Upskilling gives immigrant workers a chance to restart their careers

Before the pandemic, Omoyemi Oni was living in Nigeria working in broadcast radio and television, hoping for the chance to one day move to the U.S. The beginning of the pandemic in 2020 granted him the opportunity to finally leave, and thanks to access to continued education, he was able to build on his skills and land on his feet.

Today, Oni works as a game producer for Game Studio, a small video game development start-up. But as is the case with many immigrant workers, his journey began with a lot of uncertainty and a dream. 

"I'd been thinking about moving to the U.S. and working in the interactive entertainment space for about a decade," Oni says. "But I didn't know what the right time would be. What COVID did was to put a pause on our careers and had us all reevaluate. So I took that time to ask myself, is it a great time for me to change careers?" 

Oni decided that it was. He officially began his move to New York in December 2020 without a job lined up upon arrival, but with enough confidence in his skills, abilities and resourcefulness to believe he could find a job in the field he wanted — he just needed to find a foothold.  

Read more: In the midst of a worker shortage, ESL support can expand the talent pool

"I needed to find a program to connect the old and the new," Oni says. "I needed something that connected my old world and experience and the world I wanted to go into professionally." 

Eventually an ad for Emeritus, a virtual education program, found its way onto one of Oni's social media pages. Oni had researched Emeritus before moving when he'd realized that upskilling and reskilling were the only ways to change careers. At the time, however, Emeritus didn't have the kind of program Oni was looking for to break into the virtual reality and immersive tech space. But the ad was for a new certification course in user experience design for augmented and virtual reality in collaboration with the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. 

Oni reached out to the NYU instructors who were listed on the program's landing page to try to understand more about what the program would entail. Despite considering himself  creative, Oni worried that he might not be artistic enough for a design job, no matter how much training it provided. Fortunately, one of the instructors responded via LinkedIn and explained the ways the course goes beyond the aspects Oni was worried about.

Immigrant workers make up approximately 17% of the U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For this demographic of workers, sometimes the only thing that drives them into the careers they need to succeed is the promise of support while they do so.

Read more: Amazon is upskilling its workers via mentoring platform Chronus

"I realized that the course was the answer for me," he says. "It was going to give me some background and the technical knowledge to be able to connect my experience as a producer while working in this new field." 

The course itself was a rigorous six and a half months. There were 15 people enrolled in Oni's class when it began, but only five made it to the end of the course and only four actually received a certificate. Oni, who had arrived in the U.S. with a tourist visa, was simultaneously in the process of changing his residency status while attending his classes and completing his training. While it may seem like the added stress would make the completion of the course harder for Oni, it actually functioned more as a welcomed distraction.

"Part of what kept me sane at that time was that I was upskilling," Oni says. "I'm a person who likes movement — I like feeling like I'm progressing. I was dealing with all of the craziness of the paperwork and the fact that I was in an immigration system that is, in all honesty, very broken. Knowing that I was moving towards a specific goal and launching myself in the United States like I've been dreaming about for the past 10 years —something that was not possible where I come from — kept me grounded."

Making sure that Oni's experience is not unique and that every kind of worker has access to education is one of Emeritus' core tenants, according to Charlie Schilling, president of enterprise business and workforce development at Emeritus. The platform even offers courses in multiple translated languages for non-Americans who may be entering the workforce at different proficiency levels. 

Read more: Why professional development and upskilling is vital to women of color

"Talent comes in all forms," he says. "As upskilling programs continue to grow, these programs will certainly open up the recruiting pool by helping the talent pool learn and become experts in areas that companies are looking for when it comes to hiring." 

Through the course and the connections he'd made, Oni was able to start a short-term internship at a quality assurance department for multiple virtual apps, which led him to find a full-time job at his current company. And although his journey was not sponsored by an employer, Oni feels that more businesses should offer upskilling options for immigrants like him so that their experience is more seamless.

As of February 2022, there were approximately 11.3 million job openings, 4.4 million resignations and only 6.7 million hires, according to data from career mobility platform Pathstream. Employers could better their chances of filling these positions if they only opened their eyes to more candidates — including those abroad. 

"Every time you invest in upskilling you bring more creative thoughts into the fold," Oni says. "When there are more creative thoughts in the room, you have more creative ways of solving problems. That will, in turn, bring more reward to the company, which is essentially what companies are looking for, isn't it?"