A Fulfilling Career in Tech Brought to You by Divergence Academy

“Placement is our number one yardstick. We care about our people getting jobs, and jobs are the key measurement at Divergence Academy. If we are doing a good job training people, they will find jobs,” states Sravan Anakaraju, Founder and President of Divergence Academy. 

Sravan’s emphasis on job placement indicates how important student outcomes are at Divergence Academy. The school places itself at the intersection of AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and data science to empower its learners with the knowledge and skills they need to successfully land a job in information technology.

For Divergence Academy, a student’s success is also the school’s success. By working closely with students and partner employers, it works towards the goal of giving both its learners and their partners the best outcomes possible.

With its strong focus on giving non-traditional and transitional learners in-demand skills matched with employment opportunities, Divergence Academy can be your gateway to a fulfilling career in emerging technologies. 

The Divergence Academy Difference

Divergence Academy offers four full-time programs that give its learners the foundational skills they need and the confidence and purpose to move them forward on new career paths. All immersive programs ensure that learners become highly skilled in their fields and, more importantly, highly marketable.

• Data Science Immersive
• Cybersecurity Penetration Tester
• Cloud Engineering Immersive
• Security Operations Management Immersive

Each immersive program covers 160 hours of instruction paired with 240 hours of labs. The programs are led by experts in data science and cybersecurity, giving learners all the foundational skills needed to be highly competitive in the job market. 

With cybersecurity skills becoming more in demand in recent years, it has also become crucial for those aspiring to work in this field to have industry-recognized certifications, aside from being an immersive program graduate.  

To further assist its students, Divergence Academy also offers study groups twice a week for people interested in taking Security+ or Network+ certifications. These are outside of program hours and give learners additional support to obtain these certifications.

Extra support is always helpful for students, especially when they have other obligations and responsibilities, which most who attend Divergence Academy have. The school counts active duty, reserves, and veterans as a predominant part of its student body. 

Almost 85 percent of its student and alumni population is military. As a VET TEC Preferred Provider, Divergence accepts various funding sources, such as the GI Bill®, VRRAP, VR&E, WIOA (only currently offered to TX residents), and the CSP Skills Bridge Program for active-duty military. 

An Income Share Agreement (ISA) is also available. This financing option allows students to complete their training without paying upfront. Only after they find jobs that pay above a set minimum income threshold will their payments start to kick in. 

Whether you are from the military or in a transitional period of your life, there are multiple financing options available to you at Divergence Academy.

Full Career Support for All Learners

Divergence Academy has several initiatives that aim to fully support learners throughout their journey towards new careers. One is the Outcomes Participation Program Agreement (OPPA) that focuses on helping learners find in-demand jobs in cybersecurity, data, and information technology.

“We offer a number of different services to our students, as well as alumni. One thing we have is an Outcomes Program. This is a focused agreement that students can either opt in or opt out of. It’s a way to really focus on your career goals, commit to them, and receive support and accountability,” explains Dauphne Maples, Director of Career Services. 

“Career services are still available to people even if they opt-out of our Outcomes program, but we strongly encourage people to participate in it. We have found that they will find a better job more quickly if they participate in this Outcomes program,” she continues.

Divergence Academy’s deep commitment to its learners includes a dedicated team of Career Service professionals that help learners go through all the steps needed to land their ideal job, from creating industry-standard resumes to acing job interviews. 

“We offer professional resume services where we review and revise people’s resumes. We help them optimize their LinkedIn profiles. We provide mock interviews, including mock technical interviews. Those are handled by our instructors who are experts in the field. Many of them currently and actively work in the technical field they teach in,” says Dauphne.

“We also have career services workshops weekly. These are usually facilitated by a recruiter who is also an industry expert. We have resume-building workshops. We train on networking, where we guide them through finding and working with recruiters on LinkedIn. We have a workshop that goes through the different types of interviews—traditional and behavioral.” 

If students need to attend to other commitments and are unable to attend a live workshop, Divergence Academy makes sure that they are not left out and can still receive the full benefits of career coaching. “We record our workshops so that if someone is not available at the time that the workshop is live, they can always go back in and review it. We do that on a rotating basis,” Dauphne explains.

Divergence Academy also utilizes technology to give its learners an edge in their job search. The school uses Connections, Divergence’s Career Services Management (CSM) tool, powered by Symplicity, to make the job search easier. 

“We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs. This platform pulls jobs from around the country. We look to see if they are relevant for our population, who are primarily interested in information technology, cybersecurity, AI, data science, machine learning-type jobs.” 

“This is a platform that students and alumni can download on their phones. So, if you’re standing in line at the grocery store, you can look through jobs and start applying,” shares Dauphne.

With all the career services available to students, it is still inevitably up to the learner to maximize these opportunities. To get the best possible outcome from a learner’s time with Divergence Academy, Dauphne shares this important piece of advice, “The most important trait is engagement. Engagement in the classroom and engagement in developing your career skills.” 

“You have to be able to interview, and you have to have an industry-standard resume. It has to be able to get through applicant tracking systems. The students who actively engage with academics, career, and placement services are the type of people who will get jobs,” she says.

Divergence Academy instructors and staff are always ready to encourage, empower, and challenge their learners. When this is matched with an engaged and motivated learner, a satisfying career in tech is well within reach. 

Growing Network of Partners

In recent months, Divergence Academy has grown its partner network significantly. It currently has approximately 100 active employer partners it works closely with and another 200 companies it has been in contact with just in the past year. 

The school proactively reaches out to different organizations and companies, introducing itself as an alternative source of talent. If a potential employer is looking to improve their diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) metrics, Divergence Academy can match them with its diverse pool of skilled graduates at no cost to the employer partner, ensuring a win-win situation for all parties.

It also ensures that students get to know the employer partners and vice versa. An example of a Career Services initiative is a weekly Lunch and Learn. 

“Once a week on Fridays, we do an industry Lunch and Learn. This is where we have a recruiter, hiring manager, or a talent acquisition group from a hiring company, present about their organization, their culture, perhaps their work with veterans, and the different job opportunities currently available to our Divergence community. Both current learners and alumni are encouraged to attend,” Dauphne shares.

Divergence Academy is in constant communication with its employer partners, representing their learners, helping them find the best-fit matches, and facilitating introductions. “We refer specific students to our partners. 

“Some of these partners, even if they haven’t participated in our Lunch and Learns and career fairs, have jobs they want to fill. They provide that information to our Placement Specialist. She makes students aware of these jobs and then submits their resumes.” 

With more Preferred Employer partners joining the Divergence Academy hiring network, learners have even greater opportunities to land their ideal job in tech and start new professional chapters in their lives.

Will I Find a Job After Divergence Academy?

Divergence Academy graduates work at top companies like AT&T, Microsoft, TDS Telecom, Signify Health, among others. Some have also found jobs within the United States Army and the Department of the Interior. As of today, the school states that there are almost a hundred Divergence Academy graduates who are gainfully employed, with more graduates expected to join their ranks soon.

One of them is Corey Grant, an Air Force veteran and now the founder of a FinTech company, Beyond Wallet. He discovered Divergence Academy while looking for different schools after completing his active duty. 

“I was impressed with the way Divergence outlined their cybersecurity pen-testing program. I also looked up the different instructors for the course, and I found it amazing that all the instructors had accomplished something major in their careers. The experience and resumes of those whom I’ll be learning alongside and the friendliness of the staff are what got me,” says Corey.

“It’s important for me to learn from someone who has done what they are teaching. These are people who are in the field, doing the work, and who are constantly keeping their skills up to date. So, every question in class pertains to what you’re going to be doing when you’re on the job.”

“What I appreciate about Divergence is that they try to work with everyone. You can be a beginner or someone more experienced, but no matter where you are, you’re going to walk away from the program having learned something. At Divergence, it’s not just about the numbers, it’s actually about helping people learn something,” Corey furthers. 

Corey is just one of the many successful outcomes of Divergence Academy. If you are interested in working towards your own success story within tech, get in touch with Divergence Academy, and learn more about its programs.