MID-LEVEL TALENT
ATTRACT AND RETAIN
MID-LEVEL TECH TALENT
Introducing the Mid-Level Accelerator. An opportunity accelerate women in tech and unleash developer velocity.
The Mid-Level Accelerator enables organisations to develop and accelerate women with 2 years+ coding experience.
Women will be empowered with the skills, knowledge and career-proofing to take their tech careers to the next level.
Unleash developer velocity through attracting women into mid-level roles and upskill internally to build retention.
And as a result, we will transform business performance.
⚠️ WHAT IS THE MID-LEVEL TALENT GAP?
WE KNOW THERE FEW WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
Only 5% of leadership positions in tech are held by women. That is incredibly low and we want to see this change!
WOMEN ARE OVERLOOKED FOR PROMOTIONS
For every 100 men, only 52 women in technical roles are being promoted to manager. Women are being overlooked.
WE VOLUNTEER TO DO MORE "GLUE WORK"
Women volunteer to do “non-promotable” work 48% more often than men, doing important “glue work” that goes unrecognised.
LACK OF CAREER PROGRESSION & PATHWAY
60% of our career switchers have left their roles due to no clear career pathway or progression.
MANY WANT THE OPPORTUNITY TO UPSKILL & STAY!
81% of our career switchers would have stayed in their roles if given the opportunity to upskill.
WE KNOW THERE FEW WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
Only 5% of leadership positions in tech are held by women. That is incredibly low and we want to see this change!
WOMEN ARE OVERLOOKED FOR PROMOTIONS
For every 100 men, only 52 women in technical roles are being promoted to manager. Women are being overlooked.
WE VOLUNTEER TO DO MORE "GLUE WORK"
Women volunteer to do “non- promotable” work 48% more often than men, doing important “glue work” that goes unrecognised.
LACK OF CAREER PROGRESSION & PATHWAY
60% of our career switchers have left their roles due to no clear career pathway or progression.
MANY WANT THE OPPORTUNITY TO UPSKILL & STAY!
81% of our career switchers would have stayed in their roles if given the opportunity to upskill.
WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE
FOR THE MID-LEVEL ACCELERATOR?
We will be engaging with external candidates with 2+ years experience in a technical role, attracting junior developers with experience across one of the following areas – Python, JavaScript, Data or Java. We also offer this programme to for internal employee retention upskilling with the same specialisations or for those wanting to broaden skills.
BASE LEVEL PREREQUISITES
ALL APPLICANTS
- Agile development
- Git and GitHub basics
- Unit testing
- Debugging
- Best practices and patterns
- XML, JSON or other data formats
- Experience working with APIs, preferably REST
- Problem solving, algorithms and data structures
- Can take ownership of a small ticket / user story
- Team player
- Potential for growth beyond current role
EXTERNAL CANDIDATES
INTERNAL
ADD ON A +MASTERS CONVERSION FOR SPECIALIST MID-LEVEL SKILLS
As part of the sponsored Mid-Level Accelerator, companies have the opportunity to provide additional learning opportunities with our +Masters. With this additional specialisation, candidates will be able to upskill or reskill across areas such as Cyber Security, DevOps and Cloud, Data Analyst and AI&ML, putting these skills to use inside the business.
⚡️WHAT SKILLS ARE WE BUILDING?
Developed with a HUGE amount of research as well as insights and focus groups with both our community and clients, our Mid-Level Accelerator course and aims to drive developer velocity with best practice software development and technical professional skills to progress candidates to a mid-level developer role.
BUILDING A T-SHAPED SKILL SET
- Go-to person for their specialism
- Empathy and understanding of other tech roles
- Women thrive when they both technically specialise and collaborate
TECHNICAL
LEADERSHIP
- Pathway to senior individual contributor or technical management roles
- Focus on tech professional skills → mentoring, team work, stakeholder communication, making technical decisions
AGILITY AND
AUTOMATION
- Modern software development processes
- Focus on Agile, DevOps and automation with deployment to the cloud
INNOVATIVE AND INCLUSIVE PRODUCTS
- Build products with DE&I at the cores
- Techniques in the software development process to foster the development of inclusive products
BUILDING DEVELOPER VELOCITY & MID-LEVEL ACCELERATION BY:
CREATING SAFE SPACES
- Facilitate a unique psychological safe space
- Positive learning culture
- Enable women to understand their value
FOCUS ON FULL LIFECYCLE SKILLS
- Technical professional skills in a full-stack, full-lifecycle curriculum
- Enable women to understand challenges and manage up
EMPOWER INNOVATIVE THINKING
- ‘Future-tech’ thinking is interspersed throughout the course
- Enable women to adapt to change, drive innovation and develop future tech solutions
💻 MID-LEVEL ACCELERATOR SELECTION PROCESS
Candidates from our wider community that demonstrate the best aptitude to accelerate their career to mid-level will have the opportunity to be selected for our intensive Mid-Level Accelerator.
