Blog Post

Upskilling and Retaining IT Talent With The Help of Cornerstone

Lindsay Thomson

Senior Growth Product Marketing Manager, Cornerstone

Back in the day, hiring managers could present a list of 10 skills or characteristics they were looking for and find the perfect candidate. Today, hiring managers are lucky to find candidates with half of their ideal skill requirements. When it comes to technical positions, they’re fortunate to find any candidates at all.

In a recent study from Modis surveying over 1,000 hiring managers in the tech and engineering field, the majority (80%) said there is a gap between available talent and the type of talent they need. In fact, only 57% of candidates held the necessary technical skills that hiring managers were looking for. Clearly, competition for attracting and retaining top tech talent is fierce.

Exacerbating the issue, the rate at which professional skills become obsolete is increasing. Uncovered by a recent IBM study, the half-life of professional skills was once estimated at 10 years, meaning both the value of those skills and the relevance of the knowledge associated with them would decline by half in a decade. Today, the half-life of a learned skill is estimated to be five years and even shorter for technical skills, meaning a skill learned today in 2020 will be about half as valuable come 2025, or sooner.

The tech industry today has one of the most competitive job markets in the world. Why? Because technology talent is propelling innovation and business transformation forward. For many organizations, IT leaders now share the responsibility with HR teams to hire, retain, grow, and lead the most future-proof teams possible. So what can organizations do to attract the best tech talent, make sure their skills are always current, and get them to stick around?

According to LaSalle Network’s recent survey of more than 4,000 tech professionals, the #1 reason IT professionals consider leaving their job is due to a lack of growth opportunities. Over half (53%) also said they received between one and three job offers over the past 12 months that they considered taking. IT skills are in high-demand, but development and career opportunities can help retain technical roles at your organization.

Realizing the vast opportunity that ongoing development can provide IT teams and organizations, Cornerstone announced a new partnership with ITProTV, the highest-rated online skills development platform for IT professionals. Cornerstone customers can now provide fun, engaging, binge-worthy content to their technical teams to help them stay current with everyday technology and tools. This new offering features over 270 courses on topics covering IT foundations, security, virtualization, DevOps, and so much more. Half of the ITProTV library focuses on certification prep for vendors such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco, AWS, VMware, while the other half focuses on general IT upskilling on today’s most relevant topics.

And, being that it is an online library, this offering gives employees access to reliable training without travel expenses or time away from the office. It’s a win-win.

"Cornerstone understands the impact that both soft and hard skill development can have on the careers of current and future IT professionals," said Tim Broom, CEO and Co-founder of ITProTV. We’re thrilled to partner with a leader in holistic people development solutions and introduce hundreds of courses to the Cornerstone ecosystem to fill critical IT skills gaps."

To help you get a feel for the unique style of ITProTV, we have made the three courses below available for free to you and your team.

  • Microsoft AZ 500: Create, Configure, Network, App Security Groups | 15m

  • Microsoft AZ 104: Custom Roles | 3m

  • CompTIA PenTest+: Analyze Scripts: Python | 4m

For more information about the partnership, explore this quick video from Tim Broom, CEO and Co-founder of ITProTV. You can also get in touch with our team to learn more. Happy Learning!

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Organizations are at a critical inflection point marked by transformational shifts in generational cohorts, evolving skills requirements, escalating competitive pressures, rapid innovation, and the influence of AI and automation. Adapting to these changes isn’t a choice — it’s a business necessity. To remain operationally proficient and succeed through change, organizations need to rethink how they engage and train their people.

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