GenSpark – 2023 TMCnet Workplace Excellence Award for Tech Diversity

Summary: Tech training and job placement organization GenSpark is another company setting a great example. Rather than just relying on the open market to source talent, they intentionally source talent from pools that are diverse: rural markets, nonprofits or organizations catering to Black talent, Hispanic talent, female talent, disabled talent, neurodiverse talent, veteran talent, LGBT talent, etc. They partner closely with these organizations to support their talent with free workshops on resume writing, professionalism, Introduction to Java, etc. while also providing job opportunities to those interested in joining GenSpark.Using AI/machine learning technology, GenSpark proactively reaches out to diverse talent and invites them to apply to join GenSpark. The third party software complements our in-person efforts to grow the diverse talent pool that GenSpark can reach.In addition, to ensure that we provide every candidate with equal opportunity, they introduced Unconscious Bias training and recruiter-specific training. In 2022, they launched Belong:IN – the staffing industry’s first ERG program focused on contingent workers. The Belong:IN program aspires to provide our consultants and corporate employees with resource groups and opportunities to connect with other likeminded individuals outside of their core areas of work while encouraging a sense of belonging. We have 7 established ERGs: Able:IN, Black Culture Alliance, LatinTech, PanAsianNet, Prism LGBTQ+ Alliance, VetConnect, and Women of Pyramid Consulting.

What products or services does your company produce?

At GenSpark, our vision is to accelerate equity in the workplace and in society by lighting up pathways to career success for individuals from all backgrounds.

On one side are those waiting to start a new technology career. Too often, candidates need experience to gain new experience, making it very difficult to break into the technology industry. This problem is even more exaggerated for those coming from non-traditional backgrounds. On the other side are companies searching for experienced talent and pining for diversity. Employers today are facing an unprecedented shortage of skilled, qualified, local, diverse talent. The talent gap is ever widening with more than 20% of technical roles going unfilled each year.

GenSpark solves this problem on both ends by sourcing diverse talent from underrepresented minority groups and training those selected candidates within 16 weeks of full-time, paid, job-specific training. GenSpark training cohorts are tailored to employable technical skills, designed to prepare candidates for technical roles, including: Java Full Stack, Amazon Web Services, .NET, Mainframe, SAP, Pega, Oracle, Data, and more. During training, GenSpark candidates also work on their soft skills and interview preparation. All training of this comes at no cost to the GenSparker; in fact, they are paid a weekly stipend to help support them through their training. Individuals that may have been blocked from access to fee-based education can join GenSpark to earn while they learn.

Upon completion of their training, GenSpark connects trained candidates to employers seeking to bring on that talent. GenSpark typically has been working with these employers for months or years, understanding their organizational needs and specifically curating talent for their teams. GenSparkers receive job placement support and gain the hands-on experience that will serve as a launching pad for their careers. After training, 90% of GenSpark candidates are placed into roles with an average starting salary of $60K per year, full health benefits, relocation packages, and unlimited support and retraining from GenSpark.

How long has your company been in business?

GenSpark (formerly called Pyramid Academy) was founded in 2019. GenSpark is a division of Pyramid Consulting Inc., a company that has been in the IT Staffing and Solutions business since 1996.

What specific diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has your company undertaken? Please include documentation from company handbooks or policy manuals.

At GenSpark, we are Intentionally InclusiveTM, and our approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion is multi-dimensional:

• Our Corporate Initiative is focused on increasing diverse representation amongst our corporate and internal employees
• Our Business Imperative is to grow representation within our candidate base and to supply skilled and diverse talent to our clients, recasting their workforce
• Our Community Impact goal is to support and invest in nonprofit organizations that are positively impacting a more equitable and inclusive world

How we source and hire diverse talent:

• Rather than just relying on the open market to source our talent, we intentionally source talent from pools that are diverse: rural markets, nonprofits or organizations catering to Black talent, Hispanic talent, female talent, disabled talent, neurodiverse talent, veteran talent, LGBT talent, etc. We partner closely with these organizations to support their talent with free workshops on resume writing, professionalism, Introduction to Java, etc. while also providing job opportunities to those interested in joining GenSpark.
• Using AI/machine learning technology, GenSpark proactively reaches out to diverse talent and invites them to apply to join GenSpark. The third party software complements our in-person efforts to grow the diverse talent pool that GenSpark can reach

How we support, retain, and promote diverse talent:

• To ensure that we provide every candidate with equal opportunity, we introduced Unconscious Bias training and recruiter-specific training, discussed more below.
• In 2022, we launched Belong:IN – the staffing industry’s first ERG program focused on contingent workers. The Belong:IN program aspires to provide our consultants and corporate employees with resource groups and opportunities to connect with other likeminded individuals outside of their core areas of work while encouraging a sense of belonging. We have 7 established ERGs: Able:IN, Black Culture Alliance, LatinTech, PanAsianNet, Prism LGBTQ+ Alliance, VetConnect, and Women of Pyramid Consulting.

