As AI reshapes industries and redefines how work will get finished, the query of who advantages and who will get left behind has change into one of many extra urgent challenges to unravel in financial mobility. Technology: You Employeda worldwide nonprofit working throughout 17 nations, is working to assist make profession alternatives extra broadly accessible to everybody, regardless of their place to begin — they usually’re more and more utilizing AI to do it.
Cisco has partnered with Technology since 2023 to assist construct digital pathways to studying and employment alternatives for job seekers all over the world. We’re supporting Technology’s efforts to leverage AI as a software to attach extra individuals to upskilling alternatives and related job placements at a scale that wasn’t beforehand attainable.
Connecting extra individuals to extra alternatives via human-centered AI
Technology’s placement course of, via which they match graduates to employers who’re hiring, is operationally complicated — involving 1000’s of learners, a whole bunch of employers, and program workers throughout a number of nations. To handle that complexity, Technology constructed the Employability Module (EM), a centralized digital platform that coordinates the job placement journey for learners and workers alike. With assist from Cisco, the group has been in a position to develop and broaden this platform, together with via the mixing of an AI-powered job-matching software in 2024.
Technology’s thrilling work with Cisco is a part of a portfolio of AI-driven initiatives they’re pioneering with a spread of funders to use AI throughout their whole education-to-employment lifecycle to raised assist each their workers and the learners they serve. These instruments draw on real-time information to align employer hiring wants with every learner’s abilities, program background, and preferences—surfacing higher matches extra shortly than handbook overview ever might. Matching effectivity improved by roughly 25%, and the fee per match fell by greater than 99%, making the software viable throughout all of Technology’s nation associates with out requiring proportional will increase in workers or funds.
Technology has additionally been utilizing AI to make the educational expertise itself extra adaptive. A Customized Course Generator now produces course outlines, classes, and assessments in a fraction of the time beforehand required, whereas personalised Studying Paths and an AI Studying Companion alter content material to particular person learners as they progress, permitting individuals to maneuver via materials at a tempo and in a format that works for them.
Past inner instruments, Technology can also be evolving their curriculum to arrange learners for an AI-driven workforce, serving to them develop the talents to thrive in roles the place AI is changing into integral to the work. Cisco Networking Academy has added one other layer. In FY2025 alone, greater than 275 learners accomplished Networking Academy coursework embedded immediately in Technology’s Knowledge Analyst program. This integration means learners can achieve industry-leading technical credentials with out leaving the platform they already know.
Collectively, these human-centered instruments assist make studying and job matching sooner and extra personalised, they usually’re designed to enhance, not change, the teaching and neighborhood assist which have at all times been central to how Technology works.
Breaking down boundaries to learner – and nonprofit – success
Past the digital infrastructure, our partnership works to deal with a number of the sensible boundaries learners face daily. For a lot of Technology learners, their laptop computer is their main software for all the things from accessing coursework to submitting job purposes to speaking with potential employers. To maintain these gadgets protected from malware, information loss, and different on-line threats, we offered 2,000 licenses for Cisco Safe Endpoint to guard gadgets throughout the UK, Mexico, Kenya, Colombia, Chile, Singapore, and the US.
These efforts are designed to work in tandem. By layering our assets—funding, know-how, and experience—the influence is compounding, permitting us to assist our companions with a depth of engagement that may result in extra sturdy, significant influence.
Illustrating the influence of tech-enabled profession packages
Thus far, greater than 153,000 learners have graduated via Technology’s program choices. This quantity paints a transparent image of this system’s attain, however the actual proof level is the sturdiness of the careers these graduates construct lengthy after they end their coaching: almost 80% of Technology graduates discover employment inside -180 days of finishing their program. Greater than 20,000 employers worldwide have employed Technology graduates. Amongst alumni tracked over the long term, 76% alumni that graduated between two and 5 years stay employed, 73% are incomes above a residing wage, 40% are saving cash, and 89% really feel optimistic about their futures.
These tendencies maintain throughout very totally different geographies and beginning factors. Think about Davida college scholar in Kenya whose research have been abruptly halted by pandemic lockdowns. Confronted with restricted employment choices, his fortunes modified when he joined Technology Kenya’s digital freelancing bootcamp, the place he realized priceless abilities wanted for distant work as a digital assistant. After finishing this system, he shortly gained monetary independence; he now acts as a mentor to aspiring freelancers.
Isa had spent years working as a translator in Thailand earlier than deciding he wished to make use of know-how in a extra direct means to assist individuals. Technology’s Software program Developer program gave him the technical basis he wanted to behave on that dream. He has since constructed an indication language translator app for deaf and hard-of-hearing guests at a library in Australia, the place he now resides.
In the US, Alex struggled for years to interrupt into the company gross sales world from her small city in West Virginia, regardless of holding a related diploma. By Technology USA’s SaaS Gross sales Growth Consultant program, she developed the precise abilities and footing she wanted to land a tech position shortly after graduating.
Prioritizing function in AI-driven profession improvement instruments
Whereas public discourse typically frames AI as a risk to the job market, what we’ve realized and witnessed via our partnership with Technology suggests a distinct actuality might be attainable after we maintain people on the heart. Know-how is a software, and at Cisco, we imagine its worth lies within the alternative and influence it permits for actual individuals trying to higher their very own lives. When developed thoughtfully, with individuals and function in thoughts, AI has the potential to open doorways which have lengthy been closed, advance human potential somewhat than stifle it, and construct a future of labor that may work for everybody.
