After Raising Over $6m Heather Terenzio Aims To Disrupt The Hiring Process By Snowballing The Way Tech Talent Is Sourced

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Heather Terenzio is the founder and CEO of Techtonic, the premier partner for custom software development that changes how tech talent is sourced, trained, and hired. After being unable to shake the feeling that something big was missing from the tech industry diversity. Terenzio decided to be a part of the solution, launching Techtonic’s Software Development Apprenticeship Program in 2016. You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it! Who is Heather, and what is she about? (0:23) She is the founder of TechTonic, which is based in Boulder, Colorado. They are a software development company that has been around for 15 years. Five years ago, they started an apprenticeship program to train people from different backgrounds on how to be software developers.  Heather says they struggle with diversity quite a bit because everybody has a different definition of what diversity means for them personally. They started originally with the definition of being just women and minorities. Then the next person to walk through their door was a young white male who had come up through the foster care system, and so immediately, it was apparent that this guy needs a chance as well.  Over the years, they have expanded their definition of diversity to include gender diversity, sexual orientation, background, and socio-economic minorities, so diversity takes on many different forms for them. They want to cater to folks who maybe would not have the opportunity, to begin with. Now the way they define that is their background agnostic; they do not care where you come from; they care that you love software development and want to learn and improve your skills.  What type of resources does the company use, and what does the company actually do? (4:25) On one side, they are a software development company, and they have an amazing senior-level team of folks who’ve been developing software for over 20 years. Then they have the apprenticeship side of the business.  That is where they take people from all different kinds of backgrounds, and they have a very competitive selection process. So sometimes, they will get four or five hundred applications for a 20 pupil cohort.  What they are looking for is desire, ambition, and grit. They have a 12 step process to get through to get into their program, and once you are in, there is a 14-week class and what’s really unique about that class is that they pay you to be there on day one.  So unlike every other Bootcamp out there, where you are paying $10,000-$20,000 to join the Bootcamp, they are actually paying you to attend their Bootcamp. They found when you take all the barriers to entry away. Diversity starts to show up.  They have people without anything, they are only taking the best of the best, they are not screening for certain diversities, but it turns out the best of the best is usually a diverse group of people.  They have four times the industry standard of women, minorities, and veterans. Once you complete the 14-day Bootcamp, you move onto the true apprenticeship, and that is where you are sitting side by side with senior-level developers and learning on the job working on client projects.  What are they working towards as a company? (10:57) Today, they impact hundreds of people’s lives with their program, but they would like to move that up to thousands of lives that they touch. They want to get other companies to think a lot differently around how they hire people.  All kinds of companies and startups are always talking about disrupting, but nobody is talking about disrupting the hiring process and looking at people and how we find them.  It’s been the same recruiting model, hire recruit, give somebody a three-hour interview, make them take a test, hire them, and make sure they have a college degree and all that stuff.  They want to throw all that out and make companies think a lot differently around how they hire. They think they have come up with a much better way to hire software developers, and it's never been out there before.  Their vision is that they become the gold standard of hiring people going forward, and they want to impact thousands of lives, even that of the unemployed. Techtonic Techtonic is the premier partner for developing onshore, product-driven software. We’ve also developed a unique method to simultaneously close the talent gap within technology by tapping into a new and highly diverse workforce. This combination of development services mixed with talent generation allows us to provide value for our clients at any stage and every level of the Software Development lifecycle. Resources Connect with Heather: LinkedIn Techtonic: Website Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn