Dive Brief:

• Codecademy, the online interactive platform that teaches programming for free, has teamed up with similar technical skills educators to connect their graduates with employers.
• The initiative, called ReskillUSA, also includes Thinkful, The Flatiron School, Grand Circus, Wyncode, Sabio.la and Dev Bootcamp.
• Codecademy’s chief executive, Zach Sims, says one goal of ReskillUSA is to convince employers that the skills training provided by its members is legitimate, and that a computer science bachelor’s degree isn’t always necessary, TechCrunch reports.

Dive Insight:

Sims said that the catalyst for ReskillUSA came from conversations with the White House—and were helped along by U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith’s comments that code academies are the key to filling 1 million unfilled IT jobs in the U.S. Cybersecurity companies have also been looking to skills training programs to fill jobs. One problem with coding academy startups is that employers have a difficult time evaluating their graduates, so they’re more likely to look to university graduates instead, according to Wired.

Also as part of ReskillUSA, Codecademy is launching the offline Codecademy Labs, hosted by other ReskillUSA partners, offering training at sites in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco. The group also plans to expand beyond coding, into skills training in other areas, in the future.