CIO the CTO that's really started to permeate across the organization now where you're seeing CEOs CEOs sizeos and taking ownership getting involved in Cloud adoption and viewing that as as critical to their broader digital and business transformation agendas I think one of the terms I kind of I haven't trademarked it yet but I kind of view Cloud really as the the plumbing for digital organizations kind of without cloud these days you will really struggle to to achieve true kind of digital identity in the modern modern world I think we also saw as well during the the pandemic how Cloud was really instrumental in helping a lot of Enterprises scale up um remote working um if we look in back in the dark days before the pandemic of there was a lot less people working from home there was a lot less collaboration platforms like this being used and it was a very hard to access Enterprise systems remotely typically through um on-premise vpns appliances which were provided the pandemic hit and there was really a need to scale up almost overnight that remote access so we saw a lot of Enterprise clients shift their VPN access into the cloud to provide that instant scalability we've seen things like teams and various other collaboration platforms which are all enabled by the cloud under the covers scale up as well and so that's really where I think we see cloud has permeated from being just a term that techies used and now cloud is is all pervasive coming back to I guess the original term of cloud being out there in the in The Ether so it's it's really out and about and everywhere now and that if I had to summarize would be that Evolution from a techie kind of thing really now to a business tool that's being used to drive transformation essentially yes lots of really interesting points in there to unpack and I think the bits that resonate with me is that cloud has meant that Tech isn't just the tech playground anymore um I think even HR managers and CEOs are really having to embrace technology as it's fundamental to everybody's business now and most of us even lay people know something about tech and and how it's implemented to help their roles don't they um an interesting um articles written by Ernst and Young um recently as well that said to your point about the pandemic that they think most people accelerated their digital adoption by six years during the pandemic hello which shows what we could all do when we're we're tested to be more resilient and adapt doesn't it and it certainly meant that for us working in the skills Arena has put a lot of pressure now on on that skills Gap um Richard did you want to add anything in terms of what cloud Technologies means right now in terms of the usage and the effect of of covid and what's happening now well it's funny as James was talking I was I had a conversation with a client yesterday and um he was talking about teams uh and just how it has fundamentally changed their organization and this is quite a they're quite they're quite an old school organization um so I won't name them uh I wouldn't be right um but he was saying it's fundam they were always Monday to Friday in the office that was how they worked that was what they did they all had their desk phones they all had their way of working and he was saying right all we're now going to take away all the desk phones without only using teams so then we had a conversation about Sir where's the resilience in all that where's the continuity and all of that sort of stuff and um it's fundamentally changed the way people work you know none of us ever you know in a work environment go on a meeting without teams you know there's always going to be somebody in there and it's become accepted as well so I think that flexibility is introduced into the workplace is fantastic um and we we got given that that gift if you like doing one of the things that came via covert but actually it is also enduring as well it's brought a lot more flexibility into the workplace with people as well and it's accepted we haven't all got to be face to face all the time I mean it's nice to connect right I'm in the office today but um it's brought about a massive cultural shift I think in um in the way we work and it resonates with what you say about how it accelerated it everybody by by five or six years for the good having for the good yeah I would agree it was for the good I mean for a personal experience and you were talking about flexibility I've got two young boys so suddenly I've managed to make the odd suing lesser than things after school which I would never have been able to do before but at the same time I feel really connected with my colleagues in the US for example which again I probably wouldn't have felt so connected just being in the office not being on Virtual calls all the time so it's made a huge difference to my work life and my home life actually and then not to mention just the collaboration but just being able to access data really quickly and crunch it and then add data that other people can see in real time it's just made such a huge difference and um the technologies have definitely become more user-friendly as well for people that you know they're more intuitive now as well aren't they before we move on to the next question next week I just thought I'd ask you you obviously joined an organization postcoded and I'm sure you've been able to have experienced some of that flexibility how have you found um joining a technical team in with Cloud Technologies in the recent when did when did you join nethme um in December last year yeah and my whole team's pretty much based in the USA so around three o'clock is when we have our morning stand up so it's like they come on and they're like good morning guys and it's like three o'clock here this is very weird but um yeah on in terms of working with clients with my team in USA teams has been amazing it's just so useful and I get to speak to my whole team just within that yeah and you get used to it don't you know when I met my team in person for the first time it was like we'd always known each other I mean who'da thought that would have happened but there we go right let's move on to our topic for today then which is really about more um attracting more females into Tech and we're we've got a really diverse panel here today which is great to see um so let's