A very interesting article by Burning Glass, Tracking the Rise of Artificial Intelligence with Job Postings, starts by saying that the “newest Stanford AI Index report indicates that artificial intelligence has permeated nearly every industry in the global job market. And job posting data confirms AI’s growth: postings requesting AI job skills have grown five-fold since 2013 internationally.”

We clearly see this with robotic process automation (RPA) (and more generally, intelligent automation, which expands the scope of RPA with the application of artificial intelligence). In just over a couple of months, for example, the number of RPA jobs on LinkedIn for the USA has jumped about 12%, with a total number that is close to 8,500 jobs listed. This growth in RPA jobs really aligns with what industry thought-leaders and business analysts are telling us, which is that the global RPA segment is around $1.89 Billion today but projected to grow to $13.74+ Billion by 2028, with a CAGR of 32.8%. And, an increasing global market means more jobs, which means a greater demand for skilled labor!

Let’s take a quick look at just a couple of the many RPA Developer-related job postings on LinkedIn to see the kinds of skills they are looking for:

• Intelligent Automation Developer - Robotic Process Automation
• Leverages intelligent automation technologies to design the best solution for process automations in an end-to-end viewpoint. Uses competencies to design, develop, test, and monitor moderate and complex robotic process automation (RPA) solutions to existing business processes. Drives process solutions to improve customer experiences, optimize lean processes and increase efficiency. Utilizes Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence standards, leading practices and design principles to configure resilient, scalable business solutions.
• Robotic Process Automation, Software Engineer
• This individual will join a team that develops solutions leveraging robotic process automation (RPA) to enable faster, more accurate execution of repetitive tasks in production environments. They will work collaboratively with business units across the organization in all facets of requirements gathering, process review, prioritization, development, testing and execution of requests.

As these postings indicate, these roles are looking for RPA skills and what better way for jobseekers to demonstrate this than through the attainment of some level of RPA certification.

Blue Prism offers multiple role-based certifications, but the two that are geared most towards Academia are the Associate Developer and the Developer. These certifications really teach learners how to build and configure process automations and objects using core workflow principles that are efficient, well structured, maintainable, and easy to understand in accordance with standard Blue Prism design principles and conventions.

What an amazing opportunity this is for graduates to become workforce-ready by taking a leading industry-grade certification in one of the hottest emerging technologies that is permeating nearly every industry, every business, and almost every business unit across the globe!

As part of the Blue Prism University’s Academia Program, the Associate Developer Certification curriculum helps prepare students for the exam. The key course within this curriculum is the Foundations Developer Course, which is the starting point for anyone wanting to learn Robotic Process Automation and gives students the solid base needed to then move through other available courses. It is estimated that this course requires a good 40+ hours for students to complete (additional time will be needed to complete the consolidation exercise at the end of the course). Blue Prism also provides instructor materials that go hand in hand with the Foundations Developer course to help make it easier for faculty to teach the course to their students.

In addition to the Foundations course, the rest of the curriculum would require another 30-40 hours’ worth of work for students to complete and be prepared to pass the exam (administered by our partner, PearsonVue). Definitely a nice thing for students to put on their LinkedIn profiles to help them stand out for future career opportunities upon graduating from college!

More and more schools are taking advantage of the Blue Prism Academia program and helping to close the skills-gap between academia and industry. A partnership like this means a win-win-win for the schools, the students, and industry. In my next blog, I will do a deep dive into one such partnership!

For more information about our Academia program, visit our overview page. You can also sign up to become an Academic partner by registering here.

Watch out for more blog posts from the Blue Prism University Academia Team informing you about the state of our growing learning ecosystem, announcements around new partnerships, events like hackathons and webinars, and any new courses or programs that become newly published. Until then, happy learning!!