Zensar initiates employability skills development programme

Aims to make 500 engineering students from Maharashtra, AP IT-industry ready in one year

 

Zensar Technologies and Zensar Foundation today announced the launch of the Employability Skills Development (ESD) Program for training of fresh graduates towards better readiness for the IT industry, at no cost to the student.

 

As part of this programme, Zensar will be training around 500 students across more than 30 campuses in Maharashtra (24) and Andhra Pradesh (6). Though Zensar has been connecting with universities and colleges for its own hiring needs, this programme is different as the company will focus on training the students and making them ready for employment in the IT industry. It may also eventually hire students.

“The Employability Skills Development (ESD) Programme aims to address a pertinent concern of the Industry and fresh engineering graduates today. Each year more than 80 per cent of the jobs available for fresh engineers are created by the IT industry. Only 20 per cent of those are fulfilled by engineering graduates who have industry ready talent, because the rest severely lack the skills required for the jobs that are available to them. The ESD Program is an initiative to address this talent deficit in our state and we are hopeful that this will be a role model program for the industry,” said Ganesh Natarajan, Vice Chairman and CEO, Zensar Technologies.

 

Last year Zensar had hired about 300 engineering students all of whom had to undergo training of about two-three months.

The programme will mainly target tier II education institutes in these states. Natarajan said that the programme which starts with 500 students will eventually scale. “We are looking at atleast 15 per cent growth in the next two to three years,” he added.

 

Zensar will be investing about Rs 2 crore on this initiative and has created a facility for this programme as its Pune campus.

“This will be a two month programme. Majority of the training will be done at college campuses, we will also bring them to our campus and train them in soft skills. Before that we will also conduct a boot camp for the faculty at our Pune and Hyderabad centres,” said Natarajan.

 

Nasscom reports that only a quarter of engineering graduates are employable by the IT/ITES industry, and even those graduates, undergo a rigorous training program of 3-6 months with their employers after they join the companies. Nasscom data suggests that the IT industry spends close to $0.75 billion annually on training fresh campus graduates.

 

“The program would render Skills Development training for fresh graduates in partnership with the academia and training partners. The focus of the programme will be to enhance technical, functional and soft skills of fresh graduates for effective working in the IT industry,” said Pushpall Kapadia, Head of Organisation Excellence at Zensar Technologies.

 

Pushpall Kapadia, Head of Organisation Excellence at Zensar Technologies said, “NASSCOM reports that only a quarter of engineering graduates are employable by the IT/ITES industry,and even those graduates, undergo a rigorous training program of 3-6 months with their employers after they join the companies. NASSCOM data suggests that the IT industry spends close to $0.75 Billion annually on training fresh campus graduates."At the launch of the EDC she said, "This Employability Skills Development Program from the Zensar Foundation will be conducted at a state-of-the-art facility on the Zensar premises though the Employability Skills Development (ESD) Centre where The program has been designed based on decades of experience that Zensar has with global clientele and through a robust training partner ecosystem."