“As we stand here today, there are over 500,000 open IT positions in the United States,” said Allen Shaheen. “So this country, this economy of innovation is on the cusp of not being able to fuel itself because of a lack of resources. We cannot hire our way out of it, we’ve got to develop talent.”

Excerpts from Missoula Current’s article:

“Cognizant’s Advanced Technology Group officially opened its new headquarters in Missoula’s Old Sawmill District on Wednesday, announcing plans to recruit local talent and train them for the technology needs of today and tomorrow.

‘Technology is changing at ever-increasing paces and technology companies that are going to win are going to keep and retain their employees,’ said Tom Stergios, ATG senior vice president of strategy and corporate development. ‘Missoula is a great place to live, which makes it a great place to work. We have proven that our retention of our employees is significantly better than the industry average, and that’ll be key to our future growth as well.’

ATG and Cognizant will partner with Missoula College to implement a new training program, All In Missoula, or AIM. Currently, the 12-week training course is preparing 27 students to work for companies like ATG and Cognizant. AIM graduates will have an opportunity to land jobs with the two companies.

Cognizant also donated $25,000 to UM’s SpectrUM museum through the company’s foundation to fund STEM education across the United States. The goal is to introduce kids to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”

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