IT requires multi-skilling

While wisdom has always been known to come with age, knowledge is not always age-subjective. In fact in industries like the IT, there is a tendency for knowledge to become inversely proportional to age because of the pace at which technology changes today.

Therefore, skill-sets that were considered essential earlier, seem to have become redundant now. In such a scenario, multi-skilling and cross-skilling seem to have become the unsaid rule of the IT industry today.

Says Nitin Paranjape, chairman and managing director, Maestros Mediline Systems Limited, "In the IT sector, seniority tends to mean less knowledge. Companies today are moulded around inefficiencies because their employees are not multi-skilled. There is underutilisation of technology even by software professionals because what many of them know is just a small percentage of what the potential actually is."

Maestros is a partner of Microsoft in India and also provides IT services, that focus on converting technology to business benefits. Some of the services that they provide are in applications management, development, integration and infrastructure management.

"We have, therefore, allowed our own employees to explore areas apart from their core competencies so that when we go on-site to train other companies we do not fall short of knowledge. Multi-skilling is essential today," he adds. The company has trained 1,700 professionals in the last six months on the use of IT for enhancing productivity.

Companies like Virtusa also have started this initiative of cross-skilling. Started in May, at present, the technology fraternity in Virtusa is being trained in skills that may not be related to their existing job profile.

For instance, professionals in Java are being trained in .NET and vice versa. The company has started this initiative only in Hyderabad currently but plans to take it across to other centres in course of time.

Says Arjun Mukherjee, chief software architect at Virtusa (India) Private Limited, "Cross-skilling is essential to create true software engineers so that redundancies are not created in the system. There are technological changes that happen even in three months time. So the core attribute of an IT professional lies in upgrading."

Virtusa has started an online training programme for tech-related employees where after 32-50 hours of training and a test, a certification is provided. At present, around 450 professionals are undergoing the training programme and will be attempting the test in the second week of July.

"The programme that is aimed at multi-skilling will help the employees to function better so that the people who work on Java projects today are skilled enough to work on.NET tomorrow. This does not mean that there is shortage of talent outside. It just means that we would rather look inside first before scouting for people outside," Roshan Joseph, manager-training at Virtusa (India) Private Limited, says.

Incidentally, the course is not compulsory for project managers. Joseph says that nevertheless there are some managers who have evinced interest in taking up the course.

So, while HR issues have always been the core point of the IT industry, companies seem to have realised that to train the existing employee-base in new streams of technology is a probable solution.

"In this industry if you do not keep learning you will become a fossil in six months," says Sanjay Khendry, vice-president (business development) at Sierra Atlantic Software Services Limited.