EXTERNAL CANDIDATE ATTRACTION: for the MLA external candidate attractions, we intelligently match women to the different client opportunities in our portfolio. For these candidates, clients interview all final candidates and select their own future employees to train on the MLA and start in mid-level roles upon completion/graduation.
FOR INTERNAL CANDIDATES & EMPLOYEES: clients can select which elements of this selection process they would like to put in place or manage themselves.
1. TAILORED APPLICATION & CAMPAIGN
2. SIFTING AGAINST CANDIDATE PERSONAS
3. INDUSTRY TECH ASSESSMENTS
4. CFG VIDEO INTERVIEW
5. CFG INTERVIEW COACHING
6. INTERVIEWS WITH CLIENT
Internal candidates start their journey here.
CONFIRMED PLACES & RESERVES
WHAT WE DO:
+ Open by application only to those with 2+ years experience
+ Screening, application criteria and interview
+ 12 week MLA programme & assessment
+ Empower women to know what they need to thrive in tech
+ Equal parts traditional and innovative thinking
+ Can be targeted by geography for candidate attraction
+ Internal employee upskilling for retention
+ Branded certification
Can be boosted with a 4-week +Masters to upskill or reskill to a new specialism and/or develop mid-level specialist skills.
MID-LEVEL ACCELERATOR:
CURRICULUM OVERVIEW
12-weeks including T-shaped skills development, technical professional skills and career progression support with live lab sessions where students get to experience a full modern software development life cycle.
WeekS 1-2
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE: INITIATION AND DISCOVERY
- Project initiation
- Agile, Cloud and DevOps
- User stories
- Acceptance tests
- Full-Stack architecture
- Microservices
WeekS 3-4
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE: DEVELOP, TEST, DEPLOY
- Design
- Pair programming
- Test-driven development
- Cloud deployment
- Stakeholder presentations
- Feedback loops
weekS 5-6
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE: SPRINT 1 AND SPECIALIST SKILLS FOCUS
- Sprint 1 demonstrations
- Retro and sprint 2 planning
- Specialist skills streams
- Microservices
WEEKS 7-8
MODERN FULL-STACK LIFECYCLE: DISCOVERY, DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT
- 1 WEEK BREAK (WEEK 7)
- Design for DE&I
- DevSecOps
- Review and test code quality
- Automation
- QA
WEEKS 9-10
MODERN FULL-STACK LIFECYCLE: FURTHER DEPLOYMENT, SPRINT 2, INNOVATION
- Continuous integration
- Delivery, deployment, monitoring
- Future of Full-Stack development
- Stakeholder presentations
- Sprint 2 retro
- Future of Agile workshop
WEEKS 11-12
MODERN FULL-STACK LIFECYCLE: LIGHTENING TALKS & CAREER PLANNING
- Talks from students
- Career planning
- Career future-proofing
- Reflection and new skill capture
MID-LEVEL ACCELERATOR COHORT DATES 🗓️
Our MLA is currently scheduled to take place three times a year.
Applications for each of these cohorts open approximately three months prior to the start date to allow for assessment and interviews. You can find out more about the application and selection process above.
WINTER 2024 COHORT
DATES: 29 JANUARY - 19 APRIL
12-week course including a 1-week break as part of the course duration.
Two nights/week (Tuesdays, Thursdays) + optional drop-in session (Wednesdays)
APPLICATIONS WILL OPEN IN OCTOBER 2023
AUTUMN 2024 COHORT
DATES: 23 SEPTEMBER - 13 DECEMBER
12-week course including a 1-week break as part of the course duration.
Two nights/week (Tuesdays, Thursdays) + optional drop-in session (Wednesdays)
APPLICATIONS WILL OPEN IN JUNE 2024
PROGRESSING WOMEN IN TECH REPORT
FIXING THE BROKEN RUNG HOW TO PROGRESS WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY AND UNLEASH DEVELOPER VELOCITY
Code First Girls investigated what is preventing women from progressing in tech.They discovered the key conditions for women to thrive in technology mirror those needed for software teams to operate at their most productive. This report combines these findings for leaders wanting to build technical teams where all genders can thrive equally, whilst unleashing developer velocity and preparing forskills of the future across entire teams.