talk about why it's important to talk about women in Tech and for me there's a few different angles of this the first thing is to say that women are hugely underrepresented in Tech and when we drill down into Cloud would you believe only eight percent of roles are filled by women eight percent so we're in 2023 that seems unbelievable that we're still saying that um and from the other angle there's a huge well-educated um workforce out there in stem technologies that don't even access the workforce in Tech so a report I was reading the other day says that only 23 of stem educated women find themselves working in technology so as an employer there's a hugely educated workforce out there that we're not tapping into at all and then if you look at other applicants um another report I was reading was saying not just based on women but just general applicants are more likely these days to look at the makeup of an organization before looking for a job so for those that are looking to work in tech and as an employer trying to attract strong Talent if your organization is sustainable has really open dialogue about its goals and is really invested in diversity applicants are more likely to want to kind of work for you so there's a whole host of reasons why attracting more women into Tech is right for women out there right for employers and right to attract the right applicants outside of even women into your business so dear wanted to come to you if that's all right and ask you what are the biggest skills ways of working differences that you think about bringing women into the workplace particularly in technology roles yeah so I mean firstly both men and women bring valuable assets to the table and I think that's you know why diversity is so important is is having that difference and embracing that difference within a team um but I think we can't escape the fact that half the planet is made up of men and half the planet is made up of of women and yet within the tech space only 20 of the sector is made up of women and to your point what did you say eight percent is in in Cloud yeah which is is Tiny um very small proportion I think you know it's it's often considered that women have higher levels of emotional intelligence and collaboration abilities um and you know leading people through through change and you know women will have a different way of thinking about challenges and how to address finding Solutions um and you know I think different approaches is a vital ingredient in in a business to producing the best outcomes in a Workforce um so clearly why it's so important and I think just not stopping at gender either you know but reviewing ethnicity disability lgbtq plus neurodivergence um you know I spoke with Richard a little while back um about a neurodivergent program he was also running and just embracing all of that stuff and thinking broadly about different educational routes and socio-economic backgrounds and bringing all of that collectively that diversity into a Workforce to create that equality of thought I suppose and then to to add to that on top of it um I think to look at this from from a customer perspective you know customer-centric perspective the customer is going to be gender diverse and a business is only going to do well or they are going to do much better if they can mirror their customer base um so I think if if they fall short around women in leadership that they're gonna fall down in performance too um and to you know James's and and Rich's point I think you know the pandemic it it made that shift it forced that shift and and businesses kind of realized that they had to give people more ownership and more flexibility in the way that they worked and that shift in mindset um I think is the thing that's helped you know as you said Claire about giving that kind of flexibility to managing being a a woman in a full-time job um a high performing job that you do and also that built-in flexibility to combine your family life and it just removes those barriers to entry into the workforce for working mums but also for businesses to bring in talent and attain that Talent as well um once they've pulled in that investment piece into somebody and I think you know this is just a subject it's just super critical for organizations and it's just it's not a topic that's going to be going away so I think you know we all recognize the diversity is good for business performance and and and because of that the world's now now changing and and it's this movement I think that ensures the um you know a diverse Workforce kind of at every level you know it's being it's being measured it's being demanded it's being talked about I hear it all the time every event every hiring manager that I speak to um you know it's being talked about by suppliers by customers regulators and you know potentially and possibly the most important of all um reputation as an employment brand which I think you've already touched on so you know kind of I I think really that investment that investment piece is key um and I think when you're thinking about how to invest into a business your first investment should be its people and diverse investment and I think it's going to give you a return like no other and you know and my final point on this I think is it's just the right thing to do you know we're in the 21st century and it's absolutely the right mindset to be having with this approach yeah I couldn't agree more with all of those points today thank you um I want to come back to the broader skills Gap that we've touched on but before we do that um which I'm Keen to come back to your introduction you said you Champion um sort of some of the more linear programs across capgemini to attract more Talent into the business so talk to me about what capgemini have been doing and the initiatives you work on to to Really address the gender imbalance what is yeah there's a number of things we're doing and and I almost describe it as a as a number of channels really because we do things like code first for girls we've got something called cyber Angels um and we're we're deliberately doing it to to talk to and and establish that actually we're going out there to do this and we're doing it with AWS restart and we've done it with an organization called ambitious about autism and it's a business reason for doing it right