The mission of Hoxton Academy is to build the next generation of software engineers not only changing young people’s lives but also helping businesses find and retain talent.
With millions of businesses around the world increasing their digital transformation efforts, a big challenge lies ahead for the global economy, talent shortage.
Although a seductive and quite lucrative career, companies around the world cannot fill their needs for software engineers and the demand for talents in this field will go up to 85.2 million by 2030. Companies risk losing more than 8.4 trillion dollars because of talent shortage.
But the reality is more complicated than simply a software engineer shortage. The problem has to do with the way most companies recruit these talents.
Hoxton Academy, a project started as a close partnership between London, Tirana and Pristina, is coming to Albania thanks to ICTSmedia and Twig and it represents an innovative professional education methodology with immediate employment outcomes.
The mission of Hoxton Academy is to build the next generation of software engineers not only changing young people’s lives but also helping businesses find and retain talent.
Hoxton Academy is a company with a London HQ, focused on professional education and helping individuals start a new career in software development in only 6 months. These individuals will learn about coding, cooperation, communication and new skills that will help them become future professionals.
A wide partnership between Hoxton Academy and companies such as Twig, Hajde, ICTSlab, OneUp, Baboon, Monochain and Laralara, which are committed to offering scholarships for students who are selected to become part of the academy.
“Our mission is to make a better world through education. I’m very excited to be working on a curriculum and methodology that will not only teach students the latest technologies they need to know to thrive in the industry, but will ultimately shape them into great problem solvers and communicators, providing them with skills that will prove extremely valuable throughout the rest of their careers,” says Nicolas Marcora, Headmaster at Hoxton Academy.
Marcora believes that Hoxton Academy training will also benefit companies greatly, providing them with a pool of talented young individuals, eager to learn and capable of adapting to overcome any problem.
The industry standard today relies on a very simple recruitment process: applying for a job means going through the process of being interviewed, completing a CV or sharing experience. If a software engineer has not pursued an education at an elite university, they are faced with the challenge of proving their talent. According to Stack Overflow data, 87% of software engineers say they have learned how to program by themselves.
Hoxton Academy methodology and application process
Built in the form of a bootcamp, Hoxton Academy addresses key issues such as lack of professional education and talent shortage. During the 26-week long program, students of Hoxton Academy will be trained by highly experienced developers who have trained hundreds of software engineers at some of the biggest companies in the world such as Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Facebook etc. Students will also be lectured by leading academics from UCL, Oxford University and Cambridge University.
Geri Çupi, Chair of Board said that: “Hoxton Academy aims to produce 1,000 developers of high British quality within the next 5 years. The goal is to have well-educated talent from London and hopefully build tomorrow’s unicorns of Albania.”
The program is split into 4 main modules: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, React, TypeScript & APIs.
- Week 1 – HTML & CSS
- Week 5 – JavaScript
- Week 11 – React
- Week 16 – TypeScript
- Week 17 – API-s, Node.js, Servers
- Week 21 – CS Fundamentals
- Week 23 – Final Projects
Students will attend over 50 lectures, work on over 60 exercises and build 6 projects throughout the course. Students have 1 week to ideate and build a project after each module.
The entire studying program will be for free and, once they get certified by Hoxton Academy, these young software engineers will get a 2-year employment from one of the companies that sponsored their education.
Every day, students will engage in lectures from 9:00 to 13:00 while in the afternoon they will exercise what they learned during the day and how to put those concepts into practice.
Studying tuition up to 6000 euros is covered by companies which guarantee 100% employment of these young engineers. Once employed, students will pay back the investment made to them through monthly payments with a small percentage taken from their salaries.
“Our experience at ICTSmedia, a broad network of initiatives served us as a genuine research and we found out that the talent and the potential of our youth is our main strength in the region. The involvement of such talent and potential in the IT industry will directly affect the GDP of Albania and Kosovo by increasing exports of the companies in software development,” says Kushtrim Shala, co-founder of ICTSmedia and Managing Director of Hoxton Academy.
For him, Hoxton Academy is the response to the supply and demand in the market which today is lacking in talent, work culture and above all high-quality engineers. “Through Hoxton, the Innovation and Technology Ecosystem will undoubtedly become richer, more competitive in the region and an encouraging signal to the talents of our country that the future belongs to us and here, and that from here we can change the world.”
Young people that are looking to join this program will go through a testing and selection process. First, they will fill a form and undergo a deductive reasoning test.
Students who successfully pass the first two stages will be invited to a zoom call and will be given a short online course to complete in order to prepare for their technical interview. This technical interview will test their progress through the course and is the final step towards being accepted into the Hoxton Academy. The first cohort of Hoxton Academy students will start training in September 2021 and will graduate in March 2022.
Applications are open and you can apply by clicking this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScTOSzYUOILD6KQr-6xvSospbEjbW9opUFz3ozvW8OMy9tjtA/viewform
Hoxton Academy, companies, and talent shortage
Addressing talent shortage is not an easy task at all. Even though they don’t have the required education, millions of people possess great skills, but they are refused because most companies still rely on CVs and degrees to recruit their talent.
Many companies don’t want software engineers without experience but at the same time they are not ready to invest in their education or experience. The result is favoring short term objectives instead of long-term investments in an industry that is going to flourish in the next decade.
At Hoxton Academy we remove a big burden from companies and businesses. The 6-month investment for talent recruit will translate into a 2-year contract providing them with not only added value but also a return on investment from the students themselves. 87% of businesses face talent shortages or expect to suffer the consequences in the coming years.
Through Hoxton, the Innovation and Technology Ecosystem will undoubtedly become richer, more competitive in the region and an encouraging signal to the talents of our country that the future belongs to us and here, and that from here we can change the world.
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