NASSCOM offers to certify students' IT job skills

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 06 July 2007, 19:30 IST
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Chennai: Following the success of NASSCOM's Assessment and Certification Programme (NAC) for the BPO sector, it is also considering a similar testing and accreditation offer, NAC Tech, for IT services, according to Kiran Karnik, Chairman, Nasscom. According to Karnik, NAC-Tech is likely to be launched this academic year, and aims to make NAC-Tech, an industry standard to evaluate students aspiring to find jobs in the technology/engineering industries. To understand the potential of the students and to determine their caliber in terms of industry relevance and employability, NAC-Tech will also help the IT industry, academic institutions and individual colleges. NAC was launched as a pilot last year. It rolled out in Rajasthan where 2,500 people took the NAC test for the BPO sector to ensure transformation of a 'trainable' workforce into an 'employable' workforce. Karnik said that by the year-end, NAC for BPO will be rolled out in various States, including Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Andhra Pradesh, North Eastern States and West Bengal. By 2010, revenues from the Indian IT industry are likely to double to $60 billion. The industry will provide direct job opportunities to around 11 million from three million, and indirect jobs would be four-five times more, he said. "Though India has 347 institutes of higher education and 16,885 colleges that produce around 495,000 technical graduates, the major concern is that the right kind of people is not available for the industry," said Karnik. India's emergence as a preferred outsourcing destination has created the need for 2.3 million professionals by 2010. As per NASSCOM's estimates, a shortage of half a million skilled knowledge workers may arise if remedial action is not taken. Forseeing a shortage of skilled professional, Karnik called for educational reforms to allow corporates to enter the sector.

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