so what if you could get paid to learn the code that's the premise behind higher trained deploy programs sometimes called recruit trained deploy programs now these programs started to become popular a few years ago in Europe and they've made their way to the United States they're run by mostly staffing companies and the premise is they will hire Learners pay them a small wage while they're learning to code and then they deploy them to an employer partner so this is a really interesting alternative to boot camps and as the boot camp space continues to struggle I
think that these programs are going to be more of a path forward so my goal today is to explain to you what these programs are and from the perspective of the learner the Staffing firm and the company what are the pros and cons and if you stick around till the end I'm going to explain to you what sort of things you can look for in a quality program and give you some advice on making it through the admissions process which is very competitive so let's talk about how the model works now it starts with employment
that's the hire or recruit part of the acronym now you're going to interview just like you would for a job and they're going to be very selective because they are going to pay you to learn so this is an investment on behalf of the Staffing firm in your future so these programs can be really competitive to get into especially in a tough hiring market like now and once you earn your way into the program you are going to be asked to treat learning like your job it's very similar to a boot camp it's going to
be very intense it's going to be very fastpac because they're paying you to learn so the longer it takes for you to become job ready the more expenses they incur and the lower their profit margins are so they are looking for people who can hit the ground running and learn quickly and we'll cover more about that later about how you can earn your way in and impress the recruiting firm once you've completed the training they are going to place you with an employer partner now the good thing about these companies is that they often have
jobs already set aside by the employer partner for their program they don't usually run programs unless there's jobs at the end now this isn't a job guarantee things can change companies can back out of those agreements and people can be stuck without jobs but it's a lot sure bet than a coding boot camp so you're going to go work for this company what's going to happen you're going to get a pay raise first so you're going to get a very low wage when you're learning you're going to get a higher wage when you join the
employer and then depending on the length of the contract that you work for that employer this can be 90 days it can be one year it can be two years you will convert and you will have scheduled raises during those periods now what's the down side of that usually those rates are going to be slightly lower than Market rates because the company wants to recoup the cost of paying for your training and your hiring there's also a contract in place so if you think that you're going to you know get paid to learn and then
get put in a job and you don't like it and you're going to quit well the contract is usually going to forbid that and there's going to be some penalties in there you might have to pay the Staffing firm back for the training so that's just one thing you should be aware of but at the end of the day after a period of time you will become a full-time employee of that company so now let's talk about the pros and cons from each of the parties involved we have the learner we have the Staffing firm
and we have the company and let's start with the learner so the obvious Pro of this approach is that you get paid to learn and your chances of getting placed if you complete the program is very high and that's because these staffing firms don't run programs and don't put people in these seats unless employers have agreed to give them opportunities on the other side because no business is going to pay people to learn if they can't recoup those costs on the back end now it's not a job guarantee things can change and companies can change
their mind about their hiring needs and that does happen but compared to the regular Market that you would see at the end of a boot camp or you know a college degree program your odds of getting placed are way higher than they are in those other opportunities now another Advantage is that you are going to get industry relevant training because again the companies aren't going to reserve those slots for higher trained deploy candidates unless they're learning the things that the company wants them to learn and also you're going to have a period of time to
get you that initial experience it's very difficult for people to get their first job in it but their second third and fourth job are much easier so if you can get in there and get a year or two of experience that will set you up better for the future than other options but all these Pros don't come without cons so let's talk about the down sides of higher trained employ and the main one is the contract that you have to sign because at the end of the training you are going to have to go work
for one of their employer partners and you're going to have to do that whether you like that employer or not and you're going to have to work out your term with that employer whether you like them or not now there are ways out of those contracts but usually they involve Financial penalties like you might have to pay them back for all of those training dollars and there might be an additional fee on top of that to compensate the company for the revenue they were going to lose so breaking these contracts can be very expensive and
legally risky so again you get into an employer you don't like your team you don't like the work you're doing you don't like your boss in most cases too bad you're going to have to tough it out so depending on the length of that contract term whether it's 90 days one year or two years you may be in for a long haul of job dissatisfaction now my advice to people if they end up in that situation is to just tough it out because if you get to that one year or two year of experience it's
going to make a big difference in your future career you can leave you can change jobs you know usually get a pay raise and you're going to be good now during that period you also have to realize that you're probably going to be paid less than Market rates because you are locked into those employer so there's no incentive for them to pay you premium rates that's just an opportunity cost and in it your salary is going to grow with your experience and your skill level so if you learn a lot and you develop those job
skills you're going to make that money back later so that's not something I really tell people to worry about at the beginning your job is to gain skills and gain experience and the money will come later and and lastly this training program because that Staffing firm wants to get paid and they want to keep their employer Partners happy it's like a boot camp plus when it comes to expectations and stress levels so you better be prepared if you're accepted into a higher trained deploy program that they are going to be watching you and expecting you
