Photo: Rohit Gautam |
| IT COMPANIES today look more towards recruiting trained candidates |
INFORMATION technology, though a promising discipline on its own, plays a major role in other sectors like banking, manufacturing, telecom, hospitality, hospitals, etc., aiming at improving competence and enhancing revenues. There is a huge demand for software programming, data mining, business intelligence software, analytics courses, cloud computing, data warehousing, android and windows mobile- based applications development both in India and abroad, says Swapnil Dharmadhikari, CEO, ePravesh, a platform for online admissions. In order to meet this demand, it is imperative that students get trained to meet the required standards. “Major IT companies prefer their recruits to hold a formal degree; the smaller ones are comfortable even with domain or technology-specific certifications and hire fresh graduates (non-engineers) who show real promise,” says Pankaj Mittal, Director (India, Middle East & Africa), Archelons, a global recruitment and talent acquisition company.
However, IT education still has a long way to go. Though in metropolitan cities institutes are better equipped, in tier-2 cities and towns, they do not have updated syllabus. Inter-personal skills is another attribute where students are found wanting across cities. “Updation of curricula is necessary looking at the pace of change in technology. Teaching industry-specific topics to students needs much emphasis if one has to make them employable. Though IT education in India has improved in the last decade, the concentration of excellent technical skills is limited to certain parts,” says Timi Kwatra, Recruitment Head, Virtusa Corporation.
The education in this sector is mainly divided into four segments – vendor-based certifications, vendor-neutral certification, government-based certifications and specialized programmes that are offered by private institutes. Here we take a closer look at them:
Vendor certifications
Achieving an IT certification from a company that develops IT products could double the market value of a job-seeker as it acts as an authentic testimony of one’s learning. Further, a certification allows the student to use the respective company’s logo on his/her business card and website, and he/she becomes a member of exclusive social networking communities of that company. A student can choose to prepare for these courses through classroom training at approved centres, or buy approved training material for self study, or devote time on the computer to study online. “Simulation softwares have made online IT education easier. They can be used to assess cognitive as well as practical abilities,” says Krishna Kumar, Director, Simplilearn.com.
