Linda Patterson With GenSpark

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by on pay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Linda Patterson and she is with GenSpark. Welcome, Linda.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:00:44] Thank you, Lee. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Jen Spark. How are you serving folks?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:00:53] Sure. I’d be happy to sell Edge and Spark. Our mission and our vision really focused on the closing of talent gaps for our clients, and that’s done by upskilling a diverse and I do underscore diverse candidate pool that helps them to reshape their workforce. And the organization is a division of pyramid consulting. It was birthed out of the heart of our CEO, Namita Tirath, and the Mehta’s desire, which we all undergird, is to assist underserved early career professionals and others with launching or relaunching their careers. And so I like to give a shout out to my CEO, Anita, all of our Ginzburg team and our entire Pyramid Consulting family.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:48] So now are you working primarily with the employer or the employee? The the student, the, you know, the high school student? College student.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:01:59] Yes. We work a lot with college students, so we work with a lot of universities. But our students may come from other verticals. For example, it could be an organization that works specifically with women or with with veterans or, you know, just a student and say, for example, a mom that is returning to the workforce and needs our assistance getting started. And then we have client partners that we work with that after the students are trained up, they employ those students.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:35] Now, is this something you mentioned? College is it’s something that you go to the high school person that is not going to go the traditional college path. But once they go more vocational path, does this give them skills to help them go and find their way in that direction?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:02:54] Yes, it does indeed. And we are looking for those students also that are on their way outside of on their way out of college. Or they have they’re fresh out of college, maybe 1 to 2 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:10] So it’s anybody looking for work that may not that might be struggling a bit.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:03:16] Exactly. Exactly. And we are focused on it. So it’s definitely technology careers.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:23] Okay. So everything has a technology kind of spin to it.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:03:27] Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:28] Now, is there a way to help that person that maybe wasn’t the best math student or science student? Is there a place for them in this? Or like do you give them kind of a chance to kind of resuscitate maybe where they didn’t have a passion for math or science? And then now maybe with your instruction, they can kind of rekindle something or get something started.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:03:56] That is typically not our focus. We do work to upskill or reskill students according to the needs of our our customers. So we do work very closely with them in areas where it makes sense to do that upskilling. But we are primarily focused on I.T. careers.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] Okay. So walk me through. So you’re working with a company that needs workers. How do you help them kind of be how do you help them? You know, how are you the matchmaker that helps them find the folks they need and to, you know, to solve their problem and also help the student get, you know, this upskilling.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:04:39] Sure. So it starts with our conversations with the customers in terms of where the gaps are in their workforce and specifically what is it they’re they’re looking for to fill that gap. And so those are the cohorts that we are running through our program. And so as we’re training the student, we’re matching the students with the skillset that is required by that, that customer. And that is what we’re working to prepare them for throughout the cohort, not just in terms of their technical ability, but in terms of their soft skills as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:17] To make sure it’s the right culture fit.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:05:19] Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:21] So now I’ve seen this kind of work in a vocational and a kind of a blue collar environment where like a somebody who was needed more engine repair people, you know, donated a bunch of engines to a vocational school so they can train their students on how to fix this engine. And so then they would have people that they could hire to work. You know, in that in that capacity. It sounds similar in that regard, except you’re doing it with it.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:05:56] That’s correct. And we primarily focused on coding languages. So Java Fullstack is our most prominent coding language that we teach, but we do teach others. So yes, we’re doing this in the I.T. space.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:10] So now an enterprise level company comes to you and says, you know, it would be great if we had, you know, five more coders in Java and then you find the students that are the appropriate. So you create a curriculum that’s going to help them solve that specific problem and create a curriculum and then teach those students how to do that so they’re ready to go. And there’s a job kind of waiting for them at the end of this.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:06:39] Exactly. And so we have our standard curriculums because we know that the market is typically looking for. But then we also sit with our customers and they’re allowed to customize that curriculum to meet their specific needs so that we make sure that we’re on point and our students are on point and ready.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:59] So what would be an example of a type of customization?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:07:05] A type of customization might be a specific skill that’s typically taught in the course, but maybe that’s not used at the customer site. And so we would allow them to pull that out and put in something else that’s needed.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:24] Now, how do you find the students?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:07:28] We find the students many ways. So we are participating in all types of recruitment efforts. We are on site at the universities making sure that we’re having the right conversations with the administration staff there. We do lots of advertisements. We do also have some events in which we are reaching out to students via LinkedIn and other social platforms in order to invite them to those events. For example, to give them some idea of what coding is all about. They get a coding exercise and we make it lots of fun. We’ve also done some events such as Learn with Linda and that is me. The Linda is me where I’m teaching on certain topics such as self-esteem enhancement. And so we are running those quarterly. We invite the students to those sessions so they can learn about how to improve their self esteem. But then in addition to that, we are providing some information about Gene Spark and inviting them to join us or to recommend us.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:38] Now, a lot of these places to learn coding, there’s a fee associated with it. It could cost not a super high amount like it is going to college, but it can still cost a significant amount of money. But there’s also online ways to learn coding for next to nothing. Where does Jen spark fall in this?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:08:59] So we charge our students absolutely nothing. What we ask them to is to invest their time. We actually pay our students while they’re training with us. And after the training session is over, while the student is waiting to be onboarded, they are still paid by Jen Smart.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:18] Now, is this something the student has to physically go to a location, or is this something that can be done remotely?