because you want to fish in more ponds there is a talent challenge you want to be able to attract people into your organization and if you can give them the training you're going to be able to retain them um but what we then do when we when we bring them in um and AWS restart was a good example we bought we brought people in with a capability they've done the cloud Foundation um and they came in with with a capability and that gave us almost a landing Zone to then push off and actually carry on with their development and grow them as individuals in their organization but importantly as well it made acceptability into the organization much easier they came in with a skill set they weren't you know the rabbit in the headlights wondering oh my goodness what have I taken on they remember the skill set that allowed them then to assimilate into the company uh much more easily and we had to do all this onboarding remotely very similar to a human story there we had to do all of this remotely but it it allowed them to come in and what for me it is there is a business outcome as I've said of opening up different channels of recruitment different ponds to fishing rather than everybody trawling through Linkedin tapping up people on LinkedIn and doing it that way that's the sub-optimal way of doing it and actually you tend to you tend to bring in the people that are moving anyway I want people who are going to grow and build a career in our organization oh wait I say to the EET stuff you know if this works you pay my pension this is a great result for me so there is this very selfish reason for doing it but also they are our leaders of tomorrow you know they will grow and they will develop into roles and I know that when we get people in we've got great systems for training and developing them we've got great Pathways but we've got to be able to attract them in and these point they're about people look at an organization they want to see people like them in an organization if ah they've employed employed Fred then they're going to employ me they might I might have an opportunity as well it really does resonate with people that outside image so um for me yeah it's very important so how do you attract people in Richard because you've spoken about hiring from programs um that exist but obviously it's not a given that you approach somebody or somebody's on a program and they'll just accept a job because there's lots of vacancies out there so so what what do you do in capgemini that really speaks to the different groups to make them want to come and work for you well AWS restart was a good example because the the cohort that um derang ran for us was um it was all female cohort um and um Dee will tell you the story my wife made me go and talk to Dee because they don't they've done some Recruitment and she'd heard about this AWS restart program and she said well I said you know you should go and have a look at this and obviously you know I do exactly what I am told um so anyway went and had a look at it and I thought this is really good this is really good but what I wanted to do was not just wait to the end of the program we went to talk to them halfway through about what kept Gemini was and what we're about and it was sort of an opportunity to ask us questions and it was an opportunity then to tell them a bit about what we do because they might not want to work for us um and we did something very similar with um the Cyber Angels program we've been running on code first for girls we get involved quite early on to talk to them about us because people have lots of choices and go and can go to different places and what that then enabled us to do was as people came more towards the end of the program this AWS restart is a particular example we were able to um we were able to then sort of interview talk to people about the various roles and get them into the right you know the right part of the organization that worked for it for them um and and and I think it's that it's that the other bit that that does because I'm you know my organization is roughly UK it's about a thousand people so there is a level of churn in our organization but it made my resourcing team also acknowledge that they've got these people coming into the organization so don't go anywhere else they've got to come in and they're going to do a real job that's where you're going to get them from um so they they it sort of came into my recruitment Channel as well and my resourcing channel it wasn't it wasn't a nice ambition or a nice thing to do it actually said well actually we're going to recruit 30 early career folk this year say we're going to take them in these different cohorts throughout the year but x amount are going to come from these channels and we made a commitment with the resourcing team to say and even we've even written it into some of our contracts you will go and get people from these particular channels because as dee said it's the right thing to do in the 21st century but but also you're creating opportunities for people who never made me realize that they could have a career in I.T and that's when you do that that is brilliant right you suddenly show somebody that they could have a career that they never thought they could have personally fulfilling yeah you can see the passion that you have foreign so we've spoken about attracting more females into role um I want to talk a bit more about the support you need to potentially give women um when they land in your business so how do you look after them how do you retain them as a business what other factors do you think you need to put into place yeah I was just reflecting on points from from d and Richard and one of the the big ones that that resonates with me is is that I don't recovered it specifically is really around Role Models so having female role models in in all levels so I mean we through our recruitment process we strive to when we do our female candidates is to get females interviewing I think um that is beneficial can provide better perspectives um can help sometimes to build better report during the interview so maybe put um the candidates at ease so we've really strive to do that um but a key thing for me and for productivity really is to get those Role Models both in leadership positions but also in some of the junior grades as well and so when