Sourcing for Innovation

Many organizations look to leverage the cloud to move their business forward. But the promise of the technology (lower costs, more flexibility, greater scalability) can often be at odds with reality (spiraling costs, vampire applications, vendor confusion). Without careful consideration, cloud costs can quickly spiral out of control. Controlling cloud costs starts by focusing on three critical areas: cloud vendor costs, cloud migration costs and cloud optimization/maintenance costs. This podcast dives into those three areas, uncovering hidden costs traps and providing recommendation on how to control cloud costs while maximizing your technology budgets.

Senior software engineers, architects and team leads might be skeptical about working with apprentice software developers. They might think the apprentices will slow them down or result in more overhead to manage. Jason Foster, principal architect at Catalyte, explains why the opposite is true. Working with apprentice developers makes work faster, easier and reduces total costs. He explains why apprentices don't need hand holding, how they come vetted for quality and how they make life easier for seniors and management.

Employers need talent that can immediately contribute value and be productive the moment they start. Anything less means employers are losing time and money getting new hires up to speed. We talked with Dan Reuther, director of learning and development at Catalyte, about how our apprenticeships discover, develop and deploy day-one-ready talent that can hit the ground running, and how this process creates a "win-win-win" for everyone involved.

While the transition to skills-based hiring not an easy by any means, there are a few practical, concrete steps any organization can implement to align its skills-based hiring rhetoric and practices. We spoke with Catalyte CEO Matt Derella about how employers can make this transition. He highlights three practical area, the right incentives, technology and partners, that can help align skills-based hiring practices and rhetoric, and set your organization up for a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage.

Catalyte apprentices bring a flexible, agile mindset to every client engagement. Couple that with our rigorous, customizable technical development and clients quickly trust the work that apprentices deliver. We caught up with three of these public sector apprentices who are building an essential health care platform for a public sector client. The work they’ve done to date has had an incredible impact on their local community, driving improved outcomes and accessibility. We discussed their first year on the project, what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown during that time.

January is National Mentoring Month. We talked with three mentors at Catalyte, all at different points in their careers, about what mentoring means to them. Find out what traits/characteristics make for the best mentors (and mentees), why you're never too old to be a mentee, the importance of vulnerability and empathy in mentoring and how coaching and mentoring are similar, but different.

“Enterprises may be systems, but they are not machines. The most important element in any enterprise is the human element: the people contributing to it.” This perspective comes from Curt Schwab, Catalyte's President of On Demand, in his upcoming book "The Responsive Enterprise: Transform your organization to thrive on change". In this podcast, Curt lays out why talent is the key to creating a responsive enterprise, the three systemic elements that make up a responsive enterprise and what is the ultimate business value of becoming a responsive enterprise.

The past few years have changed the ways many organizations source and hire talent. These changes have stemmed from both pragmatic (the Great Resignation) and altruistic (realization that resume-based hiring is fundamentally biased) reasons. It’s fantastic that companies are starting to invest in alternative pathways to hiring. However, what’s happening so far is not enough to make the difference we need, either in companies’ bottom lines or in our society. Companies should view apprentices not as part of their “nontraditional” or emerging hiring strategies, but as core to their talent strategies. Doing so will unleash a plethora of benefits for businesses and our communities.

The idea of coaching in apprenticeships is so fundamental that it almost becomes invisible. But without it, apprentices don't get the structure and support they need to contribute now and advance in their careers. When done right, it helps deliver better talent to employers faster, without any additional effort on their end. Apprentice Program Manager Christine Fox discusses the importance of coaching in apprenticeships, how employers benefit from it without even knowing and why her coaching style in 95% Phil Jackson and 5% Bobby Knight.

Most companies run an internship program. So why not an apprenticeship? Catalyte CEO Matt Derella discusses why apprenticeships can go beyond an internship, helping employers find higher-quality talent faster and cheaper.