Across the technology sector, organisations are grappling with intensifying skills shortages, rising competition for experienced talent, and the growing need to build a workforce that is resilient, diverse, and future-ready. At Cognizant, we believe that one of the most powerful – yet often overlooked – solutions lie in an unexpected place: career switchers.

Through our partnership with Code First Girls, we have seen first-hand how individuals transitioning from other fields bring a depth of capability that strengthens teams, accelerates innovation, and creates a healthier long-term talent pipeline.

Those coming from backgrounds such as retail, healthcare, education, law, and operations bring a nuanced understanding of real-world business challenges. This commercial grounding helps teams design solutions with stronger customer empathy, clearer business logic, and a sharper focus on value.

Take ex-healthcare professionals as an example: around 10% of the Code First Girls community are former NHS staff, and thousands have since transitioned into exciting tech roles, including within the public sector. These women bring invaluable skills to the table – from explaining complex ideas in simple terms to thinking on their feet. Once they start their new roles, Code First Girls supports them with personalised learning plans, clear KPIs, and 1:1 technical coaching. This enables them to combine real-world experience and sector insight with the technical skills they need to thrive in tech.

Hiring tech talent today can feel like the Wild West. The landscape is shifting faster than most organisations can keep up with – with AI redefining roles, skills requirements evolving in real time, and traditional hiring pipelines struggling to keep pace. 

Yet your projects don’t slow down. You still need skilled, adaptable people – and you need them now – without always having the certainty or budget to commit to permanent hires upfront.

Maybe you’re delivering a major transformation programme and need to build capability. Maybe you’re responding to an RFP where demonstrating meaningful social value is critical to winning. Or perhaps you need consultants who can move fluidly across client environments, helping you both secure and deliver new business.

Whatever your challenge, the Code First Girls’ Recruit-Train-Deploy model allows you to hire high-quality talent with minimal hiring risk and maximum flexibility – all while smashing your diversity goals.

Every technologist deployed by Code First Girls has undergone at least four months of intensive, industry-aligned training and passed rigorous technical assessments. This means you don’t have to worry about underperformance or mismatched skills. Every technologist comes ready to contribute from day one. 

But our support doesn’t stop there. Once our consultants join your team, we supercharge their performance with personalised learning plans, 1-1 technical coaching and KPI management and tracking.

I’ve spent my career delivering technology and change across tier-one investment banks and markets, commercial banking, and group-wide HR. In that time, I’ve seen first-hand how the composition of technology teams directly shapes outcomes, and what becomes possible when organisations take a different approach to building those teams.

Tech teams now sit at the heart of how organisations compete, manage risk, serve customers, and build trust. And the cost of getting it wrong is higher than ever.

That’s why who you have in the room matters. Teams with different perspectives are far better at spotting blind spots early, challenging assumptions, and building technology that actually works in the real world. 

Some organisations are already taking a different path. They’re bringing in diverse talent, lowering costs, and building tech teams ready for the challenges ahead. I’ll share how one programme helped a major bank achieve this.

One of the most common objections I hear from large organisations is that improving diversity in technology “sounds expensive” or “adds complexity”. My experience suggests the opposite.

Traditional tech hiring often involves the cost of:

• High agency fees
• Time spent sorting through loads of candidates
• Attrition risks with people who don’t fit or aren’t engaged

When I helped set up a career switcher programme with Code First Girls, we deliberately challenged this model.

The bank sponsored women who already had workplace experience but had not previously worked in technology. CFG identified, assessed and filtered candidates, ensuring only high-quality, motivated individuals entered the programme. Candidates received structured training, and only those who passed both the course and interview process were offered roles.

The result?

• No agency fees
• Reduced internal hiring effort
• Candidates who had already demonstrated technical capability
• Exceptionally low attrition rates

From a pure business-case perspective, the cost of sponsorship was offset (and often exceeded) by savings in recruitment spend and retention.

Allyship does not stop inside the organisation. Alongside my role at Deutsche Bank, I teach technology courses at the International Hochschule in Bremen, passing on the knowledge and experience I have gained.

You can do this inside your organisation too – a short call to explain a topic, or a ‘lunch and learn’ session can spark confidence and growth.

Look for partnerships too. Collaborating with organisations like Code First Girls amplifies your impact. They not only teach technical skills but also help women believe they belong in tech and that their ambitions are achievable.