IBM CEO urges talent development for ‘new collar’ positions

IBM CEO urges talent development for 'new collar' positionsIn an article for USA Today, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty urged U.S. business leaders to develop “new collar” talent that will drive the next phase of industry in the technological age.

As opposed to blue collar or white collar jobs, these “new collar” positions require advanced tech skills in areas such as cloud computing and data analysis, according to Rometty, and many companies have been facing a shortage of workers with abilities in these areas.

To help boost employment and productivity in these innovative technology fields, Rometty wrote that IBM plans to hire 6,000 employees in the U.S. in 2017 and an additionall19,000 workers over the following three years.

“We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving – and that is also why so many of these jobs remain hard to fill,” she wrote. “As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills – which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting.”

Rometty is on an advisory panel of business leaders assembled by President-elect Donald Trump and joins other major figures like Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc., Bloomberg reported.