Immigrants and refugees: Untapped data science potential

Companies everywhere are looking to dramatically improve their operations by boosting their use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data. The problem is, finding the people with the skills to deploy and use these powerful tools is difficult—there just aren’t that many individuals out there with them. Or are there?

A collaboration among Accenture, Upwardly Global, and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) at the University of California shows that these in-demand skills can be found in what many companies might consider unlikely places—including the U.S. immigrant and refugee communities. These groups have hidden skills that, with some targeted training, could serve as a strong foundation for building new data science, engineering, analytics, and AI skills. All we need is an open mind and a little creative thinking.

There are thousands of applications at work, in our car, and in the machines and consumer devices we operate that collect and use data to improve performance. The continued growth in those applications has led to increasing numbers of highly skilled and specialized employment areas that require skills in data analytics, machine learning, decision science, data engineering, and other related areas, as well as in foundational tools such as Python, R, SQL, and TensorFlow. Recent Accenture research confirms just how strong this demand is—and how big the gap is between companies’ needs and the supply of such skills.

An Accenture analysis of labor data from Burning Glass—a jobs market analytics tool that offers labor market trends—found that between October 1, 2020, and September 30, 2021, the numbers of job openings, by occupation, requesting data scientist and data engineer skills were 8,791 and 8,162, respectively.

Overall, as measured by total job postings among major metropolitan areas of interest, the New York (59,720) and Washington, D.C., metro areas (47,447) have the strongest demand for jobs requiring data science and data engineering skills, followed by the San Francisco (42,447) and Chicago (29,4630) metros. And these are well-paying jobs, with a median annual salary of around $100,000 in these areas.

From an industry standpoint, the Professional, Technical, and Scientific Services sector leads the way in demand for data science and data engineering skills, accounting for 30% of the total job openings. Finance and Insurance (21%), Information (14%), and Manufacturing (9%) also demonstrated strong demand.

With the need for these and other skills critical to the use of AI and data growing, and their supply still scarce, employers need to get creative in their search for talent. Often, that includes looking at talent sources that don’t immediately come to mind as hotbeds of data science skills.

One of the biggest, and most promising, of these sources is the immigrant and refugee community, which recently has experienced a major influx of Afghan refugees resettling in the United States. Many members of this community have hidden skills that, with some targeted training, could serve as a strong foundation for building new data science, engineering, analytics, and AI skills. However, despite the potential, they face numerous cultural and systemic barriers that inhibit their full participation in the U.S. workforce and economy.

Immigrants and refugees are part of what we call the "hidden worker" —skilled people who struggle to find work even when companies are desperate for talent. In fact, millions of people are eager to work, if only employers could find them. Why do such workers remain hidden? Accenture, in partnership with Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work, did a study to find out. The research identified several categories of people who became hidden workers, including people who are caregivers, veterans, immigrants and refugees, those with mental health or developmental/neurodiversity challenges, those from less-advantaged populations, people who were previously incarcerated, and those without traditional qualifications. Among the biggest reasons companies have trouble identifying and considering such workers as candidates to meet their skills needs are a widening training gap, inflexibly configured automated recruiting systems, and failure to recognize the value these “hidden workers” can potentially bring to the business, hence preventing them from elevating this business case.

The benefits of tapping into this workforce are significant. According to our research, companies that hire these hidden workers are 44% less likely to face challenges finding workers with the necessary skills and 35% less likely to face challenges meeting diversity goals. Once hired, hidden workers outperform their peers across six key criteria: attitude and work ethic, productivity, quality of work, engagement, attendance, and innovation. Although rethinking best practices in hiring and rewiring human and technology processes will be a steep climb, it’s clear that hiring hidden workers is not only a social imperative, but also good for business.

Recognizing the challenge, Upwardly Global has stepped in to make a difference. It’s an internationally recognized nonprofit organization whose mission is to eliminate employment barriers for skilled, college-educated immigrants as well as refugees, and to help integrate these populations into the professional workforce.

Upwardly Global addresses barriers such as knowledge gaps, skills, and training through a combination of soft skills training, employer engagement, and labor market-driven technical skills training to prepare participants to fill the highest-demand roles in industries with the highest projected growth—including data science, machine learning, and data engineering.

Within the past year, 242 individuals completed just under 700 total data science/data engineering courses within the organization’s career skills program. Nearly half (101) of them found jobs, 18 of whom were placed in a data science or data engineering role—illustrating the both the untapped potential in this group and the selective nature of this field. Thirty-five more individuals are currently actively seeking data science-related jobs.

Of the 18 people who were placed (including one with Accenture), 14 already had some direct experience in or knowledge of the IT industry or data science. However, three did not: a former marketing and sales professional, a business analyst and scrum master, and a healthcare industry professional. These three individuals were able to build on adjacent skills (e.g., project management, sourcing and procurement, enterprise analysis, and data analysis) to develop new skills that helped them land data science-related jobs.

It’s clear that such intentional, targeted reskilling of immigrants and refugees can have a big impact on both a company’s ability to fill critical roles and new arrivals’ opportunities to restart their careers in the U.S. And that’s what spurred Accenture, Upwardly Global, and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) to collaborate on a formal, scalable program to build greater awareness among immigrants and refugees of career opportunities in data science and related roles; identify the skills these professionals have—as well as those they need—and train them to prepare for these roles; and ultimately help them find opportunities to put their new skills to work for employers that need them.

This collaboration, launched in the autumn of 2020, is a cross-sector effort: It brings together a private-sector company, a higher-education institution, and a non-government organization to find solutions to a critical problem that both employers and immigrant and refugee job-seekers have.

As a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security, Accenture brings a unique perspective to the team. Accenture works with clients to help them scale AI by embedding AI-powered data, analytics and automation capabilities into business workflows.

The company initially conducted the labor market research mentioned earlier on a pro bono basis to quantify the extent of the gap between the demand for and supply of critical data sciences-related skills—which helped inform the design and strategy of the collaborative program. Accenture also provides industry-based mentors working in data analytics, intelligent automation and AI to coach the individuals who’ve completed their training with Upwardly Global and BIDS and help them through the job-seeking process. And, as an employer, Accenture is in a position to hire individuals from the program to work in the company’s Applied Intelligence practice, where data sciences skills are fundamental to Accenture’s services.

Upwardly Global’s invaluable contribution to the partnership is its connection to internationally trained immigrant and refugee professionals who are restarting their careers in the United States. These educated, skilled, talented, and experienced individuals:

• Are fully authorized to work in the U.S.
• Have a bachelor’s degree or higher
• Have an average of five to seven years of professional work experience
• Are fluent in English and are bi-lingual or multi-lingual, and are globally diverse

Upwardly Global also supplies the training programs to help job-seekers who already have data sciences skills advance those skills, as well as to help those with adjacent skills build the relevant new skills to prepare them for data sciences-related roles.

Working together, Accenture, Upwardly Global, and BIDS have helped numerous professionals prepare for and find work in new data sciences roles. Here are just a few examples of success.

The more than 2 million unemployed or underemployed immigrants and refugees in the U.S. face a daunting challenge in looking for work. These include the thousands of refugees newly arrived from Afghanistan, who hold higher education and impressive experience and are ready to join the professional workforce. From finding opportunities, applying for jobs, and interviewing, to encountering cultural barriers and developing an understanding of how to promote themselves to potential employers, this community continues to struggle to find rich, rewarding jobs in their new country. At the same time, these individuals are highly skilled, with a minimum of a four-year degree and international experience, and are fully authorized to work in the U.S.—meaning, they represent a major untapped source of talent who can fill a variety of in-demand roles, especially those in the data sciences field.