we are going through the recruitment process so prior to joining is really allowing candidates to reach out to some of our female um colleagues who already work with us to ask questions understand the work life and so on um and then the other side of the fence is when we do have successful candidates joining us as ensure that there's those Pathways and access to the senior Role Models female role models um who provide the access who are visible in in leadership events but also outside of that across all of our events and making sure that they feel like they have an open door policy for for new joiners across all grades um in terms of retaining that's a key aspect but also um from a from a more day-to-day perspective we've got things like our parents Network which is put in place really amongst our employees to review and devise a set of offerings which really help parents I know I'm using parents there generally it's it's both males and females and having an 18 month old I've really experienced the benefits of that over the last 18 months as well um so putting in case in place things like um short-term support whereby your child's ill when you need maybe any short-term Child Care things that can start to break down some of the challenges that it experiences both in new and as a more experienced parent as you kind of have gone built up a number of years but there's going to be things that jump out at you um and and I think childcare is one of them um it's not always a challenge the primary challenge for women inspiring to move up I think for me it's really from experience has been the lack of Role Models particularly in it and secondly in cloud and it's been something that we've really tried to work on um I'm quite proud to say our team is just under 50 split of male and female from a cloud perspective that's been really challenging to get to from a recruitment perspective and that was where I was just reflecting on on Richard's point there in terms of there is quite a very small pool of candidates um to go out to and so exploring all of these different programs and innovative ways of finding new talent but I think we really need to be investing in talent for the longer term um I think we're dealing with a historical challenge of primarily men going into stem and so we're we're living that delay now and I think we really need to go back to basics and really Drive um and encourage that and some of the um the coding pieces that Richard spoke about they are really important in terms of encouraging um girls into into stem which would hopefully then will experience the the benefits over the longer term yeah so what I'm hearing from both of you is that your actions have been really deliberate you've had a really strong first of all Vision you've got other people on board with that across your organization in various different roles you've set a joint goal and then everybody's work towards it to execute and then you've had an eye on the long term as well as the shorts have so really kind of deliberate and well executed plan which I think is something that is fundamental to make a success of any hiring campaign let alone just women in tech for sure and one of the other pieces of reporting that I picked up recently was in McKinsey report from actually only earlier this year in James you touched on female role models which I think are incredibly important but obviously if you're an organization that doesn't yet have many females in it can be a bit of a catch-22 so McKinsey did a report around the importance of sponsors in organizations for women joining Tech organizations and the sponsors could be male or female so it took away the pressure to already have to have females in the organization and what they found was by hiring females and attaching them to a senior sponsor in their organization women felt 70 more heard first of all but from a business perspective the ideas were implemented more likely to be implemented 200 percent more likely to be implemented so from a business perspective they're absorbing so many more ideas and utilizing those ideas and guess what retention was also really good off the back of that as well so I think I just throw sponsors in there as another good idea for organizations really trying to not just attracts but really support and drive female hives to their potential as well um right we've had a look from employers and myself so let's move to the star of the show nathanie who has gone through this whole process that we've been talking about um so nephew do you want to introduce yourself again talk about where you're working how long you've been there and what role you're doing yes thanks Claire my name's Matthew and I'm currently a devops engineer at assembly Global um well I'll start by telling you guys very very much um so I moved here when I was 10 years of age and um it hasn't always been my plan when I moved here like um my education obviously a transitioned from being in Sri Lanka to here and then everyone was just telling me to go into different career paths such as pretty much being a lawyer or a doctor but then on the side of this whole thing my brother was really into gaming so because of that I was exposed to Tech the whole time and I just really thought um if I get into it I can really just go into any sort of career path that I want because like you guys mentioned before um it has become a fundamental of every industry um so yeah I decided to go to college and study I.T um software it was a beta diploma and then um sorry I studied and then um I was trying to go to UNI but I had visa restrictions so I couldn't get my student loan um and then I moved back home I was working at the teaching assistant for a while until my friend mentioned the AWS restart course and I was really interested in that so I decided to give it a goal it was three months really intense and um basically I finished it I booked my AWS exam and then I got in touch with D um it was a really great experience because she told me to sorry just give me two minutes okay I think whilst we've lostness May will just perhaps just do a quick overview of the restart program so I'm conscious we've mentioned it a lot of times even though with this wasn't the purpose of the conversation but for those that haven't experienced restart it's a reskilling program for uh people that are