Infosys, Salesforce and Amazon Web Services are some of the first businesses to sign up to a $64 million Victorian government program that promises to retrain up to 5000 mid-career workers.
The scheme, first announced late last year, aims to address the shortage of technology roles in Australia, which has been made worse since the arrival of Covid-19 due to the reduction in skilled migration.
It will provide participants with 12 weeks of training in fields like analytics, cloud and cyber security at a Victorian training provider, followed by a 12-week paid internship with a business.
Businesses that host participants are, in return, offered a $5000 wage subsidy for any participants they take, and gain access to the pool of digital job-ready professionals skilled through the program.
Innovation and digital economy minister Jaala Pulford this week revealed “ANZ, AWS, Carsales, Infosys, MYOB, NCS, Salesforce, Siemens, Swisse, SYPAQ and Zendesk” are the first businesses to have signed on to the program.
“We know the demand for digital talent is increasing rapidly, and the digital jobs program has been designed in partnership with industry to build our digital workforce and create new opportunities for Victorians,” she said.
ANZ will host 30 digital jobs participants in Victorian-based teams as part of the first cohort of 450 people in October.
ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott said the bank is “always looking for employees who listen, learn and adapt, and who have strong data and technology skills”.
“Our participants will be offered a combination of on-the-job learning and formal training to help them develop,” he said.
Infosys senior vice president and regional head for A/NZ Andrew Groth said the company would offer 25 internships over the next six months as part of its involvement in the program.
“As part of the program, we are offering 25 participants, to begin with, an opportunity to gain in-demand digital skills in areas including cloud, cloud platforms and Agile DevOps,” he said.
“The participants will partake in our InStep internship program, and have access to Infosys’ next-gen digital learning platform LeX.”
Salesforce told iTnews the company would provide “technical training, technical certifications and some internships”, though it is still to determine the number of participants it will host.
“We’ll… be working directly within our customers and partners on their job needs and looking to support placing candidates in roles within our ecosystem,” a spokesperson said.
“Once the program gets underway we will have a better understanding of what those roles look like and the number of jobs as a result.”
NCS did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication. AWS declined to comment.
