The global talent development corporation has tied up with the IT multinational to roll-out ‘Women in Tech’ initiative across 5,000 schools, colleges and centres in 200 cities. Prachi Rege reports
With an increased awareness of the business challenges and employment opportunities that the IT industry offers, many Indian women are opting to work in this otherwise male-dominated sector. However, the IT and ITES industry in India employs about one million women, which makes them 15 per cent of the working population in the sector.
In order to improve these numbers and attract women in professionals, NIIT has partnered with Microsoft to offer the Women in Tech initiative designed to help aspiring IT professionals from the time they are in high school until they take up a IT job or start their own IT venture. "In the first year, we will train and mentor the next one million women and help them join, grow and succeed in the IT industry," says Udai Singh, president, global technology strategy, NIIT Ltd.
As the Primary Learning Partner, NIIT will utilise its nationwide network to train and certify girl students and women professionals in the latest Microsoft technologies, through technology skill enhancer courses. "This will skill the candidates to find suitable careers in IT and accelerate their growth in the fast-evolving IT industry," informs Singh.
A number of activities reaching out to different age groups of women have been planned under the ageis of this newly formed collaboration. NIIT will introduce school girls aged 13-16 years across 4000 schools to a host of IT careers through the ‘IT Wizard’ workshops.
A campus connect programme has been designed to reach out to young women in over 1000 colleges to encourage them to participate and contribute to the dream of a Digital India.
Women@NIIT days is specially designed to engage with the college/ school students through webinars. In addition to all of the above there will also be special job fairs for women across six large cities.
To help aspirants validate their skills and acquire internationally recognised professional certification NIIT is offering consultation sessions and additional test preparation modules. Candidates have the option to choose from NIIT’s recently launched programmes—FutureSmart series of digital literacy courses, eight new technology skill enhancer courses addressing technology mega-trends such as cloud and mobile app development, big data, cloud computing and virtualisation.
There is also a new post graduate programme in cloud computing and IT management and a certificate programme in app development. These courses will be conducted at NIIT centres across India. In some of the locations, these courses may get delivered at the college campus too. "Participants will benefit from the convenience and new-age learning environments provided by our cloud campus and Microsoft’s virtual academy. NIIT trainers who are certified by Microsoft and are experts in the Microsoft technology domains would be conducting these courses," informs Singh.
Those women interested in honing their skills for the booming IT sector can apply for any of the above mentioned courses either on Microsoft or NIIT's web portals. The fees of the programmes depends and vary based-on the technology and duration of the same.
Who will benefit
a. Girls at high school
b. Young women in STEM
c. Women technologists
d. Women entrepreneurs
