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DigiTalk with DUT’s Colin Thakur: “Help me fill these IT jobs”

DigiTalk with DUT’s Colin Thakur: “Help me fill these IT jobs”

An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professional receiving a call from Accenture requesting a meeting, is the equivalent of the mountain calling Moses. It is surreal.

Let’s talk Accenture. It is a technology company at position 404 in the Fortune 500 rank, with 280 000 employees in 120 countries. It was voted a top hundred company in the world, to work for. Accenture is a company that understands where it comes from, where it operates and more importantly it has a pretty good idea where the world is heading towards.

It turns out to be a really good story to tell. Accenture targets individuals and organisations, such as yours truly and the intrepid CEO of SmartXchange Jonathan Naidoo. Would I, they asked, commit to their Skills to Succeed (S2S) project that will take a few hundred graduates in a deep skills intervention programme as a partnership?
Would I?

Dreams sometime come true, in your space, in your domain and on your terms! This is digital heaven to me.

Who is this aimed at? Accenture has a dizzy target of impacting 6,000 previously disadvantaged youth of South Africa with market-relevant ICT skills to either get a job or build a sustainable business by 2018. The programme aims at building careers not just creating jobs.

One does not become a global, multinational, multicultural company operating in every imaginable time zone by luck. I have complete faith in their model and their methodology and having been exposed to extensive training by them for this programme, I can barely wait to start.

Why and how are they doing this? S2S is Accenture’s global corporate citizenship initiative, which focuses on advancing employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in South Africa and other emerging economies. They provide financial support and pro-bono contributions of time and employee skills, working through non-profit partners to make a difference in our communities. This is a developmental effort in the ICT programming domain.

But aren’t we doing this? The government has done its bit to fund the learner. The university and student have done what it takes on their respective part to complete the degrees. The irony is that the student remains unemployed in a country crying out for such skills.

Which is why Accenture is doing this. Accenture has conducted contextual research, on current business practice for opportunities and what needed to be done to make people employable.

The result? The S2S programme aims at developing skills and employment opportunities for young South Africans with help from partners and non-profit organisations.
In South Africa reasons for under-equipped graduates include: lack of resources and equipment; lack of business experience of lecturers and lack of focused mentorship due to large class sizes and the changing education landscape requiring lecturers to pursue postgraduate studies which may compete with vocational skills development.

How will it work? The four-month program not only equips a learner with the technical knowledge, but workplace integration skills, as well as project management skills. As this methodology is currently used at Accenture to train our industry leaders, they felt it is time to share this wealth of information and skill to the unemployed youth and build a greater nation. To ensure knowledge transfer, class sizes are restricted to 20, with two lecturers for intensive learning.

How can you help? Dear readers please help me place these super-skilled graduates, if you have a project or business opportunity for such skills. If, on the other hand, you have skills that will enhance my programme, please also let me know? It will impact your cousin, colleague, neighbour or friend.

So how did this happen to me? Luck? I am beginning to love Gary Player’s contention “the more you practice the luckier you get!” Another reason, however, is divine providence in the form of one Khethiwe Nkuna, head of corporate social investment at Accenture Africa. She knows her core business, understands what needs to be done, and defers to the experts.

We have a historic relationship where we took disadvantaged learners from iLembe and turned their lives around, both academically and socially. She was headhunted before we completed the project, which in any event was an awesome success. I will write and crow about her legacy soon. Sister Khethiwe in her new role sought me out and made the proposition.

Would I indeed?
Accenture acknowledges the previous model of conceptual to contextual to workplace learning as a tried and tested one. S2S evolves this and draws on Accenture’s core competencies of training talent to address the skills needed to open doors to employment around the world. We as implementing partners will eagerly implement this.
Who will we select? We will target underemployed and unemployed ICT or engineering graduates from databases in our province who have aptitude for software programming. I emphasise this is for programmers. As a graduate you must convince us you can indeed write real computer programs. There will be interviews, skills and psychometric assessments.

So would I? Yes, Yes, and Yes!
I would because I am an improbable success from a tiny matchbox house crammed with seven people in Unit 5, Chatsworth. I therefore respectfully modify the Ubuntu principal of “I am because you are.” I am an ICT professional and so will you be. Come hell or high water. I warily remind you the word “hell” is both the noun and the verb. If you have the appetite, and the tenacity, apply for this. Watch this space for further details on how to apply. Good luck.

Is this not a really, really good story to tell?

Pictured: Colin Thakur is the Director of the iNeSi e-Skills CoLab at the Durban University of Technology. He is a digital activist keen on upgrading the e-skills of the nation to enhance the quality of life. He lives and subscribes to the mantra One-person-One-connected device.

Source: East Coast Mail, 30 January 2015

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