In the backdrop of Amazon Web Services Inc.’s commitment to train 29 million cloud professionals by 2025, Accenture PLC has taken on a similar initiative.

The company is making considerable strides in bringing a new crop of skilled cloud professionals into the fold.

“There’s definitely a war for talent out there,” said Gina Fratarcangeli (pictured, right), managing director and market unit sales leader for Accenture. “In this space, we continuously hear from our clients that they can’t hire enough people. So, in the past, in the technology space, a lot of clients were hiring their own teams. And, here, they just can’t get the skills fast enough. So we’re spending a tremendous amount of time being proactive.”

Fratarcangeli and Denise Reese (pictured, left), managing director, south market unit lead for Accenture AWS Business Group at Accenture, spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the skills shortage in cloud computing and how it’s being remedied. (* Disclosure below.)

How the issue is being addressed

A lot of activity is currently happening on the side of talent recruiting at Accenture. The company is employing a multi-point strategy that bypasses the conventional recruitment channels and fully accommodates the disenfranchised sections of society.

“One thing that we’re doing is, we set up an apprentice program where we’re reaching out into the market to find diverse talent, who aren’t coming through the critical normal college path, and bringing folks in like that. And we’ve got 1,200 people that we’ve brought in that way, just in the Midwest,” Fratarcangeli explained.

Accenture’s strategy has also extended to include more young women in the workforce to promote inclusion and diversity. Partnering with an initiative called The Mom Project, the company has already helped women who were sidetracked due to domestic responsibilities gain a foothold in the industry.

Accenture is also in partnership with Georgia’s technical colleges.

“We’ve just launched an initiative with the technical college system of Georgia and AWS. So, it’s a public-private partnership, where we’re actually helping to set the curriculum for those students that are going through programs, through the technical college,” Reese explained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Accenture PLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Accenture nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE