Atos’ Cloudreach Launches U.S. Talent Academy As IT Skills Gap Is At A ‘Crisis Point’

‘The skills gap is just insane, it‘s reaching a crisis point,’ says Poonam Flammarion, head of Cloudreach Talent Academy.

After seeing so much demand from its training program, Cloudreach, which French IT services giant Atos officially acquired this past January, expanded its Talent Academy to the U.S. last week.

“The skills gap is just insane, it’s reaching a crisis point,” Poonam Flammarion, head of Cloudreach’s Talent Academy, told CRN.

The inaugural Talent Academy cohort, which partners with Amazon Web Services (AWS) began in late 2021 with many graduates now holding jobs as associate cloud systems developers at London-based cloud computing consultancy Cloudreach. Many members of the training program did not have formal training and had varied work experiences. Those with some experience in tech had little to no experience working in cloud technology.

“We‘ve interviewed people from all sorts of different backgrounds and we look for that growth mindset,” Flammarion said. “We’re constantly looking to scale up because we know we’ve got the demand in terms of the customer demand. And the talent is there.”

There is an infinite amount of demand for security and cloud skills, she added.

“We’re looking to grow our professional services team massively, especially with the ATOs acquisition,” she said. “There’s no way you could find that many experienced people ready to go, so this is a longer-term talent strategy, but it‘s one that’s absolutely necessary.”

[Related: Trace3 President Joe Quaglia On Expansion, Finding Talent, And TD Synnex]

The two-year program has the new hires spend the first 10 weeks in a classroom setting. After the 10 weeks they then transition into customer engagements. Over the two years the new hires have special support and receive regular performance reviews.

“We have a bonus designed specifically for them so that when they hit their training targets we can give them a bonus, so that it‘s kind of instant recognition,” she said.

They’re a full-time employee from day one. After the two-year period they are typically promoted to the next level.

“When you‘re changing industries and starting from scratch, we want them to stay at Cloudreach so we want to make sure they’re here for the longer term,” she said.

The Talent Academy in North America, which kicked off in Atlanta, had more than 600 applicants. Only 20 are selected per cohort.

Flammarion said it’s not only about developing existing talent but growing new talent.

“Let’s not keep fishing from the same pool,” she said. “We need to increase the size of the pool.”

And in increasing that pool, she realized that diversity in tech “is pretty bad.”

Those in the program don’t have to have any technology experience, that’s part of Cloudreach’s efforts to grow its diversity, equity and inclusion.

“That’s where the conversation is at Cloudreach. How do we do something meaningful?” she said. “Yes we need to create more skills, but as a corporate citizen what is it that we want to change?”

She said with the North America program, 50 percent of the applicants were women as Cloudreach has reached out to different nonprofits and groups to expand their reach to attract individuals with different backgrounds.

“I had heard about opportunities in cloud technology but realized there weren’t a lot of young women of color in the industry,” said Esther Awolesi, a participant in the program. “I wanted to change that and be part of the rising statistic. I did a couple of bootcamps before joining Cloudreach but I realized that I only knew the basics after completing them. Cloudreach taught us the technologies and skills we’d use on actual projects. Cloudreach took a chance on people, and it’s been very successful.”

There’s also a lot of demand for individuals with security experience, but they’re hard to find, said Flammarion.

“Experience is the key word,” she said. “It is very hard to find experienced security and cloud talent. You can‘t just create experience overnight, over a week, over a year but we need to create space for that talent and progress our people to the next level.”