Addressing the Confidence Gap: As Well As the Skills Gap

As demand for data and artificial intelligence (AI) training starts to increase, the need to bring a wider and more diverse range of people into the industry is a crucial issue that must be addressed, according to Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO, CompTIA.

“This industry is about creating capacity for people to build better lives and create better futures for themselves and their families,” Thibodeaux said in his keynote address at the CompTIA EMEA Member and Partner Conference. “We are currently trying to find inspirational stories that we can share with people to convince them to work in our industry. It is not a skills gap that we have, but a confidence gap.”

Thibodeaux shared a powerful video filled with people from different backgrounds talking about how they got into the tech industry and how it has changed their lives. He said that while CompTIA is known globally for its flagship CompTIA A+ certification, it’s really about helping people launch tech careers.

 “We have this amazing brand and the gravity around this is bigger than any other product that we have. It is important to continue to foster and nurture this,” Thibodeaux said. “We decided to make it vendor neutral, so that someone with CompTIA A+ at the beginning of their career could work in any environment. It has been a core part of our brand through our history and has helped us cement a place in the product pyramid. We are that foundational piece.”

But the time has come for CompTIA to expand its certification offerings to bring in a wider audience, he said.

“The new areas we want to be known for are around data and AI,” Thibodeaux said. “Data is a core part of every position, and we may well see AI skills become core in the future. We have never seen job roles increase as fast as data has, and the whole security area is going to be heavily influenced by AI.”

Thibodeaux unveiled a series of training modules around digital literacy and career literacy— aimed at capturing new audiences from the middle school level to career changers to people intending to work in the IT industry.

“There is a whole bunch of people out there who think they can’t work in the industry,” said Thibodeaux. “We have to start drawing them in and we can demystify what IT careers are all about. Right now, unless you know someone in a particular job, you don’t know what it is like.”

Another layer—known as digital fluency—will help people get into tech as a career. The Essentials Series will include products around AI for marketing, Word, Excel, Office, Data, soft skills and more. Each will include a short competency exam resulting in a certificate.

The career introduction layer will include the a+ Series of competencies around network, cyber, coding and data (and others)—intended for people with an appetite to learn and start a tech career. These can be bundled with other course and used as a launch pad to the wider Plus (+) Series of certifications for career professionals, followed by the vendor-specific Pro Series that incudes training for Azure, Cisco and others. Completing the progression is the Xpert Series, including SecurityX, CloudNetX and DataX, which Thibodeaux said will give CompTIA, its partners and its members a full scale of products from soup to nuts.

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