Training Wheels

To gain a smarter workforce, companies are directly partnering with colleges to train students 

With competition increasing, today’s companies are looking for better equipped candidates. According to NxtGen White Paper, released by Manipal ProLearn, less than 12% of students clear the initial recruitment test of companies. This affects candidates and employers. This is mostly due to low awareness of industry standards and certifications of IT professionals. 

“There is a huge variation in the curriculum coverage and rigour that various industry certifications follow, making it tough to benchmark them against each other,” said Yogesh Kumar Bhatt, vice-president, IT-Education and Training, Manipal ProLearn. 

“In recent years, clearly there is an increase in industry certifications that mid-level IT professionals are taking up, but that is only for those certifications which are relevant — especially covering digital skills, have required rigour that discriminates between participants, and helps in getting a job or in climbing up the career ladder. Further, professionals take up certifications when it is mandated by clients for their projects,” continued Bhatt.

Integration

To make sure that graduates are job-ready, companies have started partnering with colleges to train students while they pursue their degrees. “Currently, most of these interventions happen in the final semester. There is an opportunity for some of these courses to be integrated with the university syllabus so that students don’t feel the burden, and get credits within their graduation curriculum,” explained Bhatt.

Currently, companies use online and classroom training, and internships. In these, students are equipped with skills that they will need, after graduating and the internships lead to reduced training time after joining a company, which leads to early project deployment.

The major reason why companies have to establish direct tie-ups with the colleges is that the current curriculum is not revised to be in-line with the industry. In addition to giving strong basics to students, they should be exposed to real time projects in order to build their technical skills, learn processes and terminologies. Majorly, this helps students in developing a problem-solving mind-set.

The problem is equal from both sides, students and employers. While students concentrate on getting higher grades and rely on rote learning, companies usually expect a lot from fresh graduates. Bhatt said, “Companies must appreciate that a fresh college graduate will not have application knowledge of tools and specific technology and must provide for specialised training. Graduates must be groomed in their initial days by managers, to enable a cultural transition from campus to corporate.”

This article has originally been published in The Hindu.

About the Author:

Dr. Yogesh Kumar Bhatt the Vice President & Director of Manipal ProLearn. He looks after the academic development and delivery of professional learning programs.

Dr. Bhatt has over two decades of rich experience involving employee competency development, education, training, delivery and consulting in the Information Technology sector.

Prior to this, he was associated with Infosys for over 16 years and in his last role was the Associate Vice President and Head of Consulting and Systems Integration Academy. In this capacity, he headed the training and competency development requirements of Consulting and Systems Integration service which accounted for about 1/3rd of Infosys revenue and had employee strength of more than 30,000.

Dr. Bhatt is a Graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Post-Graduate from CEPT University, Ahmedabad and Fellow (Doctorate) from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad.

Written By

Dr. Yogesh Kumar Bhatt