54% of current workers will require significant reskilling and upskilling by 2022

Ashwin Bharath - Revature Founder & CEO joins Yahoo Finance's On The Move to dicuss how his company is training the future workforce in tech.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Let's talk about reskilling. Not just in the US, but around the globe, because according the World Economic Forum, 54% of current employees are going to require some kind of reskilling and upskilling by 2022. Our next guest aims to help them do that. Ashwin Bharath is Revature Founder and CEO. He's joining us from Reston, Virginia.

His company retrains employees, particularly in technology. So Ashwin, what kind of demand are you seeing? Particularly because not just right now are we talking about current employees that need to be reskilled and upskilled, but of course, a lot of people who are unemployed as well who perhaps need to be upskilled or reskilled to then re-enter the workforce.

ASHWIN BHARATH: So Julie, thanks a lot for having us here. And so before I answer that question, let me give you a quick, brief overview on what is reskilling and what is upskilling, right? So both are trying to solve the skill gap issue, right? And there are two factors that cost the skill gap.

The factor one is like the technology change and digital transformation. That's followed by upskilling. You take an existing workforce, upskill them into the newer skill, and that's how the upskilling is obtained. And the second factor is forced skills gap, which is COVID, what's happening now. The COVID is causing a much more bigger problem, which is like unemployment, furlough, displaced workforce, and that can be solved by reskilling, by taking like a workforce from a different domain and identifying them to be a good programmer and doing that, right?

So these are the two things that we're trying to achieve. And the problem, as you said, is it is quite big. Especially in COVID, companies are trying to do more with less, and that's possible with technology adaptation. 87% of-- according to McKinsey, 87% of CEOs believe they have a skill gap issue and they need to upskill their people, but only 50% or less have plans for it. To me, the opportunity is massive. If you don't do it, it is going to become one of the top priorities and problems for the youth in the future.

ADAM SHAPIRO: But why is that perhaps a better route for a company, a more efficient, less expensive route than, say hiring people who already possess the skill, if those people are available?

ASHWIN BHARATH: So to begin with, at least in the tech industry, these people are just not available, right? I will give you a little bit of experience. When I came from India, I was hired, my first job, I was hired based on my aptitude, not based on my prior programming skills. But I was in a shock when I came here. That is not happening.

You have plenty of alternate supply chain of talent in US who could be great programmers. If you think about Revature, what we do is, like, we don't look for prior programming skills, but rather, we try to hire people based on their aptitude and attitude, train them and make them into great programmers. So that is some of the things, if you don't do that, a lot of these jobs that are available now can be gone forever.

- Now, taking a look at--

JULIE HYMAN: Hang on for one second, Emily. I just want to mention Snowflake, which has just begun trading at open at $245 a share. The IPO was at 120, so it looks like a big first day payday for Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce, each of which agreed to buy $250 million worth of shares at that IPO price. Again, $245 is where Snowflake has opened up after IPOing at 120. Sorry, Emily, please continue.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Just taking a look at Revature and some of the programs that you offer and some of your partners, what are the types of positions that are most in demand? I mean, is it Cloud engineering, certain lanes of software engineering, where is that demand actually coming in?

ASHWIN BHARATH: So the biggest demand I would say is full stack engineers. That's where you see the biggest demand. But what COVID did is in a post-COVID thing, what Revature is experiencing is we are seeing like a 550% or more than five times the demand for Cloud and cybersecurity. So the demand for cybersecurity and Cloud is on steroids in the post-COVID environment, right?

And having said that, like, we are partnering with great institutions, for example, Salesforce. So we are partnering with them potentially to create 100,000 Salesforce engineers to be added into the talent ecosystem, right? You're partnering with companies like Accenture. We are partnering with companies like Infosys. And we are even partnering with state governments, like for example, Rhode Island, so these are some of the partners that we are working with now.

JULIE HYMAN: Ashwin, thank you very much. Ashwin Bharath is Revature Founder and CEO.