Microsoft Corp aims to place 50,000 people in jobs that require technology skills as part of a broader push being undertaken with its professional networking website LinkedIn to help workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic move into new fields, the company said on Tuesday.
The jobs will be in what Microsoft calls its “ecosystem” of companies that use or help sell its products.
LinkedIn said it will extend the free courses until the end of this year. Microsoft and LinkedIn had aimed to get 25 million people to try the courses and said Tuesday that the figure hit 30.7 million, most from the United States but with many from almost every other part of the world.
Microsoft, which said it found that digital training courses work best when supported by local nonprofit groups who help people learning new skills, said it would work with those groups to place 50,000 people in jobs that require technology skills over the next three years. The program will initially focus on the United States but expand beyond that starting next year.
The push is one of the first times that Microsoft has worked closely with LinkedIn and its GitHub software coding tool service, both of which Microsoft has allowed to operate with relatively autonomy.