IT Engineer Skills are neither tested nor sufficient
nirav March 5th, 2007
Was going through my pending stack of magazines this Sunday and made a lot of interesting observations.
RedHerring says India’s IT industry keeps booming, and revenues are expected to reach an ambitious $60 billion by 2010. Not just outsourced work, but even work from local Indian companies is increasing. But the biggest roadblock could come in the form of scarce talent.
As a matter of fact, Kiran Karnik (president of NASSCOM) says: “Most Indian engineers are not very articulate. We need to have finishing schools that train graduates for between three to six months in soft skills such as communication, in addition to honing of certain technology skills to get professionals up to speed with industry needs.
We have been thinking of starting such a program for quite long now. The Effective Programmer Workshop that we carried in Magnet was one such effort. The results of the workshop were amazing. Participants reported excellent impact in Confidence and Problem Solving skills. On average, all participants had very effective improvement in Programming skills, Project management and Integrity.
Here are some quotes on the results the workshop produced:
- My confidence level is so high that I can do anything.
- Time management & planning work
- Mind is free now
- I have learnt something which I never ever thought about!
- Being in integrity
- Different technique of software development
I am planning to do another Effective Programmer Workshop in Magnet, accommodating feedback from the first one. Does your organization have any programs like this?
And on another related note, Linux For You carried an article on Linux Certifications. Shankar Iyer of RedHat says that “Though it may seem that certification is not mandatory, the fact remains that certified professionals are preferred over others. India accounts for the most certified IT professionals the world over.” There are only a few certification options available for Linux. The article also mentions that the trend now is performance based testing, rather than simple multiple choice questions.
Looking around, there more certification options available for technologies other than Linux. There is certain amount of weight a certificate holds, what matters more is how the candidate performs in the test that the employer is giving, and the result of the interview.
Bottomline, it is a big problem to find the right talent at the right time. And then to train and retain.
We are trying to solve this problem. You will hear some announcements in a month.