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Betsy Hauser is an outstanding entrepreneur. For the best part of seven years, she’s been steering Tech Talent South, a fast-growing coding school built from the ground up. The Charlotte-based firm equips corporate partners with the very best diverse tech talent.
Hauser is intentional about her work. The overwhelming majority of students that pass through her WBENC-certified woman-owned recruitment, training, and staffing company are women or underrepresented minorities.
Tech Talent South’s talent database consists of 65% minority applicants. Although they implement a paid customer model many of their programs offer scholarships to the underserved – minorities, women, and veterans. “If we are going to build tech for all kinds of people, then tech needs to be built by all kinds of people,” says Hauser, founder and CEO of Tech Talent South (TTS).
Rooted in community, TTS provides fully immersive training for all levels. Students kick-off with foundational courses – such as the Graduate Accelerator Program (GAP) or their newly launched Veteran Tech Accelerator – that gives them the “technical chops” to pursue a career in tech. Students, who are known as ‘candidates’, learn everything from CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
For GAP, TTS underwrites high performing, liberal arts grads. Alum graduate as sought-after programmers or full-stack developers, with a path to move on to advanced corporate pipelines. An impressive 90% of enrolled GAP candidates identify as women and/or BIPOC.
Tech Talent South Provides Pipeline For Corporate Tech Jobs
These foundational courses serve as a pipeline for more specialist training – e.g. Tech Talent Select or Talent Activation Program – in partnership with corporate brands. TTS comes up with a customized curriculum tailored to HR requirements. This effectively replaces college and traditional recruitment and cuts down on onboarding and training at the start of a job.
For companies, this significantly reduces recruitment time, increases employee retention, and opens up access to pre-vetted candidates that are instantly available for contractual or long-term positions. Firms also have a pipeline of highly qualified individuals or potential employees.
“We believe that providing individuals, especially those underrepresented in tech, with the necessary skills for becoming leaders in the digital workforce speeds progress toward diversity at the top.”
Indeed, data clearly shows that diversity is good for culture and the bottom line. For example, diverse teams are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors, and companies with above-average diversity scores reported 45% higher retention in revenue, according to stats in a recently published Built In report.
TTS also offers training for companies looking to future proof employees by giving them new or advanced skills (upskilling and reskilling). This creates a more well-rounded and cross-trained workforce that improves retention and morale, says a TTS spokeswoman.
Tech Talent South’s savvy hiring pipeline model has an impressive track record. Corporate partners include Lowes, Goodwill, and the State of Connecticut. Grads have also secured gigs at Amazon, Home Depot, Accenture, and Bank of America, among others.
Hauser’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed. She has received several notable awards and accolades, including being recognized as a finalist for this year’s Charlotte Business Journal’s list of the most admired CEOs.
Betsy Was Inspired To Launch TTS After Learning To Code
Launched in 2013, Hauser bootstrapped Tech Talent South to its first round of funding in 2017. The undisclosed amount described as a multi-million-dollar investment helped the startup scale its coding camps and expand its corporate training model.
“I attended one of the first coding bootcamps before they were mainstream,” says Hauser. “And that experience was incredible – there were people from all over the world there – an attorney from the UK, a taxi driver from Ghana, and so many more who all wanted to learn to code for their own reasons.”
“I found so much value in not only the education but also the experience – but that also lead me to want to solve for another problem which was, ‘why the heck did I have to come all the way to Chicago to have this experience?’ And thus Tech Talent South was born.”
Tech Talent South candidates
Today TTS has in many ways moved on from coding camps, now described as their ‘legacy business’. “The biggest difference is that when we launched TTS we were disruptive but it was only focused on the education space,” says Hauser. “Over time, based on the quality of that education and our talent, now we’re disruptive on the Corporate Talent Acquisition side specifically in talent pipelining. Staffing, training, and recruiting are really at the core of what we do.”
The company now has a national footprint. TTS has 12 physical locations in the South that include Atlanta, Charlotte, and New Orleans. Despite their impressive growth the mission has always been to build localized tech ecosystems that bridge the talent gap to create meaningful value for the digital workforce.
Hauser has accomplished all this with a growing family. She has four kids under six and her grit is quite simply testimony to the multiskilling genius every working mom has to pull off to survive and thrive. “I think having a community, at home and ‘at the office’ is what enables me to achieve so much success. We take care of each other.”
With Covid-19, TTS Has Switched To Virtual Learning
With the rise in online learning due to COVID-19, TTS has seamlessly adjusted to 100% live online instruction. Their focus is on GAP and re-skilling professionals whose careers have been adversely impacted by the pandemic.
“We took our courses 100% online which feels like the most obvious one, but I think more than a ‘pivot’ there was an opportunity for us to ramp our Graduate Accelerator Program at a much faster speed because there was an abundance of talent in the market for a variety of reasons, “ says Hauser. “In Q4 of last year, we received about 100 applicants for our GAP program, and in Q2 of this year, we received over 850.”
Tech Talent South (TTS) is a women-owned technical education company, with quality, community, and approachability at the core of its values. For years they have been working tirelessly to bridge the gap between corporate goals and talent acquisition, especially for diverse candidates.
“We’ve figured out a way to recruit the highest-end talent, equip them with technical and technically-adjacent skills, and deploy them at a rapid pace,” says Hauser. “We are on our way to being the choice workforce provider who is there to support you at every stage of your tech talent journey.”
