Key Requisites for an Entry Level IT Professional by Jayant Krishna TATA Consultancy Services Limite

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Key Requisites for an Entry Level IT
Professionalby Jayant KrishnaTATA Consultancy
Services Limited

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A Paradoxical Situation

• India now a global software brand, Sectors
  brilliant performance made possible by the Human
  Resources deployed
• Indias basic Engineering educational system is
  robust in conventional branches which has been
  leveraged by IT sector employers to a great
  extent
• All studies indicate that we face an acute
  shortage of Human Resources for IT

• IT sector in India has managed to garner only 2
  of global market - again surprisingly because of
  Human Resource constraints
• The quality of relevant IT education has lagged
  behind. We do not have a mapping of a taxonomy of
  IT careers against appropriate education
  training contents
• Game of numbers results in ill equipped
  institutes luring students who become misfits in
  the industry

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What Overseas Clients of Several IT Companies
Have to Say?

• Spoken English sounds like Greek and Latin
• Pedestrian writing skills, no e-mail etiquettes
• Insensitive towards cross-cultural issues.
• Lack of grooming makes you guys lesser mortals
• Utter disregard to the dress code.
• Lack of personal and community hygiene.
• Under-developed table manners, lack of dining
  discipline.
• Lack of soft skills, less idea about art of
  living
• No sense of humour.
• Dearth of well rounded professionals, incomplete
  guys
• Lack of multi-disciplinary competency and
  holistic approach
• Inability to relate to real-world problems,
  inability to see the larger picture
• Little abstraction capabilities
• Lack of business domain appreciation
• IT fundamentals not too strong, lack of in-depth
  knowledge.
• Problem of treating job as an extension of the
  campus
• Technicians rather than consultants
• Too many boys, very few men
• Moved up the value chain is a distant cry on the
  horizon

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Software as a Profession Some Inherent
Constraints

• No Consensus on Body of Knowledge to define the
  scope boundary of the profession
• Loose and not an Exact Application of
  Engineering principles
• No strict Laws / Invariant properties as in
  Science.
• Large set of stakeholders
• Certification at a nascent stage
• Ethical business standards yet to set deep roots

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Software Developer - Evolution

• Personality type (Myers-Briggs Personality Model)
• Introversion (vs. Extroversion)
• Sensing (vs. Intuition)
• Thinking (vs. Feeling)
• Judging (vs. Perceiving)
• Programmer (vs. Consultant)
• Challenge
• Ability to move across the spectrum, like an
  oscillating pendulum
• Evolving Software Profession (barely 50 year old
  worldwide, still younger in India)
• Evolution (Programming to Solution Providing)

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Current Software Scenario

• Immature discipline (Craft?? Commerce??
  Profession??)
• Heterogeneous input from engineering colleges
• Business and applications are prime drivers of
  technology
• Gaps in Formal Education need to focus on
• Knowledge of permanent value and not fleeting
  skills (Engineering Mindset)
• Synthesis abilities along with analytical
  abilities
• Abstraction capabilities and not solution schemes
  for a given problem
• Holistic thinking
• Problem solving orientation

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Five Major Dimensions that IT Companies Evaluate
Key Personality Characteristics
Discipline Knowledge, Training / Seminars
Technical Skills
Special Abilities, if any
Mental and Emotional Abilities
Education and Formal Qualifications
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How Candidates Get Ratedin Interviews?
Attitude 35
Image and Appearance 10
Communication (Verbal Non-verbal) 25
Technical Skills Qualifications 30
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ASSESSMENT AT ENTRY LEVEL TEN COMMANDMENTS

• Energy, Drive and Initiative
• Education Performance Trend over Time
  (consistency)
• Extra-curricular accomplishments to gauge
  Management
• and Organizational Ability
• Problem Solving Thinking Skills
• Technical Competency Potential to Learn
• Team Leadership Ability
• Schooling
• Family Background
• Character, Values, Commitment Goals
• Personality Culture Fit

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Generic Training Model
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Where Non-Premium IT Institutes Lack?

• Paucity of High Quality IT Faculty
• Compensation challenges
• Industry opportunities drive job-seekers away
  from academics
• Re-tooling, continuing education faculty
  development a distant cry on horizon
• Most teachers entered academics by compulsion
  than by choice, not role models
• Infrastructure Constraints
• Obsolescence of Computing Resources
• Expensive Software Licenses
• Bandwidth limitations
• Inadequate subscription of International Books
  and Journals
• Dilution in Education Standards
• Relatively lower focus on IT fundamentals
• Curriculum re-design far too infrequent
• Money the prime driver rather than academics
• Lack of seriousness in the non-creamy layer of
  students
• Lack of stringent examining standards
• Lack of industry-academia interface compels the
  institutes to remain in their shell

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Indicative IT Curriculum

• Compulsory Courses
• Basic Mathematics
• Advanced Mathematics
• Basics of Business
• Algorithms and Automata
• Systems Thinking
• Basics of Information Systems
• Overview of Technology Elements
• Architectures Distributed Computing
• Advanced data structures
• Object Oriented Concepts
• GUI - Visual Programming Languages
• RDMS
• Data Communication, Computer Networks, TCP / IP
  Internet
• Detailed Technology Elements
• Embedded Systems
• Basic Software Engineering
• Advanced Software Engineering
• Software Project Management

• Electives
• Intelligent Systems
• ERP CRM Systems
• Image Processing Geographic Information Systems
• E- Business Systems
• Cryptography Data Security
• Information Management
• Healthcare Biomedical Systems
• E-Governance
• IT Society
• Net-Centric Computing
• Mobile Computing
• Business Intelligence Systems
• Industrial Process Control Systems
• Multi-Media Entertainment Systems
• Formal Methods
• Flexible Manufacturing Systems 

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Human Resources for IT Required Interventions
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Action Items for Delegates

• Recast your IT curriculum with focus on
  fundamentals (Creating Human Resources for
  Information Technology - A Systemic Study on
  NASSCOM site)
• Introduce business skills and consulting
  methodology teaching
• Introduce extensive teaching of soft-skills by
  experts
• Cultural sensitivity training
• Grooming
• Dress code
• Communications Presentation Skills
• Table manners, dining discipline
• Attitudinal change workshops
• Encourage systems engineering as a discipline
• Have enough foreign Books Journals, create
  incentives for reading, create intellectual
  assets and have electronic knowledge repositories
  
• Usher in incentives for faculty thru compensation
  research opportunities
• Have IT companies of repute as Campus Mentors
• Pro-actively solicit interaction with industry
  associations like NASSCOM, IEEE, CSI, etc. for
  an on-going industry-academia interface
• Shun laid back attitude, do not subscribe to
  çhalta hai syndrome, have the fire in the
  belly, become agents of change for creating an
  academic environment be passionate to make
  quality a way of life at the campus

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Thank you
jayant.krishna_at_tcs.com