Supporting materials:

• Pyramid_DEI_Impact_Report_2022
• Recruit:IN Whitepaper
• Belong:IN ERGs Overview 

Does your company offer training for current managers to ensure they are employing inclusionary hiring practices, and are they held accountable for doing so?

Every new hire at GenSpark must complete unconscious bias training to raise awareness of the biases that we may have that lead to snap judgments – often based on race and gender – about people’s talents or character. The goal of this training is to reduce bias in attitudes and behaviors at work, from hiring and promotion decisions to interactions with customers and colleagues.

While many companies have begun to mandate unconscious bias training, GenSpark goes further with Recruit:IN training for all recruiting staff to ensure inclusive recruiting principles and processes. This 5-day intensive course provides deeper training on DEI recruiting practices and sourcing tools.

New in 2023, GenSpark has launched an internal training for all employees on our internal DEI Practices and on our employee resource groups. This training equips our employees with the knowledge and resources to support our company’s commitment to creating an inclusive place to work. It explains the importance and usage of inclusive language, definitions, and FAQs.

GenSpark is held accountable to meet our inclusionary hiring practices by our clients, that expect that GenSpark will deliver diverse talent.

Explain how your diversity programs have evolved over time?

As a minority-owned business, diversity has always been at the heart of Pyramid Consulting and GenSpark. Our CEO and founder, Namita Tirath, came up with the idea for GenSpark while eating at a California Pizza Kitchen. Her waiter was a young Black man with a degree in Computer Science that was not able to break into the tech industry due to the lack of resources available to him. Namita saw an opportunity to bridge that gap and create a solution for clients and consultants alike.

Our company isn’t just focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion at the corporate level, but we also focus on DEI initiatives as it relates to the consultants that we place. GenSpark is now not only known as a minority-owned supplier, but a “Diverse supplier that supplies diverse talent.” Since the core of GenSpark has always been focused on encouraging diversity in the workplace, our diversity programs have only strengthened over time and have allowed us to not only impact initiatives within our organization but invest in nonprofit organizations that share in the mission to advance a more equitable and inclusive world.

Please detail the success of your diversity programs? Include statistics supporting an increase in hiring or promotions of those in under represented communities in your response.

We decided from the outset of GenSpark, that if we were going to increase diversity within the candidates we sourced and recruited for our clients, we would need maintain a diverse corporate team. We are proud to say that 51% of GenSpark internal staff is female, and 78% from minority groups.

Additionally, 75% of GenSpark talent is from underrepresented groups in IT. Specifically, GenSpark comprises of:

• 39% Black or African American talent vs. 4% computer science average
• 15% Hispanic or Latino talent vs. 7% computer science average
• 30% female talent vs. 21% computer science average

GenSpark has created over 700 careers in technology for candidates, and ~500 of those are for diverse candidates. We are creating careers, providing a pathway to financial stability, and recasting the technology workforce with a hope of creating generational wealth for individuals of various backgrounds. Here are some of the GenSpark success stories that help drive us to continue our work.

How do you measure the success of your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives?

Every quarter, we analyze any changes in the makeup of our talent at the corporate level and at the individual level and report internally on our performance. We consider how many applicants we get and how many new hires we bring in across different diversity metrics.

On an individual-level initiative level, we measure success of our community partnerships by measuring how many new hires we bring in from each organization. For our Belong:IN ERG’s, we currently have over 20% of the organization signed up for an ERG and have a goal to grow to 40% in 2023. We take recruiter feedback on our training programs to make sure they are up-to-date. Finally, we take employee opinion into account with surveys and discussions on how we can further our work in DE&I.

Specifically when it comes to people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, veterans, the disabled, and members of other social identity groups, what specific steps have you taken to encourage applicants from these communities to seek employment with your company?

