Alliance Labs is a digital agency that doesn't just provide marketing, communications and web design to its clients--it also provides training to the next generation of web designers and creatives.
The agency provides digital marketing, communication and web development to clients, while training high potential job seekers in web skills that will directly apply to jobs or freelance web gigs. Once residents have proven mastery of these skills, they're given paid work alongside the rest of the Alliance Labs team. Their goal is to give talented, motivated, disadvantaged young adults simultaneous access to skills training and work experience, so they can transition to careers in technology and the creative industry.
"We're trying to solve the problem of, how do you get experience without a job but how do you get a job without experience?" said founder Jon Schickedanz.
Schickedanz, a longtime branding and communications professional, thought of the idea when he realized there were parallel needs in the creative community and among aspiring creatives.
He previously ran an organization called the Alliance of Creative Professionals, which connected creatives in the advertising, marketing, communications and web industries, through events. Through building this network, he heard from potential clients who were interested in hiring creatives for smaller web projects that might not be taken on by an agency.
At the same time, he had started volunteering with i.c. stars, the Chicago organization that trains low income adults in tech and business skills. He kept hearing questions from students on how they could get connected to web design projects and jobs in the creative industry.
"You get these questions again and again from clients, saying 'I need really economic web solutions,' and on the other side, you have these kids saying, 'I really want to get into this business,'" he said. "It doesn't take a genius to say there may be a way to make this work for both parties."
In early 2015, Schickedanz and Alliance Labs director of education Andrew Hicks, decided to launch Alliance Labs to address these two problems.
About three times per year, they choose about 10 students to go through a vetting process to get a sense of their digital abilities, work ethic and desire to join the industry. By the end of the process, they take on about half of those applicants as residents. Residents go through a modular, tiered curriculum with two evening training events per week--code review on Tuesday and Wordpress skills on Wednesday-- over a three to four month period, and have access to a team of five mentors throughout the week. Once they've gained a certain skill, they receive a badge and can be assigned paid work for clients.
While residents aren't offered work before they hit this threshold, Schickedanz noted that training is voluntary. Eventually he'd like to be able to pay residents as they train (similar to how i.c. stars gives students in their program a stipend as they learn tech and business skills).
About 12 students are training right now, and 10 students have gone through the program since the beginning of 2015, and they've been able to bring on new clients every four to six weeks (clients include Chicago synagogue Temple Sholom and Tinley Park manufacturer UGN).
Schickedanz emphasized that while the residency program only lasts about four months, once students are connected to Alliance Labs the leadership team will reach out with work opportunities when there's a large workload or need for a specific skill. Alums of the program have gone onto open their own game stores, build web development businesses, and study in software development masters degree programs.
Given tech jobs are lucrative and in-demand (web development is among the top skills recruiters will seek in 2017), several Chicago organizations have popped up to train disadvantaged students web skills, including i.c. stars and Blue1647. Schickedanz said he hopes the program can build off that training, and help open tech and creative industries to more people.
"It's about creating diversity in this space, which is really lacking, and creating opportunities where they don't exist," he said.
