we all know the servicenow ecosystem needs more developers and admins well this time i talk to someone to share information about a program that can change the lives of your friends and family welcome to breakpoint the servicenow developer podcast here's your host chuck demasi hello servicenow admins builders developers and of course all the curious individuals that i address with the utmost love and respect welcome to breakpoint the servicenow developer podcast where we bring you the latest tools tips and tradecraft to accelerate your career in this episode i've got the wonderful pleasure of talking to the beautiful tracy miller senior manager of project management that's a heck of a title how are you today tracy i am fabulous thank you how are you living the dream we'll go with that i like it i like it well before we begin i always like to get to know our guest this is your first appearance it's an audio podcast so we'll just say appearance tell us a little bit about yourself oh where to begin so i have actually been a part of the servicenow ecosystem since about 2011 as a customer and then came to servicenow in 2014 to be a trainer a dream job for me enjoyed it for many years and then joined the next gen team where i manage our programs for military veterans and their families you've been here for 80 years how have we not crossed paths before this that's a wonderful question i've actually admired you from afar creepy you and that bow tie for a lot of years oh okay okay sorry we have way too much fun on this podcast i listen to some of the other competitive you know companies and they don't have as much fun as we do well then what's the point i would ask exactly if you're not having fun why do it at all and then it just becomes work nobody wants that that's a four-letter word for sure when you're not at work what do you enjoy doing well you know it's been different since the pandemic started because i just don't get out much i don't travel much so we um we did our backyard kind of expanded it and got a fire pit and jacuzzi and the whole nine yards and so we really spend most of our time there um with the occasional bottle of wine you're not alone i had a friend we did some home improvements as well and i had a friend that called that investin in nestin i love that all right let's jump into it what is this next-gen program of which you spoke so next-gen was actually created back in i want to say the end of 2018 um to address the talent gap that we have in the servicenow ecosystem we're here to support the growth of partners customers and even servicenow and we do that by providing training opportunities for traditionally marginalized populations including veterans and we provide skills-based training and practical exercises and group projects and professional development we provide a mentor for all of our participants and then resources for employment so these marginalized communities what do you go out and find a group of you know gnomes and say hey you want to be a certified system administrator oh they'd be pretty marginalized wouldn't they they're hard to find i imagine so and you know to be perfectly honest it it can be tough to find um we're doing a pretty good job of filling cohorts but it can be tough to sort of meet people where they are right um but if we want to address the talent gap in the servicenow ecosystem we cannot rely on traditional avenues so we've got to go out and find them and that's exactly what it means it means going out and finding them in the veterans space we have a skill bridge program nextgen is an authorized skill bridge provider which means we get to bring those uh service members into our program while they're still on active duty oh nice yeah they're in their last six months of service so they're actually still being paid by the department of defense and they're with us through this 16 weeks and of course we had to go through all the paperwork and proof of concept and everything with the department of defense but that's really how we reach um the transitioning service members and we use linkedin an awful lot as well to you know network and reach veterans and and their families we'll take uh military spouses and we'll even take dependent kids because moving around your whole life is pretty hard and so sometimes they're in their 20s and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do so we'll take them into our programs as well we also partner with organizations like code differently for example um that's kind of a coding um boot camp that has the same philosophy that we do and so they help us to seat our programs that they'll go through code differently um and then they'll go through our program or they'll go through our program without going through the entire code differently program but we partner with a lot of organizations to try to help find people that want to break into tech and just haven't had the opportunity so tell me about the structure of this how long does it take what's the commitment from each student and what is the outcome is is it csa or what's that look like so we while we're trying very hard to have sort of a standard global program um we have to realize that our audiences are different right so in the uk they do a nine week program and their focus is on application development so they'll receive a csa voucher through servicenow fundamentals and then they'll also receive an app voucher through the app dev fundamentals course that they take here in the states we do we've got two separate programs we've got what we call our ams reskilling program and that can be a lot of different audiences we'll work with historically black colleges and universities to recruit students that way and through organizations like code differently that program is a 12-week program and it's more implementer-focused where they'll take the itsm fundamentals and implementation so they get two vouchers out of that course as well they'll get the servicenow fundamentals and the itsm certified implementation specialist voucher and then skillbridge because we're fortunate enough to be able to bring them in while they're still active duty is actually a 16-week program and they get seven servicenow instructor-led courses um along with military transition training and a lot of like career skills development project based learning and things like that and then they get three vouchers the servicenow fundamentals itsm implementation and appdev oh so you could get your certified app dev out of one of these programs for in just a few weeks yeah i'll be honest we do not encourage them to take the implementer and the app dev exam uh while they're in the training the vouchers are good good for a year and um servicenow recommends a bit of experience before they go and set for those exams but we try to give them the tools that they need so that they can you know jump into employment hit the ground running provide immediate value and start gaining experience so that they can go take those two additional exams and that's similar to the recommendation we have for everybody else as well it's like you don't go to the three-day system fundamentals course and then rush right out and take your exam that experience i swear there's questions on that csa that need experience that were never covered in the course maybe it's just me maybe i missed something while i was taking notes but it seemed like you