We’re Northcoders’ first Curriculum Partner!

Manchester is the place to be for technology right now. But the sector is in a period of huge growth – and yet there’s a skills shortage. 

We need to do all we can to support this growing area of industry. We’re seeing people switch the direction of their careers and re-train all the time – in fact, some of our own team of developers, designers, inventors and creators have had a wonderfully diverse past.

That’s why we always try to showcase the diversity of people and skills that the technology sector has accumulated wherever we can – and why we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been named Northcoders’ first Curriculum Partner.

As of this month, we’re sponsoring the project phase of the Northcoders curriculum. Their courses typically run for 12 weeks in four 3-week blocks, with the project phase as the final block.

Students are set a brief for creating an innovative, exciting new piece of tech – but there’s one element that’s always missing: business context.

And that’s where we hope to come in. By sponsoring this part of the course, we’ll be able to give direction to students on the type of tech they need to build – whether AR/VR, blockchain or machine learning – but also provide them with guidance on how that solution fits into a pre-existing business ecosystem.

We get it – experimenting with tech is cool – but we’ve always been advocates of building tech that’s useful, rather than tech for the sake of it. When it comes to training the next generation of tech enthusiasts, that critical understanding of real-world business environments can put some candidates above others in an interview – it demonstrates a knowledge of integrating that tech into a pre-existing ecosystem.

Our Engineering Manager Gary Butcher dropped by Northcoders HQ to meet the students and sit down for a quick interview about what this partnership means to us and future tech candidates – watch the video below to find out what happened.