unemployed or underemployed it's a free Access program I think it's free of charge to the Learners and really accessible you don't need any experience in Tech to join and that's the program that Richard and nephew have been referring to we reskilled people into the cloud with AWS Technologies Linux python bash scripting so as you said Richard it gives people those fundamental skills which I know is great for an employer but I think for the the person that's being hired they actually for work and contribute from day one as well which I think is really important so definitely no problem that you had to just jump off I was just I was just to explain what restart was because I was conscious that we'd mentioned it a few times and um whilst that wasn't the purpose of the conversation I thought I would just take the opportunity to do that so I'll come back to you just just picking up on your comment about you went to college to study software engineering what was that experience like how diverse was that class um it was literally two girls and I was the only girl that managed to finish the whole course um the rest were all boys it was um studying and in it and being in all these classes one thing I noticed was women were not the main like part of it it was a very diverse at all and it kind of felt lonely because it was all boys but um I felt a lot more respected going into Tech and um I felt like I had an equal if not more opportunity into getting a job and um being recognized for my talent if that makes sense it does make perfect sense and from the way you've articulated your experience so far it's clearly that you're a really determined individual as well you've really chased a career that you've discovered you want along the way before you break off you started to talk about your experience of applying for the job and going through that procedure so I'm really interested to hear about that part of your career so the the transition from being on a training program to actually breaking into your first role in Tech how talk talk to us about that experience um so yeah um Robert Half was working with the company that I did my AWS restart with and through that I got in touch with Dee and um having my exam book during that time I solely put time into getting my LinkedIn sorted out and my CV and I got in touch with these specifically I tried to get in touch with other recruiters but um it wasn't as um I didn't feel as hurt as so much I did with d and it was just a really good experience um finding the job and um right after my AWS restart um yeah so um sorry I feel like I'm all over the place and but um yeah so um I wasn't really interested in the commented devops um I was more interested in going to software engineering but D talked me into it she was very encouraging and she was like just go for it I was like right okay because it was the first job that I ever applied to after doing my AWS restart and then a couple days later she called me and she was like oh you got shortlisted and I was so excited I felt like that was one of the highlights of my life and um yeah I felt like really honestly heard and it was just an overall good experience the hiring process and everything D was there helping me the whole process um yeah so I got um the job and then it was amazing um literally being where I am now after going through all these hardships I just feel very grateful and proud and I just want more women I want to inspire more women to go into tag and just follow their path because honestly it has so many opportunities and because technology is evolving immensely I feel like there's endless opportunities to everyone not just women everyone and in any age as well like it's so good to just have some sort of Technology background I think because Tech is used in all the industries but yeah thank you nephmy we heard earlier how important role models are and and actually how few there are out there so I'm sure that other people will be following your career and and hopefully you'll Inspire more people along the way which I'm sure you will in the environment you're working now do you do you have female role models that support you in your organization um not within my team I've not met um many women that's working in Technology field per se because the SMP Global it's a global company and my team's pretty much based in the USA and it's pretty much all boys but um we're kind of used to it now but I hope it changes yeah so I'm sure it will over time we are starting to see change aren't we you touched on the interesting point about devops being a role that you weren't really sure about going for and earlier in the conversation we were talking about the shift to Cloud Technologies and what we probably didn't drill down into at that point is the shift of job roles that are available in Cloud so I'll throw the floor open to Richard you're not so if you want to contribute to that of what what the the change of roles have have looked liked over the last few years and for anybody studying Cloud now what type of roles would you be looking for James will come to you afterwards if that's okay we're seeing um we're seeing increasingly Blended teams so um the the most with a number of clients now we're running pods um so they've got they've got they've got um they've got instances in the cloud they're also maintaining um a legacy infrastructure so we're seeing a need for more diverse capability in our teams because everything's got to be secure so it's secure by Design obviously but then it's got to carry on being secure and so there's a cyber requirement definitely as some of the um more recently on some of the more Innovative stuff we've been doing we've been seeing increasing need for coding capability in what in what we're doing and what we're deploying and how we automate it so automation is becoming much bigger in terms of what we're doing and then you know our organization we will we will have sort of managed service contracts and then we'll have projects and often with a number of clients we've we we've got that integrated and we're increasing that integration so you're bringing in some of your idle knowledge some of your specialisms around change management some of your apps capability your cyber capability your Dev capability and you're starting to run that as one team and I think that will create