Several firms offer special assistance for workers affected by COVID-19. For example, today we present Microsoft’s job skills initiative.
To begin, review these articles:
About Microsoft’s Job Skills Initiative
About two weeks ago, Microsoft announced a new program to assist those looking to enhance their job skills. As Brad Smith, Microsoft president, explains:
“Truly, one of the keys to a genuinely inclusive recovery are programs to provide easier access to digital skills. Especially for people hardest hit by job losses, including those with lower incomes, women, and underrepresented minorities”.
“To help address this need, Microsoft is launching a global skills initiative aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of the year. This initiative will bring together every part of our company. As well as combine existing and new resources from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft. It will be grounded in three areas of activity:
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- The use of data to identify in-demand jobs and the skills needed to fill them;
- Free access to learning paths and content to help people develop the skills these positions require;
- Low-cost certifications and free job-seeking tools to help people who develop these skills pursue new jobs.”
“At its heart, this comprehensive technology initiative will build on data and digital technology. It starts with data on jobs and skills from the LinkedIn Economic Graph. It provides free access to content in LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, and the GitHub Learning Lab. And we will couple these with Microsoft Certifications and LinkedIn job seeking tools. In addition, Microsoft will back the effort with $20 million in cash grants. In order to help nonprofits worldwide assist people who need it most. We will provide $5 million, in cash grants to community nonprofits led by and serving communities of color in the United States.”
Click the image to read more from Smith’s announcement. Including several graphics.
Microsoft Support Through LinkedIn
As part of the Microsoft ecosystem, we launch a global skills initiative aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of this year. Our goal is to help those who have become unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis get the skills they need to land their next job.
We’ve worked together across Microsoft to make all the resources available for free for everyone in one place — opportunity.linkedin.com. It’s ambitious, and it’s just the beginning, but we’re excited to help job seekers land their next job.
Through LinkedIn’s Economic Graph, we digitally map 690M professionals, 50M companies, 11M job listings, 36K skills, and 90k schools on LinkedIn. It identifies in-demand skills, emerging jobs, and global hiring patterns. These insights help us connect LinkedIn members to open opportunities. We globally partner with governments, nonprofits, and organizations. To help them use these insights to create economic opportunity.