to perform and some people already have struggles with the boot camp pacing and the stress that involves well this is this is an even higher level than you're going to see in a boot camp so just be aware of that going in you are going to have to manage your stress you should set up your life in a way that you'll be able to handle that kind of intensive training and those kind of intensive expectations so now let's talk about the Staffing per perspective now pros and cons the biggest Pro is that they get to
build a pipeline of talent that their employer Partners want so that lets them kind of keep their finger on the pulse of the market it lets them build relationships with the candidates because someday that candidate is going to become a hiring manager or they're going to want to change jobs in the future and the Staffing firm might be the first pick for them to be placed again so building those relationships is really important for the staffing firms and on the employer side now the Staffing firm is becoming a trusted partner they're going to get more
information information on what that employer needs what their future plans are what kind of skills they're falling short in and that can Ripple through the entire Staffing organization because they're not just going to get data about entry level hires they're going to get data about the mid-level and senior level gaps that that employer has so all of this just kind of binds the Staffing firm and the employer together a little more tightly makes the relationship more sticky and that leads to higher revenues and higher profits in the future if they play their card CS right
now the biggest cons for the staffing firm is The Upfront cost they need curriculum they need instruction they need the money to pay the Learners while they're in the program and they also need to be able to float them on the other side now the float when you're talking about staffing firms they're paying you every two weeks like an employee but often times the employer is paying you know 30 days 45 days 60 days later so there is a need for the Staffing firm to have enough cash to be able to support those people until
the employer starts paying and if somebody doesn't get placed right away at the end of the program most staffing firms will leave them on the book so they start racking up more cost and that's that's a risk that the staffing firms are willing to bear and that brings us to the employer partner now there's a lot of good in this for employers and most of it is reducing the risk of hiring because when an employer hires out of a higher trained to play program they know what curriculum and what skills those candidates are learning there's
also a larger pool of students for them to choose from and that means they're going to have a lot less risk because hiring an entry-level developer I've mentioned this before on the channel it's very risky because an entry-level developer takes a lot of time to train up sometimes you don't know how good of a worker they're going to be well guess what in a higher train to play program they've been observing you as a learner and you as a student for 10 to 12 weeks so now there's a lot more data on what type of
person you are what kind of work ethic you bring how you interact with your peers and that makes the employers a lot more comfortable than just rolling the dice out there on the random market and that's really what a lot of these employers are paying for and when I was a hiring manager at companies there were a lot of gaps when I went to higher entry level people like they didn't know about Source control they didn't know about you know Common architecture patterns unit testing there were a lot of gaps coming out of those College
experiences and if you're an employer and you're willing to hire entry-level people your only option is to really roll up your sleeves and train those people yourselves and if you happen to be on a team like mine was where we had a lot of work to do it was very difficult to take senior developers offline to mentor and train entrylevel people appropriately well guess what higher trained employ the employer gets to skip most of that the Staffing firm is taking on that burden for them so that saves them time money and risk now what are
the downsides well whenever you save time money and risk you're paying for it so the way these higher trained empoyee contracts work is that the employer is going to either pay a placement fee after like 90 days or they're going to contract that employee at an hourly rate for a year or two and most of these staffing firms they are making anywhere from 20,000 to $40,000 in profit per placement so that's the opportunity cost for the employers and if you're an employer who's going to hire at scale there is a level where your hiring needs
might say hey we should build our own Academy program like the one at JP Morgan Chase or City Bank there are some programs out there that you'll see advertised where employers run these Academy programs themselves and usually that's because they have a lot of entry-level hiring needs and they're not getting what they want from the market out of colleges universities and coding boot camps so they decide just to bring it in house and do it themselves and that's something I've personally helped companies do I have built program Academy programs for Fortune 500 companies before and
it's a really interesting model and it's not as expensive as a lot of employers think but I understand the hesitance if you are an employer you're not a school you're not a training provider so I understand why a lot of employers choose to go with the Staffing firm because it's less risk and they can just spin it up and down however they want and that leads to better cost controls for those employers so now that you understand understand the players involved and what their motivations are what are some higher trained deploy companies in the space
now in the US the ones you're going to hear about revur is probably one of the biggest ones fdm group htd group and Dev 10 there's many more out there and I recently uh attended a staffing firm conference and this topic was a big Topic at the conference so I expect to see more higher trained deploy programs coming online not only in software development but in other areas of business needs in the future so go out and research it you can search for hire train deploy or recruit train deploy and you will find a lot
of companies in the space now the next question I want to answer is what should you look for in a higher trained deploy program if you want to throw your hat into this ring now I said previously that one of the benefits is that the curriculum that that they teach is tailored towards employers but that doesn't mean that that particular employer wants things that are popular in the market so you should always be sure to review the curriculum and compare it against the job postings in your region because it's not uncommon for a company to
