The Maryland Tech Council has a new set of partnerships to grow the state’s tech sector

This year, various entities throughout Maryland and DC are coming together to level up the Free State’s workforce and entrepreneurial opportunities.

The Maryland Tech Council (MTC), a tech and life sciences interest group based in Frederick, officially teamed up with  OneTen, the Baltimore Digital Equity Coalition and the Federal Lab Consortium to grow career opportunities, digital connectivity and tech transfer in the state — all of which the orgs’ leaders hope will help diversify the sector.

OneTen, a DC-based organization that works to connect Black professionals without four-year degrees into well-paying roles, will work with MTC to advocate for dropping four-year degree requirements in hiring. With the Baltimore Digital Equity Coalition, MTC will host forums for policymakers, community leaders and residents on closing the digital divide. And together with the Federal Lab Consortium in DC, MTC will host meetings and events connecting entrepreneurs and founders with federal labs in the hope of boosting economic development via tech transfer.

Maurice Jones, CEO of OneTen, said that the org was particularly interested in working with MTC because tech is a sector that’s both growing and already works in skills-first hiring — meaning that skills are prioritized over degrees.

“There’s really no place that’s a better fit for that [skills-first] work than the technology sector,” Jones told Technical.ly. “The technology sector has long recognized that at the end of the day, there’s no degree that prepares you for the rapid evolution of technology; that you will always have to skill and reskill and upskill. So it’s a perfect sector for this kind of work.”

MTC CEO Kelly Schulz said that it will be setting up an event for Jones and the OneTen team to speak to her organization’s nearly 700 members about skills-first hiring, as well as facilitating and building a relevant hiring ecosystem in Maryland. Right now, Schulz sees a large-scale shift already at work, in which employers and hiring managers are reevaluating the type of employees they’re looking to hire. She’d like to see it go beyond tech but thinks this sector is a great place to start.

“We know that you do not have to have a college degree in order to be successful in many, many jobs within the tech field and we want to be able to help elevate that,” Schulz said.

For Jones, skill-first hiring methods make sense from a business standpoint; following this partnership, he hopes to see similar models employed in healthcare and manufacturing. For the future, he’d love to see Maryland become the skill-first state for hiring across all sectors — something it’s already led the way on by eliminating four-year degree requirements for many state jobs.

“Let’s make sure we’re not creating barriers that are keeping talent on the sideline,” Jones said. “Let’s lean into technology and other places where they know that skills are the most important factor when it comes to predicting success on the job. So this is an opportunity, a big one.”