Millions of people have lost their jobs and finding a new one can be difficult, but there's a way you can re-skill to get a career in the tech industry.
Codecademy is offering 100,000 free scholarships for their online courses that can teach you new skills which are used in a variety of in demand tech jobs.
You can sign up for the scholarships here.
One of the many people who've made the switch is Ann Pohl.
She said in the beginning of 2016, she lost her job. Then 6 weeks later, her husband lost his job, and 6 weeks after that they found out they were pregnant.
While this may have happened years before the COVID-19 pandemic, her situation is similar in that she needed a job and she realized she likely needed some new skills to get a new one.
Pohl said, "I thought, what if I learn how to code? I wasn’t working, I had this period of time and so I taught myself how to code basically during that pregnancy."
She used Codecademy to re-skill herself and land a job at WordPress as a Web Developer.
Other jobs you can get from learning coding include app development, mobile development, data science, digital marketing, computer systems engineering, and user experience designing.
You don't have to have previous knowledge of coding to start learning either.
"I feel like anyone could hop on Codecademy and start with their basic introductory level classes. I didn’t know any HTML, I didn’t know any CSS, I didn’t know anything about coding when I started," said Pohl.
Kunal Ahuja, Chief of Staff at Codecademy said now is a great time to learn theses new skills in order to get a new job.
"Why not use this time when you’re looking at your laptop, or your TV, or your phone, to pick up skills that would actually help you, during this time, invest in yourself," said Ahuja.
Pohl said learning how to code is great for people who like to learn and like to problem solve.
Meanwhile, Ahuja said Codecademy has seen countless stories of success where people have been able to learn coding and go on to new careers in the tech industry.
"We want to build a workforce that’s ready for the 21st century to come back stronger out of the pandemic," said Ahuja.
The free coding scholarships will last three months, seeing as that's how long Codecademy thinks it will take you to learn a basic skill set of coding to help you land a new job.
