Course providers Mission Ready hope offering IT training without upfront fees could lead to more diversity in the industry Photo: Suppied / Lenovo
Train now, pay only once you get a job - training organisation Mission Ready says it is the first in New Zealand to lower the risk for students looking to upskill to fill a tech sector skills gap.
The organisation runs a quick-start training programme aimed at getting people into work, but is now offering to do that without upfront training costs.
Graduates of the 10 to 20 week programme would then begin paying for their training once they landed a job.
Mission Ready said its courses had an 87 percent job placement success rate, since launching four years ago.
Its pay-on-success programme offers tertiary level education courses valued at nearly $5000, to be repaid once a graduate is successfully employed.
Mission Ready co-founder Diana Sharma said the programme would remove financial barriers to the skills needed to land a tech sector job. She hoped that could relieve financial barriers for students and help lead to more diversity in the sector.
"Aotearoa's tech industry is chronically short of new talent and our vision is to fill that tech-skills gap by diversifying the talent pool and empowering unemployed and underemployed students," Sharma said.
"We wanted to do something tangible to help new talent from different pathways overcome real cost of living challenges and take that first step.
"With Train Now: Pay on Success we're removing the financial barrier, fostering diversity, and assuring students that they will only repay once they are successfully employed in their new careers."
The industry needs between 4000 and 5000 new tech professionals each year, and right now, there were only 4 percent Māori and 3 percent Pasifika tech workers in the national pool, Sharma said.
The pay-on-success programmes included mentor-supported work experience with IT businesses like Datacom, AMP, Fonterra and Salesforce.
"We're confident this barrier breaker will help us generate the demand for new graduates from a wide background and new channels that our partner businesses tell us they need," Sharma said.