A year ago, Automation Alley landed a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration to help build up Metro Detroit's IT workforce.
Today the business accelerator's Technical Talent Development Program has trained 78 new people to work in IT and retrained 48 existing employees for companies. It expects to hit 119 new hires and 82 incumbent workers by the end of the year. The program aims to train 540 new IT workers within its first five years and retrain 460 workers in the same time frame.
"We are right on schedule, primarily in the new hire section," says Alysia Green, director of talent development for Automation Alley. "That's the main focus of the grant."
Automation Alley's Technical Talent Development Program provides funding to local employers for high-level IT training for both potential employees and existing workers. The training is administered by corporate training companies, workforce development organizations and educational institutions.
"When you talk about this high-level IT training, the costs range from $2,000 to $8,000 per person," Green says.
She says that many of these workers are ending up in fast-growing local IT firms, such as
Secure-24 in Southfield and
GalaxE.Solutions in downtown Detroit, among several others.
Source: Alysia Green, director of talent development for Automation Alley
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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