really had to have that experience to answer some of those questions accurately yeah and as hard as we try to teach concepts um so that they have a good understanding of the concepts when they go in to take those exams there's nothing that beats real world experience now we were talking a little bit before we recorded this and and you were telling me about the approach that the next gen program has a different say lineup than a traditional take a course take a course take a course tell me a little bit about that right so since we are cohort based um and we've got the same students with us for either 9 12 or 16 weeks um we try to use that to our advantage in the uk they will have the same instructor for all of their servicenow instructor-led classes here in the americas we do different instructor instructors for each instructor-led class however we have training assistants that are with us for the entire length of the program okay so we break the students up we might have a hundred person cohort wow i know and that's what we're shooting for for july we have got for our july skill bridge cohort we've got 80 offers out so far and you know our goal is 100 participants and so we're trying to take the burden off of the instructor i know when i was a trainer if i had stepped into a virtual class of 100 students i probably would have had a panic attack so we've done everything that we can to sort of alleviate that stress for the instructor and let them just focus on delivering the content we break those students up into 12 10 to 12 person learning pods and each learning pod is assigned a training assistant and that training assistant and that group of 10 to 12 students they are together for the entirety of the program so this the cohort that we're we're in right now is the first one that we've done this with and we've been stunned by the success um the teams have really formed a bond with each other and with their training that's important yeah yeah and they love their tas and their tas are um some of them the tas are even newer to uh the servicenow skills but that doesn't stop them from being incredible um teachers for them they what they're teaching them is how to find the answers to the questions that they have and they work through labs together and they work on group projects together so i think it's that um that sort of team aspect uh they're encouraging each other throughout the entire program and really we you know we talk a lot about placement on the next gen team because if we're not getting people into employment then why are we doing this right and i like to say that placement really starts day one in the classroom we're not really talking to employers until they get towards the end of the program but we're working on placement from day one by preparing them for the interviews that they're going to have by building their confidence not just building their skills but building their confidence and their ability to talk through the things that they're learning throughout the program that's important it's it's it goes beyond just the technical you've got you've got that presentation that that that yeah facade isn't the right word but you know what i'm talking about you got to be able to confidence that's what i'm looking for yeah that's confidence is everything and you know knowing the material obviously is a confidence builder but just these these teams of of participants being able to really kind of build each other up um is is even better really than the skills training that they're getting it sounds like when you've got this cohort together you've got a great community of people that can rely on each other do you cover the other communities that are available like hey our online community is there for asking questions or reach out to this linkedin group or do you get into much of that absolutely that's critical i did that as a trainer when i was teaching public courses and i do that in all the cohorts we actually do a session on your resources because we want them to know not just about the community but about the product documentations a site and about the uh the now learning and the developer community we we actually kind of do a demo of all of those different resources for them because we're trying to teach them i mean it's kind of cliche but we're trying to teach them how to fish right we're not going to be with them forever and we want them to be successful i was i was going to go and teach them to fly but fishing works as well the time to leave the nest go i get occasionally i mentioned linkedin i get about once every couple of weeks somebody says hey i watched your javascript videos are you are you recommending you know non-now learning resources um we are we are in um in both the 12 week and the 16 week program they do learn some javascript skills before they take scripting in servicenow and we actually use your videos chuck tomasi um that are out on youtube because i i have found and and the feedback that i have gotten has been that um there there's like small bites of information it's a lot of videos but they they they come to them in small bites and it's easy for them to digest so we recommend code academy but we start with the chuck tomasi javascript videos so and then they go from that into the scripting and service now fundamentals and you know in addition to the javascript we also have some you know some different worksheets and things that we've created on the next gen team that we use to try to give them practical experience in the things that they're learning that's awesome i was wondering where these messages were coming from and then i realized hey wait a minute someone's feeding this information i should also mention that the videos are now available through now learning with the community contributed content as of mid-april they officially got launched there so there that's that's the start of a larger uh endeavor to get more contributed content into now learning so if anybody's interested i want to give the listeners an action item some homework if you will because i'm sure they know somebody who might be a candidate for this and would like to reach out how can they help identify people that might be good for this program i think that the main criteria that we're looking for is people who are new to tech and new to servicenow right we don't want somebody that's been in the ecosystem and and is just looking for additional training we're looking to tap into entry-level talent so if you know somebody that's been trying to get into tech maybe they don't have a college degree that's fine um they just want to break into tech and they're interested in service now you can absolutely send them to apply for our program we've got an application it's next generation dot service dash now dot com forward slash apply and that will give them some information about the program and about the application process and really all they have to do is apply and you know we're going to do the best that we can to seat them in one of our cohorts the link will be in the show notes the link will be in the blog entry you'll be able to find it if you can't let me know reach out to either me or tracy and we will get that there there's got to be some really interesting backgrounds from these people whether it's a hair salon stylist or grocery store manager what are some of the interesting stories or transformations