How continuous STEM education encourages growth and innovation

80% of the fastest growing careers in the US require STEM education, but prior education lasts only about five years due to changing technology, according to the US Department of Commerce. Such rapid change poses a singular challenge to tech companies in how they build teams and grow their businesses.

How best to confront this demand while pursuing targeted professional development was one of several topics under discussion at a recent panel hosted in Bloomberg’s New York office. There is a multitude of solutions for this issue, but it is essential that companies start addressing STEM education quickly with current and prospective employees at every level, and think in the long term.

Changing the skill set

The task of upskilling current employees demands that companies get creative in their approach to skills development, looking beyond simply identifying or instilling a combination of financial and technical knowledge. Ultimately, as Stephanie Sparvero, Bloomberg’s Global Head of BVAL and the conversation’s moderator, stated, “teams need to be changing at the same pace as the rest of the world.” That evolution should be strategic and keep a company’s objectives in mind.

At Bloomberg, our approach to education has encouraged employees to evolve, while also changing the way we hire. “The data analyst of the past was a subject matter expert in finance and accounting,” explained Suzanne Mulder, Head of Learning within Global Data at Bloomberg.

“About six years ago, we started changing our hiring profile and bringing on people with technical skills and engineering backgrounds to evolve our workforce and the way that we did business. Back then, it wasn’t always easy to find that combination of financial and technical knowledge, but now we’re starting to see more people with financial backgrounds who have learned to code as part of their degree program.”

“That hiring pipeline alone is not going to transform the workforce. We need to focus on our existing employees, too,” said Mulder. “They’re the ones that have the expertise and the deep market knowledge, and we’ve invested in them in a variety of ways.” In addition to developing robust internal skills development programs, championing policies like tuition reimbursement can encourage this kind of learning on an employee’s own terms.

Early access

A key part of this equation is ensuring the next generation of talent, and those entering the workforce today, are acquiring the right kinds of skills and advancing their tech knowledge to be competitive in the job market. Increasing the visibility of different opportunities within financial technology, so students and recent graduates can see the value in STEM education, is crucial.

“The way we think about early access is, all jobs are tech jobs,” said Bertina Ceccarelli, CEO of Npower, an organization dedicated to launching digital careers for military veterans and young adults from underserved communities. “One statistic suggests that, in the next ten years, eight million new tech jobs will emerge, which presents a conundrum for the industry in how they hire. Some companies do a great job in upskilling and are looking at college recruitment in new ways. Some are looking at non-traditional candidates and alternative sources for tech talent: people who can be agile and train quickly for these skill sets.”

By focusing on diverse technology talent, and these non-traditional candidates in particular, companies can meet their hiring needs for new and evolving roles, while increasing access for those who might not otherwise have it.

Npower’s model includes internship experience, which, as Ceccarelli explains, can be a game changer. “There are so many screeners for prospective employees these days, and if someone doesn’t have a traditional background, it can be difficult to get past those,” she said. “But, if someone has the chance to go through an internship, build relationships, and find a mentor, it’s far easier for a hiring manager to see the technical acumen and value someone offers, beyond whatever their background might be.”

An active pipeline

So much of these upskilling efforts and initiatives depend upon finding and fostering a new generation of talent with interest and acumen in both finance and technology. As Aishia Snider, US Capital Market Sales Director at Microsoft, explained, the issue, at its core, is simple. “When you think about what upskilling is, and what the tech skills gap really is,” she said, “it’s all about being able to understand the data that runs through any and every device we use today. This is the time to begin educating people on how to understand data by teaching them the science and analysis behind it. With that comes insight.”

Given the fast pace of technology and the evolution of the necessary skills, creating and maintaining an active pipeline of STEM-minded individuals is essential for organizations to remain competitive. Companies need to be consistently asking what more they can do and anticipating what the next challenge to solve for might be.

Solving future problems

Ultimately, STEM education and upskilling come down to the ability to solve problems, whatever they may be. This importance of interpersonal, as well as cognitive, skills needs to be recognized early in a person’s career, and throughout.

Bloomberg believes in and supports continuous education for all employees, and makes STEM skills a priority for the Global Data team, comprised of over 1,500 employees in offices around the world. They work as analysts, problem solvers, and innovators. Aside from exhibiting technical and data analytic skills, members of this team become experts in their respective areas of focus, gaining deep knowledge of the landscape and trends – all bolstered by an evolving approach to education.

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