‘IT-BPO industry continues to be No. 1 career destination’: NIIT

‘IT-BPO industry continues to be No. 1 career destination’: NIIT

Mathura, May 18, 2007: Asia’s largest IT trainer, NIIT held a career seminar for college students in the city today. Addressing a large gathering, Col. Ajai Manohar Lal, Global Head-Channel Management, NIIT said, “The Indian IT-BPO industry continues to be a sunrise career destination for the youth. The sector, which has been growing higher than any other industry segment in the country and generating jobs for an ever expanding business universe, is likely to keep its place as the Number One employer over the next few years.”

Col. Lal shared statistics of the IT-BPO industry which has created jobs for over 1.6 million people in FY 2007, up from 200,000 in 1998. “There is a further estimated demand for 850,000 IT services and 1.4 million ITES-BPO professionals by 2010 in India”, he said.

Recent studies show that there are over 300 institutes of higher learning in India and over 16,000 colleges churning out 495,000 technical graduates, nearly 2.3 million other graduates and over 300,000 post graduates, annually. “However, while India seems to have large numbers of graduates, post graduates and techies coming out of its educational institutions, not all are rightly skilled or employable, especially by the IT-BPO sector. In order to get job-ready, the youth need to opt for special training that will prepare them for the real world that lies ahead”, said Col. Lal.

To address the need for relevantly skilled manpower in the IT-BPO sector, NIIT has introduced portfolio of offerings for different segments: 

• NIIT’s flagship GNIIT programme is one of the most comprehensive, industry-endorsed IT curriculum that offers one year’s industry training through Professional Practice (PP). The industry endorsed curriculum has been revised this year, working closely with technology giants, to ensure that students’ IT skills are mapped to the real life requirements of the industry. 
• ‘NIIT Edgeineers’, a specialised programme for the engineers and IT graduates not only serves as a supplemental skill upgradation programme but also enhances skills of practising professionals. Since its introduction last year, nearly one lakh engineering and IT students have benefited from these programmes.

The NIIT Edgeineers series offers a range of international certification programmes in alliance with global IT giants like Microsoft, Oracle and Citrix, thus giving the students with requisite knowledge to qualify for global certificates in emerging technology platforms.

A significant component of this series is ‘ANIIT’, which is a special accelerated programme for engineering and final year students pursuing their master’s in science. This also helps in selectively choosing students, who, after successful completion of the programme, are provided placement assistance through NIIT’s National Placement Network and Industry Alliances.

Students pursuing these career programs from NIIT have bagged plum jobs in the IT-BPO sectors. In fact, last year NIIT placed over 15,000 students with top IT and non IT companies.

Over 200 students from the NIIT Mathura centre have been placed with leading organizations such as Microsoft, IBM, CSC, HCL Technologies and NIIT Technologies, amongst others.

Col. Ajai Lal also highlighted the emerging career opportunities in other sectors of the Indian economy. According to him, while IT continues to be a lucrative career destination offering opportunities in Software Engineering, Hardware and Networking, Information Security, Storage Management, Database Administration, BPO Management; other sectors such as Banking, Insurance, Retailing and Healthcare will also have a huge shortage of manpower in the next few years.

He shared details about NIIT’s training initiatives in some of these sectors, such as the NIIT Institute of Finance Banking and Insurance which trains entry level professionals for the Banking industry.