News today from the Labor Department bodes well for job seekers at all levels of experience. The unemployment rate is falling, wages are increasing, and yet there is still a strong sense of demand, as employers continue to struggle to fill roles within their organizations.
Intersect 2017 is now behind us, but we’re still buzzing with excitement! It was such an incredible meeting of so many minds, and a living testament to the power of community. With the theme of Learning for the Jobs of Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond to rally around, you could just feel new opportunities emerging, and great connections were being made everywhere you looked.
It is with this theme front-of-mind that we’ve recently been featuring stories about Udacity students getting jobs—specifically, our Self-Driving Car program students, because in many ways, their stories are emblematic of the fact that the jobs of tomorrow are already becoming the jobs of today.
If you had asked us—back when we first committed to our Intersect 2017 conference theme of Learning for the Jobs of Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond—which “category” Self-Driving Car jobs belonged in, we might have been tempted to say “beyond.” As we’re learning, however, nothing could be further from the truth!
Imagine the scene. After rounds and rounds of applications—plus all the analysis, filtering, and ranking—the hiring committee finally convenes. The stakes are high, the need is real, and decisions need to be made. A question is asked, “Which ones do we bring in for an interview?” A brief moment of silence follows, then another voice counters, “No. Which ones do we want to HIRE?”
At Udacity, we want to be the place where you come to get an education, to get a job. One of the key ways we pursue this objective is through candidate profiles. Every career-ready Nanodegree program student has a unique candidate profile, which functions as an optimized showcase for your skills, your projects, and your experience. We want to see top employers consistently discovering Udacity talent, and student profiles help make this possible.
There are many paths to career success, and while we all generally share a similar end goal—landing our dream job, being successful, enjoying a fulfilling life—we all start in different places. Some of us literally begin at square one. We don’t have the skills we need, we don’t have the experience required, and we don’t have any portfolio evidence of our accomplishments. But we want to learn! Others of us have some of the puzzle pieces assembled, but still need a few items to flesh out the picture. But we’re ready for our careers to advance! And finally, there are those of us who are essentially already ready to be hired, but for some reason the switch isn’t flipping.
At Udacity, we’ve thought deeply about all three of these scenarios. And while ultimately every individual’s journey is unique, there are some patterns that emerge, and we’ve tried to speak to each of these with our offerings. Our Nanodegree programs are perfectly suited for that learner who is ready to undertake the full journey towards a new career. And Nanodegree Plus, with its job guarantee, is ideal for that career-focused student who knows what they want to do, and is ready to do it.
But what about that third scenario?
We’ve been able to celebrate some pretty amazing news at Udacity in recent months. But nothing makes us happier than those stories that directly impact the careers and futures of our students. Which is why we’re especially excited about today’s announcement. Flipkart, India’s largest online marketplace, is partnering with Udacity to radically change the hiring process in the software industry.
Breaking away from convention, Flipkart is embracing an “interview-less hiring” approach, and hiring candidates based directly on their Nanodegree projects and Udacity profiles. No in-person interviews or group exercises. This approach enables Flipkart to hire talent swiftly, shorten the hiring process, and maintain a critical competitive edge in its hunt for talented professionals. And it allows our graduates to earn roles based directly on the skills and experience they accrue through their Nanodegree program studies.
Three Udacity students—all graduates of Udacity’s Android Developer Nanodegree program— have already started working at Flipkart, with the mobile development team. They are the first to join the Flipkart team, and both Flipkart and Udacity expect many more new hires to follow.