diversity in organizations just by the fact that you're pulling people from different parts of the organization and I I do see that then evolving as um as organizations work in multi-talented models they've off they've still got Legacy that they're trying to work out what they do with um they've still got quite a lot of infra that they're working out what they do with they've got Legacy apps but that convergence continues which which requires more capability and more diversity in the team itself from a from a technical perspective and that's set up and PODS moving between Legacy and Cloud projects sounds like a great environment for somebody entering a Tech Career just with the sheer diversity of different topics to cover sounds like they'll be working with lots of people of different abilities and backgrounds that they can learn from as well yeah you know again going back to the conversation I had with this client yesterday we were talking about a um a a service a service now implementation and he said the problem we had with the with the implementation is we couldn't get people off Lotus Notes they were using Lotus Notes for all that all their stuff and all their all their backlog and everything everything like that so we had to we had to teach people about low test notes in order to be able to make the change because they couldn't they couldn't um divorce themselves from it it was a really interesting conversation because but most organizations are like that unless you're a Greenfield organization or a startup you were going to have that mix you know so yeah and you were saying earlier James that cloud was the playground for startups originally um obviously being products that you can Flex so you can buy as you need pay as you go um but obviously Enterprises are using them all now and then this blend with Legacy makes for quite interesting job roles what are you seeing in terms of the diversity of job roles that are out there for somebody starting their career I think I'd probably have a split of non-technical and Technical roles I think that's an important delineation um often when talking to clients we head down that technical route and it kind of comes back to my original Point around that Evolution from from technical to business we're really seeing um a broad brush of non-technical roles in the cloud so I'll throw out the buzzwords like agile um we're seeing um a real push for for ways agile ways of working um we're seeing things like product owners um business analysts which is essential in the cloud World in terms of capturing requirements so not necessarily having to know too much about the inner workings or the technical aspects of cloud um and when when we're going out and recruiting I really try and emphasize that um to candidates that I'm not always looking for deep technology or deep Cloud expertise um we need The Advisory side so I often look for strategists people who can come in and help me really strategize with with clients and help them talk in in business speak so translate from the techie world back into it to the business speak which is really important on the technical side um very much in line with with what Richards mentioned there earlier um we're really I think some of the trends we're really seeing recently around um thin Ops so managing the the spend and cost in the clouds is a really popular thing and I guess if you reflect on it it's not too surprising given the the macro economic conditions right now that we're seeing going on so the desire to really not just cut costs but optimize costs so spend in the right places is is is really popular and then something that I'd say for people to consider and that's kind of a really it's probably a role in the middle between the technical and the business world so to the financial aspects of cloud through to technically how you could could optimize Cloud development so so as as netany spoke about there from from the development world and Richard mentioned um Cloud operations so for all of our clients who are shifting to the cloud somebody needs to be there to look after it on a day-to-day basis um and so it's something that's often forgotten about um in migrations which is all about getting there but it's then the operations piece of was best practice from an operation side and that can be technically operating and probably some of the Cyber pieces Richard spoke on there really fall into that operations piece as well but also the non-technical side so project managers who are able to to manage the operations and probably links into the servicenow conversation Richard was having in terms of ensuring the service management is there wrapped around the cloud environments and then last but definitely not least is the day one activity really around collab security so making sure that is that is baked in throughout both the development and the build but also through to operations as well so hopefully they resonate with people and people can see um there's non-technical roles and there's technical roles as well that has really needed from a cloud adoption perspective yeah and I think for for those on the call listing that are looking to launch their Cloud careers there's lots of great advice there from all of you that it's not just a few limited job roles that are out there it's really worth researching the plethora of jobs that are out there both from a technical and non-technical perspective and any females that have been put off launching a career in Tech because of the limited numbers of females we've said in cloud in particular in the tech roles it's worth saying it's much more Equitable in those jobs you've just mentioned James around project management and product ownership that's more like late 40s percentages of females in though so if anyone's daunted launching a Tech Career there's probably areas that you might feel more comfortable with if you want more females around you so it's definitely not a closed a closed book for if all of the different job roles we've mentioned so kind of looking to the Future nothing more interested in where you are appreciate you've only just started your career but you sound like one determined lady so I'm interested in where you think your career might take you so what where do you think your next steps will be in your Tech Career um I'm hoping to be senior devops um