Happy birthday, TechVets! A phenomenal amount has been achieved by this community in just five years. To celebrate how far we’ve come since our founding in 2018, take a look back at how we got to where we are today (and where we might be headed)…
Connecting Ex-Military with Tech Careers
TechVets launched as a non-profit in 2018, with the aim to provide a bridge for the British Forces community into information technology careers.
Our four co-Founders noticed that there was a skills gap developing from an increasing need for cyber security across many industries and a proliferation of tech in the UK’s cultural landscape. Research bodies like the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport were reporting that the majority of private sector businesses faced a lack of confidence in performing a range of basic tech skills (especially relating to cyber security). Even cyber security firms themselves were reportedly facing problems with technical skills gaps among their workforce.
The TechVets co-founders connected the dots: while demand for skilled tech professionals grew, so did the underemployment issue in the British Military Forces community.
One of these visionaries was Mark Milton, who has since passed. TechVets is indebted to Mark’s work as a service design specialist and CEO. You can read more about his lasting impact here.
Alistair Halliday, CEO Forces Employment Charity:
“Today we mark a historic day – 5 years since TechVets was formed and started its amazing work supporting the Forces community into the tech/cyber industries. Over the years we have seen more than 4,000 join our community, and able to benefit from the free training so kindly donated by our brilliant partner companies. The community continues to grow and reach out to ever greater numbers and we are now particularly proud to attract many spouses and partners into the programme. TechVets is unique in its scale and scope and is the leading provider of support for AF community into this exciting and growing sector– and all for free.
None of this would have been possible without the passion, energy and commitment of James Murphy who has led TechVets for the past 3 years. I would also like to pay tribute to all the founders who first came up with the idea, commenced delivery and have remained engaged since, and to James for taking it to the next level. We are proud at Forces Employment Charity to be providing such a home for the programme and ensure it will continue to grow from strength to strength over the next months and years.”
Supporting Employment During Global Crises
The recent past brought new and unexpected challenges to the British workforce, from the global pandemic to its subsequent impact on the nation’s employment landscape. We are proud that TechVets has supported the ex-Forces community through it all.
From 1st Oct 2022 to the present day…
TEAM
- Volunteering their own time unpaid, the TechVets co-founders ran TechVets for the first two years with zero funding.
- Since successfully winning their first funding through two philanthropic donors, they hired the first CEO and Military veteran, James Murphy, who has since grown the team to five including two veterans, and a veteran / military spouse.
REGISTRATIONS
- All time registrations
- 4,358
- Total registrations
- 971
- Service personnel registrations
- 791
- Total Families registrations
- 180
COMMUNITY
- Total current number in Discord
- 3791
- Changes to discord
- Total partnerships broken into
- Funders
- From the first two years unfunded, to multiple strategic funders including the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, Splunk, Cognizant, and the Veterans’ Foundation.
- Community partners
- We are community partners with:
- CREST
- CIISec
- SASIG
- VETS
- International Cyber Expo
- UK Cyber Week
- BSides
- International partnerships with:
- VetSec (USA)
- Vets in Cyber (Australia)
- Coding for Veterans (Canada)
- We are community partners with:
- Training partners
- To date, we have training partnerships with
- Immersive Labs
- Pega
- Fortinet
- Splunk
- Cisco NetAcademy
- Netcompany
- Arca Blanca
- Cybrary
- Safestack
- TryHackMe
- SANS
- Samurai Security
- arcX
- North Green Security
- Policy Wizard
- To date, we have training partnerships with
- Employment partners (all employers on new jobs board + programmes):
- NomiosUK
- 6Point6
- ThreeTwoFour
- NHS England
- Immersive Labs
- Greater Manchester Police
- Defence Digital
- Salus Cyber
- DXC
- The Rank Group
- AMR Cybersecurity
- Avon & Somerset Police
- Barclays
- Ascentor
- Amtivo
- Base3 Solutions
- Arculus
- Marston’s PLC
- Aviva
- PA Consulting
- Government Digital Serivce
- British Gas/Centrica
- Hitachi Rail
- Amazon
- CREST
- Phillips
- Polestar
- Cyro Cyber
- Capco
- SNS MS UK
- Forfusion
- Metrea Mission Data
- Staffordshire University
- Wind River
- SMS-PLC
- Razorthorn Cyber Defence
- Vodafone
- Expleo
- Funders
TRAINING
- Numbers accessed digital / tech upskilling 667
- Including 67 places for partners/spouses on MS Office training
- 131 Google Career Certificates
- 185 core cyber training
- 97 Splunk SIEM training
- 31 Pega low-coding
- 110 Networking technologies
EMPLOYMENT
- Number CVs reviewed 64
- Number CVs into CREST service 37
- Number into jobs
- 76
- Comparison with 2020
- In the past 5 months we have supported 16 more people into IT careers than throughout the entirety of 2020
- Category of jobs
- When TechVets started, we were focused almost entirely on cyber security careers. Now we are supporting our Forces community into a wide and diverse range of career paths across information technology – from IT project management and UX/UI design, to data analysts, network infrastructure, and low-code specialists
- Average salary
- The estimated median average salary for TechVets members launching their new IT careers, is £52,500
*That was more than £20,000 higher than the UK’s own mean average salary, which was calculated as approx. £32,300 in 2022 by the Office for National Statistics.
We’re confident that there will continue to be even higher numbers of TechVets success stories in 2023. If you’d like to read them firsthand, we’ve grown a small library that you can access here.
James Murphy, CEO TechVets:
“I am incredibly honoured to lead TechVets. The community is unrivalled and demonstrates the fantastic people we have leaving the British Military every year who are always willing to reach out and support their peers on what is a very challenging journey into civilian employment.
At a time when the use of technology is growing by the day, there are potentially serious risks to the UKs national security should we not address the skills shortages, and the Forces Employment Charity’s TechVets Programme is providing an innovative approach to help solve this. We are not simply here to help vulnerable people, we are here to unlock the potential of incredibly talented professionals with vast and diverse experience so the UKs digital economy can thrive and in doing so, prevent so many in the Forces community from becoming underemployed or unemployed.
I joined TechVets because of the principles instilled by the co-Founders and a business model that is shaped around those we support. With the new team firing on all cylinders and the incredible successes over the past five years, I am incredibly excited about TechVets future.“
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Expanding Our Resources for Veterans, Service-Leavers, Reservists, and Military Family Members
We are now consistently breaking records for registrations. TechVets has registered more than 1,800 new members this past year alone, including 150+ family members of veterans, reservists, and service leavers.
Our expansion of support to military partners and spouses of all current serving and ex-serving Forces families was a big milestone. This offering was designed to help reduce the pressure on the Service leaver having to land ‘the job’ whilst empowering the partners & spouses to lead fulfilling careers despite the disruption that military service has on their lives.
We have also expanded our partnerships to include Google and Coursera, Arca Blanca, Defence Digital, North Green Security, SafeStack.io, and many, many more. With the support of these partners, 1,385+ training opportunities were accessed in the past year. The vast majority of these opportunities remain self-paced and self-enrolled so that people with childcare needs or full-time jobs can still build their IT career in the way that suits them.
TechVets has expanded its own troops as well, receiving enough new funding last year to build an entire full-time team. Our passion combined with programme support from The Forces Employment Charity means the future is bright indeed!
“Collaboration is critical and I’m extremely proud that TechVets is partnered with so many organisations, affording our members an incredible opportunity to access information technology careers,” says TechVets CEO James Murphy.
To follow all our future adventures, watch this space and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. If you’re tech-curious but not already a TechVets member, you can register at the link below.
