“A lot of people told me that college was the right path,” says Travis Williams, “but with my learning style, working with technology helps me understand it better.”
Mr Williams is a trainee at Virgin O2, one of around 740,400 trainees across England.
For school leavers who don't want to (or can't) study, internships offer an alternative route into many technology companies.
Mr Williams joined Virgin Media O2 a year and a half ago as a cyber security trainee. He previously obtained a baccalaureate degree in IT and cybersecurity from university and then worked at another university in IT, primarily providing technical support.
Mr Williams is now responsible for configuring, maintaining and monitoring security systems at Virgin Media O2, both the network and data center infrastructure.
has become the go-to person when there is a problem with the Intrusion Prevention System, which monitors the network for unauthorized activity.
“If there is a problem with that, they come to me or one of my colleagues,” he says. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s very exciting to have this experience.”
What was the company looking for in him?“Not so much someone who has all the answers, but someone who shows interest and a willingness to learn as much as possible,” Mr. Williams says. "Mentioning that I've been experimenting with [network analysis] tools at home helped me demonstrate this."
“The best thing about training is that you can learn the skills you need and sometimes use them on the same day,” he says. “I think college is great, but you’ll never get the work experience from it.”
BAE Systems also plans to hire 1,400 trainees this year.Hollie Keenan left school after her GCSE and joined BAE Systems Advanced Apprenticeships in 2019.
Working at Barrow-in-Furness submarine yard. As an assistant manufacturing engineer, she uses a virtual reality headset to check the submarine for potential problems before it goes into production.
She never thought about going to college. “Where I live, all we talked about was training,” he says.“My whole family came to BAE through the apprenticeship program and went on to do other roles within the company.”
The training lasts three and a half years. Ms. Keenan's first year was spent primarily at college, where she acquired tool skills in electrical, mechanical, and pipe shops. In his second year, he spent one day a week at the university, working on topics such as materials and health and safety.
Although you have started your career, you are thinking about starting a career in a few years.“It opens doors for me when I wanted to go somewhere else,” he says.
IBM is hiring people without degrees to recruit a more diverse workforce. “There are brilliant people everywhere, but opportunities are not the same for everyone,” says Jenny Taylor MBE, who leads the company’s first careers programmes.
“Our customers are diverse. Why wouldn’t you look for talent in all possible avenues?”
In an employer survey by skills development organization Generation, 52% of respondents said they had difficulty filling entry-level positions in technology.
Whether people come to IBM as trainees or graduates, the company strives for the same transferable skills. “If you have worked in a bar you have teamwork, customer focus and communication skills,” says Ms Taylor. “You must have dealt with difficult people. We are much more interested in the person than their academic qualifications.”
In addition to entry-level programs, IBM has removed degree requirements from many other job offerings so that people are not disadvantaged later in their careers.
Research from the Burning Glass Institute found that only 29% of IBM listings for a software quality assurance (QA) engineer in the U.S. required a degree. In comparison, it was between 90% and 100% for four other well-known technology companies.
“They are behind the curve,” says Robin MacDonald, director of technology recruitment firm Harvey Nash. “They just haven’t changed their ways. You will have to do it.”There is no reason why a QA should have a degree for this task. “We can train these people in months.”
And he adds: "If you hire entry-level programmers and only look for people with a degree in computer science, there will be no gender segregation because 90% of the courses are taken by men."
Bootcamps offer short, intensive, in-person courses to quickly gain technology skills, and there are many self-paced courses available online.
“I was quite surprised when I found out that Harvard's Introduction to Computer Science (CS50) is available online for free for anyone to learn,” says Vesko Trakiyski, chief technology officer at digital marketing agency Fifty.I.
He dropped out of school at the age of 15 and spent the next two years teaching himself web design and technological skills, including through the Harvard course. At the age of 17, he got his first job as an entry-level web developer.
Two years later, he joined the startup Fifty.io as a junior developer.Eight years later, the company is ten times larger and he is chief technology officer. “I don’t think I would have reached this level of career development if I had started job hunting after graduating from college.”
“Technology is one of those industries where you don’t need a degree to get a job and have a career,” he says. "It's quite unconventional, risky and strange not to follow the established path, but if you know you want to play a certain role, in some cases a different path is available."
Like Trakiyski, Daniele Servadei taught himself to program. However, he is studying computer science even though he has already founded an online company. He co-founded Sellix in 2021, which enables people to receive payments for digital products. Around $80 million (£61 million) in payments have now been processed for 280,000 merchants.
“When you have an idea, you should get to work straight away,” he says.“Don’t hesitate to refine the idea. When we first launched Sellix, it only had a few features.”
He recognizes that there are important aspects of computing that he still needs to learn, but his main motivation for attending university was networking. “There are a lot of people [at university] who want to learn and have the same ideas as you,” he says. “The best thing is the university environment."
Teaching has advantages over self-directed learning. If you learn on your own, you can create programs that work, but may not use the best approach, says Servadei. A teacher will recognize it and help you. He also noted that university courses are structured to guide learning in a logical order, while online documentation often does not.
recommends students to supplement their studies with their own learning.His course teaches the C programming language, but JavaScript and Python are the languages needed for many jobs today. “You have to see what the market wants from you and study that,” he says. “Don’t just trust that the professor knows everything about everything in the computer world.”
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