like I said I didn't want to go into devops in the beginning but um being in the job role and seeing um everyone else within the company that software Engineers working on what they're working on it's pretty much the same thing I feel like um so I think to go into devops and carry on being in there and getting more knowledge in it and being more high level yeah it's interesting is that you've gone into a job that you hadn't considered before didn't think you wanted to do and that's where you see your career ready to go but I think it's a really good lesson to for people starting out and I I certainly did this without realizing it's just good to dive into roles that where you've been given the opportunity because often the person interviewing you is sees a fit for a role that you don't see in yourself and it's worth just playing that out and having a go and it's often actually where your strengths lie then um I'll flick the question back to to Richard and then to James So for anybody looking to reskill at the moment we've spoken about Job roles but in terms of um Technologies actual skills where would you advise people to look I guess in terms of vacancies where Cloud Technologies is going what what skills would you advise people starting a career or looking to progress their career to really hone in on um Richard can I come to you first with that question oh I was hoping you wouldn't uh there isn't a single thread because it's it's similar to what um what changed what James was saying there is such a diversity as to what you can what you can do if I if I um if I take a bit about project management for example that is definitely something you can learn in an environment when we recruit into our pmo teams we we look we're looking for organizational skills we're looking for people who can plan and organize and you know which is oh you've got to be agile qualified you've got to have your prince qualification you haven't if you if you've got those organizational skills we can take people in at a junior level and then develop them because we've got all the training here to do it and you know when when we're talking to grads and apprentices particularly our apprentices who do sort of come from um they've not got in they've not gone into further education they've come straight from school or sixth form you know they're not going to done any of that so the very fact that they are able to demonstrate an organizational capability we can then do the rest with them when they come in and take them through the degree in the tech space um this is why AWS restart has been really helpful for us because it's given people a broad a broader brush of understanding of um of the I.T landscape and what they will be doing with the stuff you touched on there when you were just giving people a bit of background on it around sort of coding skills around building Landing zones around Network understanding etc etc all of that gay people a broader understanding and once they're in an organization then we could we can do the rest and we can develop and further and like James you know if I I can look at CVS um you know to to unblue in the face but actually if I meet somebody with the right attitude and the right commitment and the rest of it isn't quite there I'd go with that because I know that if they've got that that drive and that willingness to learn and that's what you'll test out in some of your interview questioning and you know try to try and get insight and understanding then you're probably going to have a fair chance of success with that individual and they're going to succeed in your organization as well yeah yeah you definitely can't teach the enthusiasm bit because that's the bit that you need to come across at an interview James anything to add to that point yeah I think just continuing that thread so we when we recruit we're really looking for that aptitude General aptitude of [Music] um General business skills project management um ensuring that you're you're there you're present you come across well um the technical pieces we are happy to invest and train people up however I would say and I kind of always come back to an Andy jassy quote when he was leading AWS which was there's no compression algorithm for experience and that was that stuck with me I think it's a really clever quote and it really spoke to the fact that AWS has such a head start on other competitors but if we apply that more broadly to ourselves in terms of if you're looking to get a job into the Cloud investing in yourself in terms of AWS restart but also there's nothing stopping you now with thousands probably if not millions of free courses online that you can take advantage of covering anything and everything in cloud and when I see someone's CV come across who has a list of courses maybe they've sat online and maybe a couple of certifications that they've sat that is something that shows me and reinforces that aptitude and desire um and and things like nafira said wasn't necessarily looking to do a devops role doing some of those courses can actually help you discover things that you don't want to do as well as you do want to do and so nothing might have done a devops course and going actually I'm quite interested in this but likewise nothing you might have done a cloud with synops course and gone I really don't want to do this this is not something for me and so investing in yourself in terms of the skill sets and training is really going to help you in terms of gaining that experience volunteering and also doing some of your own little projects at home so you can log into any of the cloud service providers there's free tiers where you can spin things up you can play around break things all of that is going to be great experience that will wrap up into those Technical and non-technical roles in the future thank you I totally agree we with everything you've said keeping a broad spectrum of skills and interests until you really find your Niche if you ever do you might be a generalist um it's really cool I I like to earlier comment about Cloud economics in particular it's not something that somebody outside of Technology might understand is is quite a big topic area right now and in terms of free content there's a platform called AWS educate that has a huge amount of free content on in bite-sized chunks and one of