you've heard um so there's a lot um just in the skillbridge space in you know my very first pilot program for skillbridge started in february of last year and one of my participants was a navy cook um another one of my participants was in the navy band and she played the clarinet so you know these i know right it's i mean but it's amazing to see somebody go from being um you know a navy cook to to breaking into tech listen listen a career in tech really and this is why i do what i do a career in tech can be life changing for somebody who hasn't had the opportunity to you know go to college and and go you know kind of go down that path and we had one veteran who came through skillbridge who was homeless it's a homeless veteran which should not even be a thing no in the united states of america but he spent some time homeless and he was an aircraft mechanic and um you know now he works in the servicenow ecosystem so um when the pandemic shut a lot of things down a lot of people lost jobs we changed our focus to trying to reach out to people that we knew that were affected by that shutdown and you know i don't cook a whole lot so my husband and i spend a lot of time eating out and so i know a lot of like servers and bartenders and you know we tried to i helped as many of you of those people as i could either get into one of our programs or get into our we've got a now learning next-gen pass that we use for on-demand learning for people who can't you know sit in a program because it is time consuming for that 12 or 16 weeks it's 40 hours a week so if we have somebody who can't do that we we threw them into our now learning path and and at least they got to take some fundamental training and we were here to help them if they needed it so i mean it could be a target cashier it could be you know a bartender it could be a mechanic it could be a navy cook somebody wants to get out of that i mean my dad was a mechanic and that's hard hard labor and you get to a point where that becomes very challenging and so to give people like that the opportunity to break into tech like i said it really can be life changing not just for them but for their you know for their whole family absolutely yeah it just gives him a whole new lease on life you mentioned the aircraft mechanic that was homeless that could have easily been my brother he was an air force aircraft mechanic and uh yeah turned out a little different from him he did not go into a tech career but uh you know that that one hit home at home tracy so if if anybody out there is listening and you think you know somebody who might be interested in this or you bring it up at the dinner table when when people say who do you work for you say i work as a software developer uh for servicenow or with servicenow and this partner whatever it is you know the enthusiasm in our community is wonderful share that with them and don't forget you say hey if you're interested in living the dream like i am we've got a way to get you on board i'm i'm i'm not saying you necessarily go downtown and you know start passing out business cards to the homeless people but maybe you've been doing this since 2000 no the program was was initiated in 2018 and when was your first inaugural cohort graduated um we did a different program that we no longer do back in 2019 so we we took 30 veterans through training and into employment back in 2019 through sort of a different program we learned a lot from that program which led us to what we're doing today um so small numbers in 2019 and and 2020 and um you know we just help them as as we can and now like i said we're ramping up this year um we've got 37 that are graduating in june from skillbridge and another 40 that are graduating in june from our our 12-week program well if that doesn't get you out of the bed in the morning to go i'm i'm helping change lives i don't know what does and that's that's just so impressive and so exciting let me ask you who is conducting all this training it's certainly not you all over the world there's got to be a team um i will tell you back in 2019 with um krista nepper is is my boss and she in 2019 i remember she used to say we're throwing pasta at the wall to see what sticks um i did a lot of the training myself in 2019 and i spent a lot of time in philly and tampa but now we've got our feet underneath us we've figured out what's sticking to the wall and we're using servicenow trainers we're using partner trainers we've got specific partners that have become next-gen partners in order to help us uh with the training and and the ta work that we that we have in the program how many trainers would you say you have out there doing this now more than 20 less than 100 okay a lot and growing all the time i suspect yeah that is amazing i mean even if you took 20 and you had a cohort of 100 that's 2 000 people that are being served by this program right now and that's probably on the conservative side that's incredible that just oh it it it's so exciting i want to be a part of this well you are a part of this chuck because they watch your javascript videos i made some videos yeah that okay i'll take some little hanging fruit there thank you tracy it has been a joy and a treat and inspiring to talk to you today before we let you go let them know how they can reach you because i'm sure somebody out there listening to this is going yes yes and more yes so you can always connect with me on linkedin i am not a social media guru by any means but i do have a network out there and i do use linkedin to you know to talk about this program and to recruit for this program so connect with me on linkedin um and you can always email me tracy.miller at servicenow.com and we also have a next-gen email address it's just next-gen at servicenow.com easy enough yeah so they can email with you know specific program questions and and whatnot and then um i think that's it unless you want me to hand out my cell phone number probably not you'd be the first on this show that ought to get enough information to them and i will put the instance the application in the show notes as well as mentioned before thank you very much tracy and thank you wonderful listener for joining us today i'll have links for all of this information as promised don't forget to check out the other servicenow podcast you can find them all at servicenow.com podcast breakpoint is brought to you by servicenow executive producer chuck tomasi video captions by earl decay and to find out more about the servicenow developer program head over to developer.servicenow.com again i can't say it enough thank you so much tracy for joining us today you're welcome it's a pleasure to be here please let us know what you think about this podcast you can leave feedback or ask questions in the servicenow community for more great information on servicenow development check out the servicenow developer portal at developer.servicenow.com thanks for listening i did one of these with kat lang one time and realized that i sound like i'm from oklahoma so where are you from oklahoma that was too logical tracy miller senior manager let me try that again i don't get asked how i'm doing too often so apparently i don't know how to answer it let me do that again that was that was that was ugly the way it came out because it was now to say this without saying it wrong oh goodness i don't even i don't even reference qualifiers