Citeman - July 11, 2009

More than three decades the IT services industry makes CMS the right organization to design, develop and implement a curriculum for youngsters who dream of a career in this industry banking, finance, insurance, retail, transport, travel, education, oil and gas, are some of the many verticals for which CMS has been consistently delivering IT services. The quality of delivery of IT Services thrives on the availability of technology skilled and certified manpower. The IT Service skills requirements range from the lowest to the highest based purely on the type of the project to be managed.

The IT Service delivery skills are not part of the curriculum of any University or Board of India. This makes it extremely difficult for IT Services companies like CMS, Wipro, Infosys etc to recruit manpower for IT Services directly from the campuses. More than fifteen years back, CMS envisioned that in future there could be a dearth of skilled IT Services man power and once India would become an IT powerhouse this lack of key skills would be an obstacle to the country’s objective of being recognized as a world leader.

CMS, through CMS Institute, its education arm, focused on developing such key skills amongst the youth in India by developing and constantly upgrading curriculum that would expose students to what the future shall demand from IT Services professionals.

CMS destroys myths like the existence of a hardware and networking segment. For CMS, it’s all about delivery of IT services primarily comprising hardware maintenance, application support, desktop management server monitoring network administration information security and storage.

The job opportunities are surely not shrinking for certified both fresh and experienced. There is a correction in the recruitments that are happening in this segment and the focus now is on offering opportunities to certified personnel. Students normally make up their mind based on articles that they read in print or the web. Social networking sites add to the confusion. Since organizations employing personnel for IT Services are making it a point to now employ only quality manpower, those students who come with only primary level skills and with weal communication skills are finding it difficult to make the mark. The students need to back their technology skills with industry acceptable certifications and customer management skills.

Students normally fall for the 100% Job Guarantee trap and feel that on attending any program or course related to Hardware and Networking they will be provided employment by their respective institutions. Most students also feel that having a certificate of participation from any leading institute will fetch them a job.

Global certifications mean qualifications from principals and vendors who own a particular product or technology like Microsoft, RedHat , Oracle, Cisco, EMCSun etc. Customer management skills are taught only by institutes like CMS, who thought their IT Services division, know exactly what, when and how IT services are delivered. Having good communication and technology skills without certification and customer management skills reduce employment opportunities. These certifications exams are conducted by neutral bodies like Prometric & VUE and hence acceptable globally. A combination of some of these certifications is what is recommended for the student today.

Customer management skills, unlike communication or English speaking skills include building skills effectively deal with various kind of technology failure situations, team building, understanding Service Level agreement, delivery use of metrics within IT help desks, problem solving, escalation of customer site issues beyond self or team’s management ability and effective communication.

CMS is a pioneer in delivery of IT service in India and this experience was transformed into delivering training in the same segment CMS knows exactly what the industry needs in terms of certifications and customer management skills to deliver IT services. Their partners, like Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Oracle, Prometric, VUE etc. have only helped deliver this training effectively through organized curriculum and certification oriented testing facility CMS looks at offering official training programs from other vendors mentioned above, and are in high level discussions with most of them. CMS’ experience international partner based curriculum, training methodology, ethical certification processes and overall service delivery experience makes us the training institution for students to develop IT service delivery knowledge and skills.

Any skill that a student achieves post academic education must help the student in a professional environment directly or indirectly. IT is the single most important and common factor to any industry globally Knowledge of hardware maintenance, network administration, information security and storage helps you go a long way in delivering IT services. Certification on technology or product from any international technology giant strengthens your employability chances. Customer management skills help you delivery IT Services, effectively what and when a student learns these skills along with from where and how the student achieves these certifications will be the differentiating factor in an IT Services career.