This IT bootcamp is bringing grads back for free upskilling

As you know if you’ve been paying attention to tech ecosystems over the last decade, bootcamps can help jumpstart a tech or IT career.

These intensive programs can be life-altering, often in three to four months. They’re competitive to get into and require students to be almost fully immersed as they learn new, highly sought-after tech skills. Graduates have been known to double or triple their incomes, with room for growth.

What we don’t always talk about when we talk about bootcamps is that the very valuable skills earned in these programs are just the beginning for successful technologists.

ITWorks is Tech Impact’s IT bootcamp serving underemployed people 18-26 without a college degree in Delaware, Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern Nevada. It sends its graduates out into the workforce with Cisco IT Essentials certifications, mentorship and experience on their resume from a paid internship.

100% of participants intern and many find good jobs after the program. But given the general nature of the IT Essentials certification, they might not know exactly what career path they want to take until they’ve been working for a while — and then find they need additional education.

To address this, ITWorks developed ITWorks 2.0 and 3.0 specifically for its graduates who want to come back to get additional education through the program

Art Green, a Las Vegas-based ITWorks instructor, will be leading the virtual courses for alum now located all over the country. The program includes CompTIA Network Plus training.

“What we focus on is under the assumption that they’ve been working in a certain industry and have started figuring out which career path they want to go, whether that’s going to be in system administration, network administration, or whether they want to go down a cybersecurity path,” Green said. “They’ve had time to figure out, ‘This is what I like, I feel like this is my comfort zone. Now I want to achieve more in my specific industry.’”

2.0 and 3.0 are not necessarily chronological, though they can be. 2.0 centers on network administration, including CompTIA Network Plus training, while 3.0 focuses on cybersecurity, cyber policy, auditing techniques and forensic investigation-type topics. Graduates can choose to take one or both options. The plan is that these courses will be ongoing, so current and future ITWorks students who complete the course will have 2.0 and 3.0 available to them as well.

While the intensive ITWorks 1.0 course can be challenging to complete while working even part-time, 2.0 and 3.0 are designed for people working full-time.

“We’re looking to have it in the evening, under the assumption that most of them are already working in the industry and working in the field during the day,” Green said. “We try to make it convenient for them to have some night hours for the additional classes.”

2.0 and 3.0 are slated to launch in February.

ITWorks is free for eligible young adults who are accepted to the program in Wilmington, Philadelphia or Las Vegas. ITWorks 1.0 is an in-person program that accepts applications year-round.