A former Facebook employee recently launched an apprenticeship initiative to teach workers the skills necessary to close the data skills gap. Andy Kriebel, a former data analyst for the giant social network, started the program to train individuals in Tableau and Alteryx, two major tools used in the data analytics field. Called The Data School, the UK-based academy uses a mixture of project work and real-world placement to teach these much-needed technical skills. "I traveled the world and trained employees and answered business questions," Kriebel said. "My job was to enable people in their roles to do data analysis more quickly with Tableau." He thinks there is a need for such a school because there is a very limited pool of individuals with the required data skills to work for companies like Facebook. "We thought, 'we can't find the people anywhere, so we'll just make them,' and that's how it got started," Kriebel said. "Participants go through four months of dedicated training and they're paid by us—so they're being paid to undertake this training."