be struggling to find talent because they're using Legacy systems or because they're using nich products now it's not a bad thing you're you're still going to get trained and there's a very high likelihood of getting a job and if your goal is just to get any job that's not a problem but if your goal is a long career if you have a certain career path in mind or a certain vision of how your career should play out then be sure to evaluate the curriculum against the market and against what you have what you want to
do the second thing you're going to want to look for is the quality of instruction both during the program and the support you're going to get after the program so once you transition from that learning into your job and you're a contractor there what kind of support do they give you and this varies wildly some companies kind of throw you over the fence they assign you to a project manager and good luck to you other companies will continue to give you training mentorship and support during that contract period that that does cost the Staffing firm
money and it lowers their margins so I understand why not every company does that but a good company that cares about the longevity of the program and cares about both the employer and the learner experience is going to provide that extra support and one of the biggest things you need to do is review the contractual obligations do not sign up for a higher train deploy company if they're kg or not being transparent about what that contract says and you should get that contract reviewed by a professional that means a lawyer it's worth the couple hundred
bucks to have somebody look over that contract so that you don't get stuck later because I have seen contracts where if you get fired or dismissed during the program you have to reimburse them for the training and sometimes you might be dismissed and it's not even your fault that might be because an employer pulled out or things like that there's not a job there anymore things that are out of your control you need to have an open conversation with the higher trained empoyee company about all those scenarios the wh ifs that could happen that could
cost you money and speaking of those employers every higher trained employee firm should be willing to share with you who their employer partners are you should never sign up for a higher trained employ program if you don't at least know which companies you have a shot at being placed at because you're going to want to research those companies because there are companies out there that you don't want to work for and you're going to go want to go check out glass store and you're going to want to talk to people on LinkedIn about those companies
and do your research just like you would for a regular job because again if you get hired and you don't like it there you're going to be stuck there for a period of time so doing that that research and doing that homework upfront about who those employer partners are is really important to this process and last but not least be sure to check that contract for relocation requirements National staffing firms the larger firms in this space they have employers all over the country and you may need to be willing to relocate for that job and
if that's a deal breaker for you you need to know that UPF front you need to see that in the contract and another thing you might want to consider in the contract is if you do have to relocate is there any stipend is there any reimbursement for that relocation or are you going to have to fund that yourself that can be a nasty surprise for Learners who get placed with a company and then are forced to relocate on their own dime now I don't have any statistics on how many companies will pay for relocation versus
not it is just something that you need to be aware of and prepare for now the last thing I want to talk about is if you are going to apply for one of these programs what are some ways that you can maximize your chances of being accepted and to talk about this we kind of got to flip it back around the Staffing firm is making a bet they are betting that the candidates that they bring into the program are going to be successful and the employers are going to desire them so they are trying to
minimize their risk well if you're hiring somebody to learn how to code what is the best way to minimize the risk and the answer is to select people that already have foundational knowledge of that coding skill now you don't have to go all the way you don't have to go from zero to employed take a boot camp and then go to higher trained employ that that's not what I'm asking you to do but if you have mastered the foundations of a programming language like say for Java you might learn about variables Loops conditional statements classes
interfaces unit testing all those core Basics that let you start your programming journey and this is about 4 or 500 hours of learning if you can walk into a higher trained deploy interview and demonstrate that you are comfortable with that foundational knowledge the risk goes way down and your chances of making it through that interview go way up the other things that you can do is really focus on your communication skills because Employers in Tech do tend to Value soft skills almost as much as the hard skills obviously you have to know how to code
to get a coding job but when people are similar level of technical skill the people who are good communicators good organizers have good soft skills they are going to rise to the top and often times when you're interviewing for a higher train to playy program it is going to be an actual interview process so you are going to do a preassessment kind of technical interview it's not going to ask you necessarily to write some code but some of them do but they are going to check your logic and reasoning and your programming meta skills at
minimum you're also going to have a behavioral interview and that's where you're going to have to come prepared just like any behavioral interview how do you deal with cont conflict you know how do you communicate well what type of work environment do you enjoy you need to come prepared to talk about those things and really impress the interviewer because you are interviewing for a job it's just your job is to learn so to wrap things up higher trained deploy programs are out there you should be aware of them they are going to grow they are
continuing to grow I do a lot of Consulting on the side for these programs kind of helping them set up a good learning environment the coding boot camps as we know are struggling and as the coding boot camp Market shrinks I think that higher train deploy is going to grow to kind of take the place of those coding boot camps and at the end of the day I think this is a relatively positive development for Learners because getting paid to learn is a lot better than shelling out $20,000 to a coding boot camp and then
coin flipping on a job now these programs are very competitive to get into so it's not going to reduce the need to have formal education it's not going to reduce the need to self-study like you can do at skill Foundry getting those fundamentals and kind of coming in with Just A Cut Above people who aren't as well prepared is going to be the best way to get these opportunities happy coding [Music]
