Dive Brief:

• Global education provider General Assembly (GA) will partner with software developer Interapt to train incoming tech talent in secondary U.S. markets, GA announced in a news release. The companies will work together to expand GA's curriculum and registered apprenticeships.
• The first cohort of the partnership will include over 20 students, who may access "GA's career development services, Fortune 500 hiring partners, and vast alumni network," the news release said.
• The partnership aims to resolve the tech talent drought many employers face by increasing the number of candidates who have digital skills in secondary U.S. markets. Programs will start in Kentucky and Georgia before expanding throughout the country, GA said.

Dive Insight:

Many employers — not just those in secondary markets — face a talent gap in the STEM industries. According to a survey from Modis and GA, 80% of decision makers in the engineering and technology industries said they think there is a talent gap in their industry. This issue extends beyond these fields, however. Earlier research found that the talent shortage took first place among the emerging risks for organizations heading into 2019, according to Gartner. Still, digital and technological skills are among the most sought after.

Partnerships and other initiatives designed to increase tech talent are cropping up as a result of this problem. Boot camps for students and other learners, for example, are growing in popularity. Johns Hopkins University announced it would partner with 2U's Trilogy Education to offer a coding boot camp to teach front- and back-end development skills to those in the Baltimore, Maryland, area.