COMPTIA LAUNCHES GLOBAL IT CAREERS HUB FOR PUPILS, TEACHERS AND PARENTS

CompTIA has launched Skillsboost, a new IT career site that offers dedicated content for students, parents and teachers.

IT industry organization CompTIA recently announced the launch of a new IT careers website called Skillsboost. The initial launch of Skillsboost was aimed at UK-based visitors, but a version of the site for the North American audience is now available.

CompTIA’s goal for Skillsboost is to offer information about its certification programs and to attract people to the possibilities offered by a career in IT. The site features personalized content for three specific audiences: students, parents and educators.

As you might expect, the bulk of the Skillsboost site content is targeted at students. The site has been designed with a generous application of HTML5 glitter dust and clearly wants to attract young students with its slick layout and dynamic page elements.

The site does a lot to reinforce the benefits of a career in IT, including capsule summaries of success stories and links to CompTIA’s “Test Drive an IT Career” YouTube playlist. Students who already have some IT knowledge can take timed pop quizzes on IT fundamentals in support, security and networking categories. And of course, there is a wealth of content on CompTIA’s certification programs, including links to the CompTIA certification roadmap and individual certification information pages.

For parents, Skillsboost offers a short FAQ addressing the benefits of IT certification, with tips to help them get their kids interested in career development. This section has many of the same links to CompTIA certification program documents and web pages that the section for students contains. Hopefully, CompTIA will continue to build out its section for parents, because existing content is a bit meager.

The section for educators is essentially a marketing pitch for the CompTIA Authorized Partner Program. The CAPP definitely comes with decent benefits, such as discounts on CompTIA certification exams and subscriptions to its CertMaster training software. But, it would be nice to see some site content for educators that is more than just a blatant advertisement for the CAPP.

CompTIA’s Skillsboost currently walks a thin line between a useful IT career site and a bullish online marketing brochure. These are early days for the site, as it was only launched at the end of June 2015, so we’re hoping that it will grow in the right way. If CompTIA continues to add more career-oriented content, Skillsboost has the potential to become a very good resource for its target audiences.