A community strategy

A year after launching, Tech Channel Ambassadors (TCA) has already signed up almost 400 ambassadors to go into schools across the UK and tell the children about the career opportunities in the Channel.

TCA’s founder and director Ian Kilpatrick, former EVP at Nuvias, recruited 20 new ambassadors alone at his stand at Channel Live recently.

Kilpatrick started the Community Interest Company (CIC) in April 2024 alongside fellow committee members Hayley Mooney, managing director of Crayon, Hayley Roberts, CEO of Distology, Alex Tatham, executive director of Westcoast, Lisa Roberts, director of channels and alliances at Rubrik, Rebecca Monk, chief people officer at Softcat, and Wendy Shore from TCA to raise awareness of job opportunities in the Channel and to address the current skills gap.

“The fundamental problem is that nobody outside of the Channel knows about it,” said Kilpatrick. “And because of that, despite contributing around three per cent to the UK economy annually, we have no real representation or voice within government or education.

“Government’s goal is to grow the economy, but, in a digital world, they’re not delivering the necessary digital skills to schoolchildren, while many apprenticeships don’t require digital skills either. But because these youngsters don’t know about the Channel, it isn’t a career aspiration for them.”

Attracting and retaining

The other major issue, said Kilpatrick, is that many schoolchildren, particularly girls, are dropping science technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects at the earliest opportunity. Most are put off, he said, due to a lack of interest in or knowledge about the subject.

Another problem, said Kilpatrick, is attracting and retaining the right talent. The primary challenge here, he said, is the cost of recruitment.

That’s why TCA is targeting Year 7 and 8 schoolchildren, who are already starting to think about their career choices. It signs up volunteers from the Channel, who go into the schools and explain to the children what the Channel is and the opportunities that it can offer.

“They tell them everything about the Channel – what it is, the different jobs they can do, how much they can earn and how they can get into it,” said Kilpatrick. “And there is so much they can do – you don’t necessarily need to have any IT skills – you can do sales or marketing, or any number of different things.

“The next step is to advise them to approach a local MSP or reseller about doing some work experience or joining an apprenticeship scheme. Ultimately, it’s about selling it to them as a rewarding career that brings many benefits with it.”  

Social mobility issues

TCA has a database of all the schools and teachers in Great Britain, as well as access to a database of schools with social mobility issues, which runs to about 3,000, said Kilpatrick.

Each ambassador, he said, is required to make a minimum of two visits to schools every year, with the recommendation that one of those is to a school on the social mobility register. When they sign up, they’re also asked to register two other people as ambassadors.

Another issue that TCA is aiming to help tackle, in collaboration with other channel representation groups, said Kilpatrick, is diversity in the Channel. Currently, he said that the demographic is skewed against people with social mobility issues.

“As a channel, we have a commercial strategy, but no community strategy,” said Kilpatrick. “We need to break that mould of the last 40 years and make the Channel a more diverse place to be and work.”

Gaining traction

Kilpatrick said that TCA has been actively marketed at shows, through networking and on social media. While the process of engaging with schools has initially been slow, he said now it’s gaining more traction, with the hope that more ambassadors will be sent in as the year progresses, and that will be followed up with further visits as the pupils move up the years.

“If we can get more people interested in joining the Channel, we can start to plug that skills gap and increase sales and, ultimately, help in our own small way to drive the country’s economic growth,” said Kilpatrick. “We’re not going to fix this overnight, but over time we can gradually start to make a difference.”