Hired Partner, Pathstream: Preparing Students for High-Demand Digital Skill Careers

Pathstream helps students from all backgrounds gain marketable skills. By partnering with leading technology companies to build digital skills career programs delivered through university partnerships, Pathstream certificate programs will help graduates find a new job or level up in as little as 4 months. We sat down with the VP of Career Strategy, Amy Ahearn, to learn more.

Hi Amy, welcome! Let’s start off with a bit about Pathstream.

Hi! I lead career services at Pathstream, a provider of digital skills training.

At Pathstream, we focus on preparing adults for high-growth digital skills careers. We’ve identified some of the fastest growing tech jobs that do not require a coding or programming background and developed online programs that teach people the practical, hands-on skills needed for roles in fields like project management, data analytics, or digital marketing. We partner with industry-leading companies like Facebook, Tableau, Salesforce, and Asana to develop these programs so that we make sure they feature leading software and align to what employers are looking for.

Our four most popular programs are The Tableau Data Analytics Certificate, The Salesforce Career Administrator Certificate, The Facebook Digital Marketing Certificate, and The Asana Project Management Certificate. These programs are delivered through some of the best universities in the country – including Harvard, NYU and Emory – so that you can earn a certificate from both an industry leader like Salesforce and a premier university. 

Everything is online and there are no fixed class times when you have to log in, but you get 1:1 support from an instructor and, when you finish the program, you can begin working with the Career Services team at Pathstream to receive unlimited individual career coaching and all the resources you need to navigate a job search. We are committed to working with all of our students until they get a job.

What prompted the organization to actually get started?

In 2015, Eleanor Cooper, Founder and CEO of Pathstream, was a graduate student working with people who had been incarcerated. These individuals did not have college degrees, but were eager to get their lives back on track and find a career. 

Eleanor quickly recognized the barriers these individuals faced when they tried to access relevant education. Although they were eager to gain digital skills and access modern jobs, they didn’t have good options. Bootcamps were cost-prohibitive. Community college courses tended to focus on traditional jobs and trades. Other training programs had prerequisites or price tags that rendered them inaccessible.

Eleanor recognized a clear failure in our education system: for too many people, affordable education pathways are disconnected from employment opportunities. Pathstream exists to change that.

We give a clear path to education, delivering high-demand digital skills programs through colleges and universities nationwide, and we streamline this education—creating a well-designed curriculum and learning platform that leads to compelling career opportunities for graduates.

Since our founding, we’ve served thousands of students across the country and we’re just getting started.

And how are you working with Hired?

When Pathstream students finish the program and begin working with Career Services, we refer all of them to Hired where they can set up a profile and highlight the marketable skills they have gained to employers. Companies that use Hired can then screen and interview Pathstream candidates directly and actually discover them by searching “Pathstream” in the keyword search. 

Our students are always excited to access job opportunities through Hired! It’s a great platform to help connect them with companies looking for the skills they have just mastered.

What are some initiatives that your organization is currently working on?

Pathstream recently raised funding from impact investors including Strada Education, Citi and New Markets that will allow us to continue expanding what we offer. Specifically, we are looking forward to building out more features to help people navigate a job search.

Congrats, that’s great news! Anything coming up that we should be on the lookout for?

We host virtual workshops on “Designing Your Career” almost every week that are free and open to anyone. If you want to learn about networking, interviewing, or career paths in specific fields, you are welcome to sign up! Learn more and join us here: https://www.pathstream.com/workshops_careerdesign

You can also find additional career resources on our blog.

Fantastic, thanks for taking the time to sit down with Hired, Amy. 

Hired is the largest AI-driven marketplace matching ambitious tech and sales talent with the world’s most innovative companies. Backed by global HR leader, The Adecco Group, Hired combines intelligent job matching with unbiased career counseling to help people find a job they love and reach their full potential.

By providing accurate, real-time information, access to equal opportunity, efficiency, and transparency, the Hired platform serves as the backbone for hiring managers, recruiters, and C-level executives to surface the best talent and build amazing, diverse teams around the world.

Hired is committed to building equity in the hiring process through a more representative talent pool, using bias reduction features, customized assessments, and salary bias alerts to help remove unconscious bias when hiring. 

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