Eighteen months ago, TechPoint conducted a workforce survey that sparked a talent movement in Indianapolis. After confirming long-assumed challenges shared by 26 key tech employers and learning valuable insights into their talent recruitment needs, TechPoint developed two tech workforce reports and launched its Xpat and Xtern talent attraction and retention initiatives that are changing minds and filling the tech talent pipeline!

In the first year for both programs, Xpat and Xtern delivered excellent results:

  • Coming into the program, 67 percent of the first 50 Xterns reported they would “never” consider Indy as a place for their careers.
  • At the close of the summer Xtern experience, 91 percent of those same 50 Xterns reported strongly considering a return to Indianapolis for tech careers after graduation.
  • The 2015 Xtern program is anticipated to be DOUBLE the size of last year’s with 100 Xtern placements with Greater Indianapolis area tech companies.
  • About 100 expatriates attended the first Xpat holiday event called IndyXmas in December 2013, that resulted in several former Hoosiers accepting tech jobs back home in Indiana.
  • The second IndyXmas in December 2014, was bigger and better and already on track to surpass attraction stats from the first event.
  • Digital, social advertising is driving significant online traffic to Xpat landing pages and capturing contact information for people interested in Indiana tech jobs.
  • Throughout 2015, Xpat will ramp up communications with targeted expatriates including events and continued one-on-one employment matching.

Support from the tech community for these talent initiatives is palpable! I’ve personally been working in and around the tech sector here in Indiana for more than 15 years and I have never before seen programs that organically draw this kind of interest from all kinds of tech and tech-enabled companies.

As a nonprofit, it’s always a good feeling to have people appreciate what you are doing for the community, but it’s a different level when you start getting cold calls from companies you’ve never even heard of that want to get involved.

Here’s your chance to be a part of this movement!

Beginning this week, TechPoint is launching a new version of the workforce survey that started it all! By participating, YOU will help us identify hiring trends and the most in-demand tech skills for Indiana’s tech and tech-enabled employers.

BONUS: Through a partnership between TechPoint and EmployIndy, your survey feedback will help guide training efforts for upskilling the existing tech workforce and educating the next generation of tech talent coming out of our Indiana colleges and universities.

If you’re taking the long view, you can immediately recognize the value of participating because by helping to determine the needed skill sets of current and future workforces you are improving the employment pool for your own talent needs, too!

 

Take Survey

 

If you want to get involved and participate in the workforce survey, reach out to Sally Reasoner of TechPoint and she will find out the best way to plug you into the talent initiatives.