"We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity; if you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out"- these famous words by Management Guru, Peter Drucker were never more relevant than now.
Pandemic changed the course of our lives- globally- and at all levels! A lot of jobs were lost across the spectrum and we are still reeling under the after effects but the IT industry implemented means to not just ensure continuity but introduced many lucrative options to lure talents.
Remote working gained prominence which in turn changed the way the IT industry hired. A sizeable of chunk of talented work force belonging to smaller towns and cities came on the radar which earlier went largely unnoticed. Women who were on a sabbatical were induced to join the workforce. Up skill and re-skill became the buzz words. IT industry showed resilience and what we saw as an outcome were many positives.
Millionlights University was one such initiative that came to India after running successful tech boot camps in the UK, looking at the necessities here. It’s a proud feeling to be able to make small contributions towards the cause. As pointed out in my earlier articles, we identified the skill gaps widely prevalent and felt the need to intensify work in this niche space. Scouting talents is no mean task and we managed to polish and shape some of them- which is nothing short of a feat considering the situation of the “Covid Batches”.
It’s heartening to see many students graduating out of the colleges with just a degree in hand- but no hands-on experience on any project, no internship- absolutely no practical knowledge. Our education system is long flawed but Covid accelerated and amplified the entire process of merely churning out graduates and post graduates. Millionlights acts as a bridge between the academic and the corporate world, where we strive to fill the skills gap. We have had students coming from diverse backgrounds and walks of life- some coming from the remotest of the rural areas to women who took a break and were finding it difficult to get a foothold. Not just in India, but in the UK too we have worked with people belonging to non-IT backgrounds and trained them to be Cloud Engineers. One of the recent one happens to be a landscape and gardening expert turned Cloud Architect!
The one thing that irks me though is the lack of drive that many students have. I sincerely hope that they wake up to the fact that it’s important to up skill , look for opportunities to work on projects and do whatever is necessary to stay relevant. Our team is happy to have helped such students get jobs who had very slim chances at securing a decent job. We saw them working relentlessly, turning up for all the live sessions, appearing for all mock interviews and constantly upgrading themselves. A big salute to their hard working and never-say-die spirit! Recently, the team felt a greater need to implement company approved projects in the cohort and the ongoing batch will be the first to go through such a rigorous training. It’s our hope that the students understand not to just sit on these opportunities but to capitalize on them.
I also feel the IT industry needs to revise their hiring strategies. From what I hear in my social and professional circles, they spend a decent amount of time, energy and money in hiring and trainings only to realize that the selected candidates were misfits. Sometimes the verification isn’t done properly and on many occasions, it turns out that the candidate should not have been hired in the first place. It’s a drag on the entire process and something that can be easily done away with by engaging an HTD model- the Hire, Train, and Deploy (HTD) framework of recruitment that simplifies the overall recruitment process right from interviewing shortlisted candidates to the employee onboarding process. It indeed is an efficient way to get productive workforce from day one.
We are living in interesting times with newer innovations and competencies coming into foray. We, at Millionlights, are positioned to navigate through the changes and be able to turn the tide for those striving to accomplish bigger and better opportunities. We understand those in 20s- fresh out of colleges, no one to guide, a little wet behind their ears-it might all seem like an uphill task, but with proper direction, it will not be. Together, we can!
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