those topics is cloud economics So for anybody that hasn't got that in their kit bag of skills at the minute that's a great place to go to for that there's a few questions that have come up in the chat so um as we've got a few minutes before we close I just thought we could address those was some great feedback for yourself so thank you for joining us everyone's found your story really inspiring and has loved hearing from you so you've already inspired people which is one of the goals that you had so thank you for that um we have got a question here from AO um who says he's got a solid background in software development and has just finished the restart program actually um he wondered how male applicants stand a chance of being given a chance to prove their capabilities thank you for asking that question I'm very conscious the the topic today is women in Tech but it's not the only important topic at all the tech should be a really accessible career so Richard I know we focused on women in Tech what what programs outside of those that we've mentioned today or access points into capture and are available for early careers Talent if you're not a female so we we recruit via um we have a graduate program we have an apprenticeship program we do internships as well um so you know and and obviously those channels are open to all AWS restart we just the first cohort we did it was just specifically an all-winning cohort which um but they they are you know they're abnormally that isn't normally the case so there are lots of channels in um and um and and you know we're recruiting Junior Talent all the time one of the things we do is um we bring people in at the junior level sometimes for a formal program but also just through um bring it bringing them into our organization as a new starter and starting that level and giving them the training program they can then cut into some of those other programs but they can join at Junior levels yeah thank you we seem to have lots of people in the audience that really think that they would love to work at Gemini I'm not surprised the way it does like a great place to work yeah yeah um so for everybody asking those questions there's obviously lots of entry points um I do agree that apprenticeships are a great second step from restart as well not everybody goes into apprenticeship programs but it dovetails really nicely into a level four apprenticeship as well um conscious we need to wrap up in a few moments um so Keen to see if there are any other questions for our panelists today does anyone else have any other questions feel free to pop them in the chat or speak up I was just going to jump in Claire because I think actually just to keep to time we have one minute to go so I just I don't want to overrun or anything but I do want to be able to say a big thank you for everyone who's attended today's webinar I know everybody's schedules are really busy but uh particularly for those that have been speaking yourself included Claire has been a hugely informative session we've spoken about some really hot topics um in the market and um and some really important topics in the market and nephmy once again thank you so much um it's great to have heard your story I think it really is an inspiration to lots of people who are trying to make that transition um it's it's great hearing from from James and Richard to show that that is possible the the way that businesses are thinking of how they're trying to help entry-level Talent into into the um into their businesses um into the market and and Claire thank you so much um just for for everything that you do with with AWS three starts um it's always a pleasure working with you um I love I love being a part of this uh this this sector and and helping individuals into entry-level roles so um yeah thank you everybody for being here today and um yeah I'll let you go we are bang on to a clock thanks for organizing d ude thanks Steve thank you all bye-bye thanks everyone thank you bye-bye thank you bye-bye Gary Gary

How changing cloud capabilities are creating new careers in STEM

As cloud capabilities evolve, tech teams will need to diversify to bridge the gap between legacy and cloud projects. This, plus a higher demand for cyber requirements and increased use of automation, leads Richard to predict a rise in blended teams with diverse capabilities.

“I think it will create diversity just by the fact that you're pulling people from different parts of the organisation,” says Richard. “I see that evolving as organisations work in multi-talented models — they've often still got legacy that they're trying to work out what to do with. They've got legacy apps, but that convergence continues, which requires more capability and more diversity in the team itself from a technical perspective.”

James recommends having a split of technical and non-technical roles to cover the client side of the business. He believes product owners and business analysts are just as essential in the cloud world in terms of capturing client requirements.

“When we're going out and recruiting, we’re really trying to emphasise that to candidates. We’re not always looking for deep technology or deep cloud expertise, “says James. “We need the advisory side, so I often look for people who can come in and help me really strategise with clients and help them translate from the techie world back into business speak.”

Technology is seeping into all aspects of business, from finance to marketing, demanding digital upskilling from almost all professionals in all walks of life. For this reason, Nethmi wants to encourage people to open themselves up to the possibility of a career in tech.

“I just feel very grateful and proud, and I want to inspire more women to go into tech and follow their path because, honestly, it has so many opportunities as tech evolves,” she says. “I feel like there's endless opportunities for everyone, not just women, everyone and at any age, as well. It's so good to just have some sort of technology background because tech is used in all industries.”

To find out more about diversifying, supporting, and hiring tech talent, visit the Robert Half advice blog. If you’re ready to redress the gender imbalance in your team, get in touch with our Robert Half tech recruitment experts.

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