Tata Technologies trains engineers on core, soft skills to address skill-gap

Engineering and IT-services firm Tata Technologies wants to target the issue of the skill-gap among engineering students. Through their Ready Engineer Programme, the company is looking to address the twin-challenges of core skills as well as the softer skills needed in a job.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Anupal Banerjee, chief human resource officer, Tata Technologies said their idea was to have engineers ready for the jobs from the day one.

The programme

Tata Technologies works with 35 engineering colleges and takes about 80 people per college. Banerjee said the programme runs over four semesters and above 4,600 engineers get covered.

“We look at four factors, including the engineering concepts and fundamentals, contemporary technology, soft skills, and employability. The idea is to have engineers to have skills relevant to the current times. This includes a process of learning as well as unlearning redundant concepts,” he added.

Banerjee said the idea is to have relevant interventions at different times over the four semesters. A talent that is trained in new technologies is most attractive across employers.

In the future, he said the company also wants to take it to the other markets they are present in.

The benefits

In most companies, fresh graduates are required to undergo a learning cycle for six to eight months to acquire company-specific skills. Only then are they asked to work on full-time projects.

“Across companies, the learning-cycle is shortening. It is to have relevant bite-sized learning. So, we would want to keep adopting newer models and also keep updating the curriculum and technologies on a regular basis,” he added.

Tata Technologies also trains the trainers. “We have a dedicated staff to work with the professors in these engineering institutes. Since we also depend on the professors to deliver the training, it is imperative that they are trained first,” he added.

He said they are in regular talks with the engineering schools to look into the possibility of implementing tweaks in the curriculum so that the course content is tuned to the industry needs.