The Value of Hard Skills in Turbulent Times

You want to do something. Unsettling predictions seem to crop up in the headlines every day, and sitting back and letting the news wash over you without taking action can leave you feeling defeated and empty.

And there is something you can do — both to fight that feeling and to truly prepare for whatever’s to come. If you’re worried about your employment prospects in a turbulent economy, there are real actions you can take that will have real impact. Let’s talk about that.

The more education, the better

Few historical occurrences are truly entirely unprecedented, and economic uncertainty is remarkably precedented. In fact, we don’t even have to dig too far into the past for a comparison. Less than two decades ago, we were in the midst of the Great Recession. That means we have recent, relevant insights into how to weather uncertainty.

What are those insights? Well, the basic reality has already been spoiled in this section’s title: the more education you have, the better you fare. Findings from The Brookings Institution back this up:

As the recession’s decreasing employment rate bottomed out between 2010 and 2011, “[those with less education] had an employment-to-population ratio that was fully six percentage points lower than in 2007.”

It doesn’t end there, though. This demographic’s subsequent recovery was less robust as well. As of the writing of that piece in 2018, “less-educated groups [have] not recovered as fully from the recession.” So, over a decade after the start of the recession, the employment rate for people with less education still hadn’t attained parity with what it was in 2007.

That’s a rough way to start an article, but it’s the information that you need to know to prepare yourself for turbulence. So, what do you do with those insights? You should go to college, right? Well…

A multi-year solution to a pressing problem

Let’s say you go for the standard bachelor’s degree_{College vs. Bootcamp: Which Learning Model to Choose} — enrolling in the fall of 2025 and spending the standard four years studying. If a dip does come on, and if changes in employment follow the four-year decline seen during the Great Recession, that means you’d be reentering the workforce when the employment rate is near its nadir.

That’s not an ideal situation for a fresh grad. After all, others with bachelor’s degrees just like yours would likewise be looking for work. And some of those people might already have experience on their resumes while you might not, having spent those previous four years focused on your studies.

But you’d have the degree — that’s unambiguously true. The thing is, if you were like 42.7 million others, getting that qualification would incur student loan debt that averages out to $38,375.

Yikes, y’all. We’re trying not to be harsh, but the data we’re looking at doesn’t make this path seem ideal. By going for a bachelor’s degree in that scenario, you’re essentially going into debt and delaying entering the workforce until it’s at its most competitive — all while not necessarily building the bona-fides to convince hiring managers you’re the person for the job. And because this all would take years to accomplish, it’s still not an actual way to prepare for potential near-term economic turbulence.

Okay. We promise the doom-and-gloom parts are over. There are solutions that can actually improve your prospects of weathering uncertain economic circumstances — both in the near-term and the long-term.

What you can do now

It’s all about matching the solution to the problem. The problem? Short-term economic uncertainty. The solution? Short-term, employment-focused skill acquisition. Or, in other terms, a bootcamp.

Now, when we say “short-term,” we should be more specific. Depending on the program, your bootcamp can last from four to nine months. And following graduation, TripleTen students are eligible for our money-back guarantee_{What You Need to Know about the TripleTen Money-Back Guarantee} for ten months. So at max, we expect our students to find a new job within just over a year and a half, or we refund their tuition (for more details, refer to the linked article).

To be fair, that’s not the immediate change that we all wish were possible. But that is the minimum amount of time our experts have determined is necessary for career switchers to master a new field and find their first job in tech. 

But remember: this assumes our longest estimated timeframe, and a bachelor’s degree would still take over twice as long — all without any sort of guarantee.

That’s not to mention that colleges aren’t employment-focused institutions, and bootcamps are. This affects the information taught: colleges tend to focus on making sure their grads have theoretical knowledge, while bootcamps focus on making sure their grads are job-ready_{Want to Really Learn Tech? Get Hands-On Experience} with practical skills. 

In addition, when students graduate from a bootcamp, they have portfolios in-hand. These bona-fides prove to employers that not only do bootcamp grads have theoretical knowledge, but they’ve actually applied it. That makes them more attractive candidates.

And our approach works — we have the data to prove it. In our latest Outcomes Report, we found that just over 4 in 5 of our graduates landed jobs relevant to their studies within six months of program completion. The vast majority of these employed alums — 80% — had absolutely no prior experience in tech, and 59% of these people didn’t have bachelor’s degrees.

The bigger picture: What’s behind all this

We do a lot to make sure our grads are job-market-ready. In addition to all that we talked about above, at a basic level, we teach students the skills employers are actually looking for, and we constantly update our curricula to stay current with the dynamic tech world. 

But all of our employment-focused instruction would be pointless if the industry itself weren’t robust. And good news: the industry outlook is indeed strong. This is where the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) comes in.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Note: we included Market Research Analyst as a proxy for Business Intelligence Analyst, as it is an analogous role tracked by the BLS)

According to the BLS, the lowest estimated growth rate for potential post-bootcamp roles is twice the economy-wide average over the next eight years. Then, at the high end, data scientist roles will proliferate at a rate fully nine times the average. 

Basically, more and more roles requiring tech know-how are going to open up, and that means the demand for people with digital skills is going to only increase. That leads to a simple equation: the more employers who need workers with these skills, the more secure a career based on these skills will be.

So, want a career that’s resistant to turbulence? Want to get on the fast, reliable track to getting one? A bootcamp just might be your best bet.

Is a bootcamp right for you?

If you want to make absolutely sure a bootcamp is the choice for you, we’ve got you covered. Take our quick bootcamp quiz to find the best learning path for you.