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:09:24] They can do it remotely. So we are totally virtual at this time. So all of our students are logging in remotely from various areas of the US.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:33] And is the the job opportunity going to be remote as well, or is that something that’s going to require them to go physically like live in a certain place?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:09:42] It really depends on the customer and the customer’s need as as we are starting to reenter the physical buildings, some of our customers are requesting that the students are on site or they may have. I have a hybrid approach in which sometimes during the week the student is on site, other times the remote, and then we have some of our customers that are still remote. So it really depends on the customer’s needs.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:07] Now, are you I know you’re training them to be skilled that that technology part, but you mentioned some of the soft skills. Is there training in that area as well to help them, you know, be able to navigate kind of the enterprise level world that they’re about to enter into?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:10:23] Absolutely. We have a very robust soft skills training program and the students are also meeting with an actual soft skills trainer who is helping them improve in that area. When we are preparing our students as well for mock interviews, we are going through with them behavioral questions so that they know how to respond appropriately. So we really work very hard to make sure that our students can communicate well, that they demonstrate their willingness to learn, that they have the ability to talk about their teamwork, that they demonstrate that they can work as part of the team. So lots of soft skills training. Imagine smart program.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:06] Now when a student goes through this program, I’ve interviewed several of these kind of boot camp kind of things in the past. These coding camps, they the rate of getting a job is extremely high, like because these companies are so hungry for this type of skill set. Is that the same thing here, that if you go through this program, there’s a very high probability that you’re you’re going to have an opportunity somewhere?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:11:32] That is correct. And the great news is, is that we these are the companies that we’re placing these students with our partners of ours. So they understand that we are making the attempt to place the students. And a lot of these students come from underserved communities or underserved situations. And so they’re partners and understanding the type of students that we are trying to place. So they really work very closely with us in that regard.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:01] Now, is there a success story you can share? Be a student that, you know, kind of got to a new level because of the program.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:12:10] Oh, absolutely. And so we have our success stories listed on our website. And I pulled a couple that I thought would speak to the work that we do at Spark, as well as the student success. And so one student said during my training, I interviewed with the Spark client and they offered me a position to get started. After completing Jim Sparks training, I was confident and knew that I was well prepared for the job and another student said it was just ten weeks when I finished my Ginzburg training and I was offered a job I had tried for so long to get a job on my own. It just feels great to make this kind of advancement so great success stories from our students. We are extremely proud of them.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:56] So when you were kind of beginning on this Jen Spark adventure, when did you start realizing, Hey, this thing’s got traction, we can really make a big impact with this?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:13:07] Well, I joined the organization in January of 2021. And so when I started we just had the Java program. And so since I’ve been there we’ve also opened up a non Java start. So I would say from the very beginning we were experiencing success. But the more that we work with our clients, they really kept coming back because of the type of top talent we were rolling out. So things picked up pretty quickly and Spark has been very successful thus far.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:41] About how many students have you put through the program?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:13:45] Oh, we probably put a good I’d say at least 500 students or so through the program.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:51] That’s fantastic. I mean, just imagine the impact that’s making to not only them individually, but them and their families and their communities.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:13:59] Absolutely. And that is definitely the goal.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:02] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:14:05] You can help us by encouraging others to reach out to Jim Spark. They can find us by visiting our website at WW Spark Net. We are also on all of the other social media platforms, so you can find us on Twitter and Facebook, so you can really help us by spreading the word that Gen Spark is doing a phenomenal job. We work very closely with our students. We love on our students. We take what we do seriously. We are very passionate and compassionate about making sure that our students are able to launch their careers with our help. So if you can help to spread the word about the great job the spark is doing and the fact that our students are successful, that would be great.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:49] And then is this something that you’re always kind of recruiting for students, or is there like a beginning of a school year? Is this kind of a rolling curriculum that you can jump in whenever you get there?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:15:00] Yes, it’s a rolling curriculum for the most part. We do start cohort cohorts pretty regularly. So when the person speaks to a recruiter, the recruiter will talk to them about the cohorts that we have and where they could potentially fit in. And so that’s the other thing is we’re trying to make sure that it’s a good fit and the best fit for the student. But we constantly have cohorts that are running and they will let them know the start dates and end dates for those cohorts.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:30] And then how long does a cohort normally last?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:15:34] Typically between ten and 12 weeks, but we do have cohorts that are shorter. It really depends on the technology. So we have some that are six and eight weeks as well. So really just depends on the technology. But on average, I’d say 10 to 12.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:47] And then is it something that I take a test to see where I’d be most likely, you know, have the best chance of success and then we go there? Or do I just pick one?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:15:57] Yes. There’s typically an entrance exam and there is an interview with the recruiter so that we can make sure that we are having you to enter the best program.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:09] And then you mention that you’re trying to serve the underserved. Does the under-served also include maybe older folks that maybe are looking for a second act in their career and hadn’t gone down this path but might be curious about it?

Linda A. Patterson: [00:16:23] Absolutely. We definitely have more seasoned individuals in our program as well, and maybe they need a restart looking for the next new thing to do. We invite them to be a part of us as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:16:42] Thank you, Lee. We appreciate this opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:46] And that website one more time is Jen Spark Dot Net Jeans, PRK Net. Linda Patterson, thank you again for sharing your story.

Linda A. Patterson: [00:16:56] Thank you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:57] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.