WorkingNation logo with the tagline of "Covering the Future of Work"
DONATE
Search
Ruben-Harris-WIP
Tags   
Tags 

Career Karma: Training, coaching, and peer support

A conversation with Rubén Harris, CEO, Career Karma
By Ramona Schindelheim
-

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Youtube Music | RSS

Rubén Harris is the CEO of Career Karma, an app and web platform that connects career transitioners with one of 450 job training programs—specifically coding and tech boot camps—around the country to prepare them for high-paying jobs. He also hosts the Breaking Into Startups podcast and he joins me in this episode of the Work in Progress podcast.

Harris says the programs that Career Karma connect people with take about a year to complete and, on average, lead to jobs and careers starting between $70,000 and $100,000 annually. What makes the platform unique, according to Harris, is that not only do they match you with one of the job training programs, they offer additional personal support.

“Once you have been matched with the right training and the right coaching, we give you support through a virtual peer group called a squad—during the program, during the job search, and for the rest of your life. Say I’m 60 years old and I feel uncomfortable because I don’t know anybody my age that’s doing this. We have the Code Gray Squad.” Harris says that there are squads for moms, dads, veterans, and just about any group. “It’s the kind of support my business partners and I had when we were starting out.”

“Once you have been matched with the right training and the right coaching, we give you support through a virtual peer group.” –  Rubén Harris, Career Karma CEO

Tech is Taking Over Every Industry

“Tech is taking over every industry. If you have life experience in any domain, you can actually double down on that, and use the coding experience as sauce for your life experience.”

Harris and I talk about how tech is open to people of all ages and all backgrounds. You’re never too young and you’re never too old. In fact, age and experience can actually give you an advantage over many job applicants. Harris shares this hypothetical example to make his point.

“Let’s say my experience is in the restaurant industry. When I’m in a boot camp, I can focus on building projects related to specific things that are issues or problems that I’ve faced working in the restaurant industry. Then when I go to the job search, I can apply to companies that are focused on problems related to food industry or food distribution, like cloud kitchen, for example. Then if I’m competing against an engineer that has 10 years of coding experience, I’m not a junior developer, I am a seasoned food retail expert that happens to know how to code. I could probably add a lot of value to a company.”

Reskill America Campaign – Laptops for Low-Income Communities

Harris points out that many of the 50 million Americans who have lost jobs due to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, many of them in low-income communities. He says that tens of thousands of the people who come to Career Karma seeking to reskill and find new jobs don’t have laptops to take advantage of these opportunities.

Career Karma has partnered with the nonprofit Kapor Center and other organizations to form Reskill America, a campaign to raise $500,000 to provide these people with thousands of laptops. Since it was announced in mid-June, they are one-fifth of the way to their goal.

“Reskill America is our way to make sure that people that are being laid off and furloughed due to COVID-19 have all the tools that they need in order to bounce back to work. There’s a lot of people that are quarantined right now that have the desire to do this, but have no ability to get a job or train for a job or attend any classes because they don’t have a laptop.”

“Reskill America is our way to make sure that people that are being laid off and furloughed due to COVID-19 have all the tools that they need in order to bounce back to work.” – Rubén Harris, Career Karma CEO

You can listen to my full interview with Rubén Harris for Work in Progress here, or find us wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the logo below ????. Thanks for listening!

Episode 144: Rubén Harris, CEO, Career Karma
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Related Articles
Get the latest from WorkingNation
DONATE
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Our Mission
Contact Us

© Copyright 2024 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.

Share Bio