Bristol Open Doors: Meet _Nology and Reach Robotics

Author
Fay Daniels
Marketing Manager - Contracts | Business West
30th October 2018

As part of Digital Cities Bristol 2018, Business West and Bristol Media are working in conjunction with the BBC Academy to coordinate a series of Open Doors events. Creative and digital companies from around Bristol will be opening their doors to give a behind the scenes view of this exciting and fast paced industry.

_nology and Reach Robotics is one of the businesses inviting guests to come and visit them on Tuesday 27th November. We caught up with Founder Peter Anstey to talk skills, digital talent and why he wanted to take part.

Tell us more about your company and your role there?

_nology runs a 12-week immersive coding course, that enables people from any background to launch their career in technology. This is specifically designed to make them work ready with practical, up to date experience – not just theory – to meet the real-world needs of leading employers.

My role, as Founder, is to shape the future of the business and ensure we meet our ambition to connect thousands of people to opportunities in Tech. 

Have you experienced skills gaps within your own business?

As a small company, we’re short on skill gaps internally but every day we discuss the digital skill gap which is expected to grow to over 100,000 unfilled vacancies in 2020. As we scale I expect to hit the gap full on when trying to find new mentors to trach the next generation. 

Companies are already struggling to address the skills gap and using short term fixes like sending big pieces of development work to other countries

Do you think there are skills gaps in the digital sector overall?

Absolutely. The skills gap exists not just in quantity of people with digital skills, but for specific areas in new technologies that didn’t exists even a few years ago. The pace at which tech is growing is alienating more and more companies from talented people who might need to re-skill to catch up.

If we don’t address the skills gaps in the region, how do you think this will impact the digital sector?

Companies are already struggling to address the skills gap and using short term fixes like sending big pieces of development work to other countries. Germany, Eastern Europe and generally the Scandinavian countries thrive on exported tech work. India is also a hot bed for digital talent so plenty of work goes there before being brought back to the UK teams. If regions want to attract more companies to the area they need to have a great talent pool, so the growth potential is there. 

In your opinion, what can we do to make the most of the digital talent in the region?

Invest in more people to become your future talent. Good people actually aren’t hard to find. People willing to work hard and push themselves to learn are everywhere. Too many companies are asking for the finishing product and this narrows there view to the select few who are expensive, demanding and often difficult to retain. Take time to invest in people who are close but not quite there yet and the results will be amazing. Of course, this is easy to say and difficult to implement. The pace at which tech companies move prevents them from thinking long term when it comes to talent, preferring to be rough and ready to meet tight deadlines. 

Tech is an incredible space to be right now, huge innovations, creative opportunities and game changing ideas are everywhere.

Why did you decide to take part in our Open Doors events?

For me, ‘Open Doors’ is a very good way of describing where tech should go. But I’d be more aggressive than that and in an Italian Job sort of way ‘Blow the bloody doors off!’. Break the misconceptions about what digital skills are so more people are interested in investing their future in learning this in-demand skill. Take more time to showcase the work you do rather than just pointing out how great it looks at the end. Tech is an incredible space to be right now, huge innovations, creative opportunities and game changing ideas are everywhere. If only people knew about it… 

And what can people expect if they attend your Open Doors event?

Honest, informative and exciting (Fun optional).

 

You can see a full list of Open Doors events here. Book now to avoid disappointment!

 


 

Meet other Open Doors participants:

Fat Media

ADLIB

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