Red Hat offers various free fundamentals and just-in-time learning opportunities

It is no secret that organizations value candidates who demonstrate a commitment to staying abreast of new technologies and industry trends. A recent IDC whitepaper sponsored by Red Hat, "The Business Value of Red Hat Training," revealed that trained IT staff see greater productivity, risk mitigation and a reduction in IT infrastructure costs. 

When it comes to team onboarding, job readiness increased by 76% when new team members had already completed Red Hat training prior to joining, and by more than half (55%) in cases where they were trained as part of the onboarding process.

Clearly, training and certification increases marketability of job candidates in a competitive employment landscape. Unfortunately, barriers persist in accessing quality training, as it can often present as cost-prohibitive for individuals who may not have educational opportunities sponsored by their employer. Red Hat Training and Certification is dedicated to making open source learning accessible to those who are interested in upskilling and improving their technical expertise and professional skills.

Access online content

Red Hat offers a number of free training resources in the form of technical overviews published on Red Hat's Training and Certification page. These technical overviews provide more than 18 hours of educational content on the Red Hat product portfolio. 

Community learning partners offer additional training, allowing learners with existing accounts to integrate Red Hat Training and Certification with other learning and expand your product knowledge. Some community learning partners offering Red Hat-developed training include Coursera, Udemy, EdX, PluralSight, and openSAP. We continue to look to find new community learning partners to expand the reach and availability of Red Hat training.

Outside of the traditional formal training, product and services teams within Red Hat have increased their focus on training resources: Red Hat Consulting offers informal whiteboarding tutorials and guidance on embracing DevOps practices and enabling teams to utilize open source technology on the Red Hat Consulting YouTube channel. 

The Red Hat OpenShift team has poured effort into an interactive learning portal for OpenShift, which provides users with a pre-configured OpenShift instance that can be used to experiment, learn the basics of OpenShift and troubleshoot real-world problems in a low-risk environment. 

Similarly Red Hat Developer offers a no-cost Developer Sandbox for Red Hat OpenShift, allowing access to the cutting-edge technologies built on Kubernetes. Kube by Example is a recently-announced collaboration between Red Hat teams, aligning with the intention of offering complimentary training on Kubernetes. Red Hat is consistently iterating our community learning opportunities to keep pace with the industry and our audience. 

Collaborating for good

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna cited the digital skills gap as the single biggest challenge currently holding the economy back, prompting the launch of the IBM SkillsBuild digital learning platform. 

Through this initiative, Red Hat joins more than 30 high-impact organizations globally to broaden access to skills and employment opportunities by providing job seekers with access to industry-renowned Red Hat Training courses. This collaboration helps aspiring IT leaders, particularly in underserved communities, hone marketable skills in open source software, among other topics.

Learn from your peers

A key component of making the most of these free resources is the ability to gain insight and advice from peers within the industry. Red Hat Learning Community provides an informal environment for learning from and communicating with other members of the Red Hat community. 

Red Hat Learning Community offers just-in-time learning opportunities by allowing members to ask and answer questions on an open forum, moderated by Red Hat portfolio experts. The community provides a space to pick the brains of experts and plan for making the most out of the Red Hat experience.

Educating the future of open source

In addition to the resources available online, Red Hat also places emphasis on developing the next generation of experts in the industry, meeting students where they are. Red Hat Academy offers free training on Red Hat products to tens of thousands of students per year at high schools and higher education institutions around the globe. 

This strategic program was created in order to foster the future of leadership in the open source community, and to prepare students for careers in enterprise software. Students have the opportunity to earn Red Hat certifications that can help propel their careers and allow them to stand out from peers as proven and ready to take on the largest challenges in the industry.

An open culture opens more doors for learners

In a time where financial constraints can pose a significant challenge to participating in valuable learning opportunities, Red Hat has worked on the creation of collaborations and initiatives intended to close the skills gap within the field of information technology. This level of accessibility to premiere training opportunities can help enable the next generation of open source professionals and open doors for learners around the world. Explore Red Hat’s free training offerings today.