Let’s Solve the Talent Gap
The most frequent question I get from people about New Orleans is:
Does NOLA have the talent for tech companies to scale?
I spoke about the city’s tradition of creative talent back in my talk at TribeCon last fall. But the lack of talent in NOLA is a recurring theme and we need to solve for it.
I’ve been brainstorming with a lot of folks about solving this, and I’d like to lay out a three-pronged approach:
1) RECRUIT
There is tremendous opportunity to continue to recruit top technical talent to NOLA. Kumar Thangudu just moved to NOLA from Houston and is on a mission to bring more engineers with him. Talent attracts talent, and we need to keep nurturing the flow of tech talent.
Here are some actionable steps for recruiting:
Stay — we have a French Quarter apartment we rent for Launch Pad mentors during our class. We can open this up to anyone who wants to put someone up. I hear of some folks working on a “hacker’s den” which would be awesome. We need an AirBnB place for folks hang out together.
Work — we offer up Launch Pad as a free place to work when folks come through town. this offer is standing.
Meet people — hit up the hack night on tuesdays, meet folks at Capdeville
Jobs — We’ve got a listings source on WorkNOLA. I believe everyone should be posting jobs on AngelList too. We probably need a way to easily link to all tech positions in NOLA.
Fun — It’s our brand, shouldn’t be too hard to show people a good time.
We need a systematic way to share candidates across tech companies hiring around town so candidates can get exposure to all positions and don’t have to work through multiple processes with all of them. Let’s get organized between companies to make it as easy as possible.
In addition, let’s focus internationally. New Orleans is a port city and has always been a city of immigrants. What if we were the easiest and best city in the country for international engineers?
2) TRAIN
Let’s map the grads coming out of LSU, University of Lafayette, UNO & Tulane once the get back on track. Let’s know where every engineering and CS grad ends up and make a point of ensuring they know positions exist in New Orleans.
We need grads with 4-year degrees entering the workforce, but there are plenty of folks who are capable of being programmers but don’t need to go back to college to do it.
It’s time to get serious about recruiting a code school to New Orleans. These organizations run short, intensive programs and produce entry level engineers. They are proven effective and are a great model. Carl Nelson and I chatted about these last week when he was here for NOEW, so thanks Carl for the information.
Here are a few well respected code schools:
Starter League — Chicago
Hackbrite — SF
App Academy — SF
The Flatiron School — NY
Let’s recruit, franchise, or start up one of these.
(Aside — why doesn’t Launch Pad do it? We have run the alpha test. Last year we ran 6 week classes in iOS, RoR & Javascript taught by LP members. They worked great and were all full, the demand was there. I believe these need to be run by a committed organization that’s focus is on education of programming and its outside what we have the capability to do at Launch Pad, however we’ll host them and do everything we can to support.)
3) MESSAGE
We need to start to talk about the talent that is here. We’ve branding ourself as a startup city and do an incredible job highlighting the entrepreneurial ecosystem over the last 5 years. You can’t miss the headlines about New Orleans as a startup hub.
We need to focus on the same marketing for technical talent. We need an organization as dedicated to engineers as Idea Village is to entrepreneurs. We need to brand our city as a great city to work in tech.
When anyone asks, “is there enough tech talent in New Orleans?” The answer needs to be “hell yes” and we need to be able to point to it.
I believe this should be a primary focus of the economic development agencies. GNO, DDD, LED — start talking talent and getting the message out there.
The way to do it is not to talk about jobs. Any engineer or programmer can get a great job anywhere they want right now. It’s to talk about the talented folks who are here. Focus on the community, highlight and celebrate the amazing talent we’ve got. This will help to change the perception of the lack of talent and it will help us to recruit more.
Sound like a plan? Let’s get to it. I’d love to hear any other ideas you have in the comments.