GenSpark hires individuals of many backgrounds, education levels, technical proficiencies, experience levels, and demographics. GenSpark works with hundreds of universities, nonprofit organizations, and job markets to identify and qualify individuals that are seeking to break into technology. We have established dozens of partnerships with organizations focused on diversity and attended many events to encounter and recruit diverse talent, including Women in Technology, National Black MBA Association, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, HITEC, Technica, Lesbians Who Tech, Disability:IN, Black Data Processing Association, Tech Ladies, National Society of Black Engineers, Hire our Heros, and more.

Additionally, we work with many Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU’s) including North Carolina A&T State University, Texas Southern University, and Virginia State University. Likewise we work with Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI’s), including University of Arizona, Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, Miami Dade College, University of Central Florida, and University of Houston to name a few.

What steps are you taking to ensure representation of under-represented groups in management and board-level positions? 

Leadership at GenSpark comes in two ways – internal mentorship & promotion and external hires. GenSpark maintain partnerships with organizations like ITSMF and HITEC to engage external senior-level talent and to support professional development of Black & Hispanic executives at GenSpark.

The CEO of our parent company, Pyramid Consulting, answered the call from CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™ to join other CEOs in pledging to drive measurable action and meaningful change in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.

The CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™ aims to rally the business community to advance diversity and inclusion within the workplace and is the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity and inclusion. Employees are participating in the CEO Actions new mentoring initiative, which seeks to accelerate the development of diverse leaders through C-suite led mentoring circles.

Do you have any initiatives to give back to underprovided communities? What about other minority groups?

As mentioned previously, GenSpark works with nonprofit organizations that cater to the professional development of minority groups. Currently, GenSpark and Pyramid Consulting partner with over 30 different nonprofit organizations.

Additionally, GenSpark is a part of the Pyramid Cares program, which donates hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to organizations like Vibha, American Red Cross, and Sewa International, most recently in support of earthquake relief for Turkey & Syria.

Finally, we are committed wholeheartedly to supporting diversity in the marketplace. We intentionally track our spend with diverse suppliers, and we are proud that 30% of our spend is with diverse suppliers.

Specifically when it comes to people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, veterans, the disabled, and members of other social identity groups, what specific steps have you taken to encourage applicants from these communities to seek employment with your company?

• On an individual-level initiative level, we measure success of our community partnerships by measuring how many new hires we bring in from each organization. For our Belong:IN ERG’s, we currently have over 20% of the organization signed up for an ERG and have a goal to grow to 40% in 2023. We take recruiter feedback on our training programs to make sure they are up-to-date. Finally, we take employee opinion into account with surveys and discussions on how we can further our work in DE&I.
• Every quarter, we analyze any changes in the makeup of our talent at the corporate level and at the individual level and report internally on our performance. We consider how many applicants we get and how many new hires we bring in across different diversity metrics.

Are there other initiatives your organization supports to help equip people in disadvantaged communities to better compete for tech-related careers?

Where needed, GenSpark will support individuals who are interested in joining by providing equipment needed, including a laptop and WiFi. We also cover a portion of relocation costs if required for GenSparkers to start their job.

Externally, GenSpark has pledged to support two initiatives to grow DE&I in technology:

• In March 2023, GenSpark joined Everest Group’s Commitment to Action, which pledges to grow the impact sourcing market from its current level of 350,000 FTEs to half a million in three years.
• In August 2021, GenSpark joined the OneTen Coalition as a talent developer. Over the next 10 years, OneTen, their employer partners, and talent developers such as GenSpark have committed to advancing one million Black individuals in America into familysustaining careers, and be accountable for their ongoing retention, development and advancement.

What specific plans are in place at your organization to help you become even more diverse in the future?

In May 2023, we are launching a Mentorship program that pairs internal employees in 1-on-1 mentorship opportunities to retain and promote talent in the organization.

GenSpark also plans to continue growing the number of women consultants by sponsoring new opportunities, like female-focused Hackathons in 2023.

Additionally, our very first DEI Day as a company is coming up in late April to keep DEI at the top of everyone’s minds. An exciting initiative titled the “Intentionally Inclusive Challenge” will be announced that day, which will encourage DEI employee and consultant engagement and buy-in through the completion of challenges and activities, such as participating in community outreach, attending ERG events, and more.

 

Back to the entire list of TMCnet 2023 Tech Diversity 2023 winners.