The Australian tech community unites to launch Skill Finder

The power of community has never been more important than in 2020.

That is why earlier this year, the Hon. Karen Andrews, Australian Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, asked the local technology sector to step up and take action to support the rebuild of the nation’s economy.

One of the key priorities discussed that day was the need to. We all personally know someone whose work has been affected this year. Many businesses have had to shut their doors, leaving countless people without jobs or decreased income. At the same time, digital transformation has been fast-tracked with new skills becoming critical to adapt and innovate.

Helping people reskill for the digital economy has always been a priority of mine, so I was happy to lead this project. With the help and support of other leaders across the Australian tech sector, we put our minds, experiences and resources together to come up with a solution to this mammoth challenge.

The result is Skill Finder, the world’s first free digital skills marketplace, available to all Australians. With Skill Finder, Australians can equip themselves with job-ready skills through practical micro-courses offered by the world’s most pre-eminent technology companies such as Atlassian, Canva, MYOB, Xero, AWS, Google, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Twitter. We’ve seen, and continue to see, incredible interest from the media in Skill Finder with the initiative receiving coverage on TV, radio, online and in key print media publications across the country.

The idea for Skill Finder was born out of a hackathon run by one of our partners in Melbourne, Balance Internet. This small team donated hundreds of hours of their time to develop the Skill Finder site – working nights and weekends, remotely and in lock down, to deliver this important resource for the Australian workforce.

Skill Finder is a great resource for anyone, no matter what their professional or educational background, or current expertise is. The courses cover basic to advanced levels across a range of topics including graphic design, coding, AI, analytics, cloud computing, business tools and content marketing. Most courses are deliberately short – only taking a few hours to complete – so that people have time and the flexibility to complete them.

COVID-19 has, paradoxically, brought our industry closer together with a shared sense of commitment to building a digitally skilled workforce. Our vision is that each and every Australian is empowered to redefine their tomorrow with new knowledge and skills, and we believe that Skill Finder is an important step towards this.

I encourage everyone to take a look at Skill Finder, sign up to learn new digital and technology skills, and share it with anyone you know who can benefit. For more detail on how it works, check out the videos below.

Click here to learn more.