Career@ITworld: A unique Industry-Academia partnership to create industry-ready workforce

[24]7 Inc., Wadhwani Foundation and St Joseph's Community College to impart Skills-driven Education to improve employability. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) March 23, 2012 - Bangalore: [24]7 Inc., Wadhwani Foundation and St. Joseph's Community College have signed an MOU to set up a unique program for industry focused skills development among undergraduates targeted to improve potential employability. This is a remarkable initiative to ensure industry-ready workforce as the curriculum is integrated with the industry requirements and will be constantly updated.

The program - Career ( @ ) ITworld: Earn, Learn and Grow into a Global Career - targets to train 500 students in the first year in Bengaluru and Hyderabad dot The first pilot batch in Bengaluru is open for enrollment and begins in April 2012 dot The Hyderabad initiative is expected to begin in the July quarter with an academic partner from the state dot

Students who have passed II PUC / Class 12 are eligible to qualify for the program through an entrance test and will get a conditional offer letter. On successful completion of 3 months training at St. Josephs Community College and 3 months of paid internship at [24]7 Inc., students will become a full time employee with [24]7 Inc. and will receive a diploma certificate from St. Joseph's Community College. In addition, [24]7 Inc. will facilitate higher education, for interested candidates by providing various options like part-time employment, education loan, loyalty incentives, etc.

Animesh Jain, Chief Delivery Officer, India, [24]7 Inc. said, "Employability skills are the most important attributes that businesses look for in new recruits. The competition for jobs being intense, it is vital for students to proactively develop relevant employability skills like business communication, basics of computing, orientation to customer service and good command of spoken and written English. We believe that Career ( @ ) ITworld Earn, Learn and Grow into a Global Career will improve the predictability of employment of the people and ensure a steady stream of employable talent pool dot [24]7 Inc dot is the industry and knowledge partner for Career ( @ ) ITWorld and we will provide internship and placement support dot "

The program is aimed at creating and supporting an industry ready curriculum formulated collaboratively by [24]7 Inc., St. Joseph's College and Wadhwani Foundation. The courseware is a specially designed learning module leveraging global best practices, which will be continuously updated with real time inputs to meet industry's demand for employable workforce.

Dr. Ajay Kela, President and CEO of Wadhwani Foundation said, "This initiative is a part of our Skills Colleges program which supports industry driven education to create knowledge workers for tomorrow's economy. It introduces a hybrid model combining the best of the American model of Community Colleges offering employment-relevant short term education programs like Associate's degrees and the German model of apprenticeship to produce ready-for-employment knowledge workers to meet the unique needs of Indian Industries. This coming together of a foundation, an employer and an academic institution will mark the beginning of a new chapter in human resource industry."

Fr. Francis Guntipilly, Director/Principal of St. Joseph's Community College said "We are excited about pioneering this industry driven program with [24]7 Inc. and Wadhwani Foundation and hope this model will go a long way to meet the needs of the future job market and is widely emulated in other colleges and companies."

This initiative is a unique collaboration between NGO, College and Company which will be leveraged as case study for addressing national skill gap.

To enroll in the batch starting April 2012, interested candidates can register at career.itworld ( @ ) gmail dot com or call up Vijay at +91 9241797006.

About [24]7
[24]7 Inc., the intuitive consumer experience company, provides software and services that make life simple for consumers to connect with large companies to get things done. [24]7's software helps companies anticipate what consumers want, simplify interactions, and learn from those interactions so that future experiences get better all the time. [24]7 is based in Campbell, California.

About Wadhwani Foundation
Established in the year 2000, Wadhwani Foundation was founded by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, an IIT-Bombay alumnus with a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and an IT entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, California. The mission of the philanthropic foundation is to accelerate economic development in India and other emerging economies. This is achieved through two primary thrust area: Large Scale Job Creation and Skill Development. Entrepreneurship and Innovation focus on Job Creation whilst skilling is achieved through Skill Colleges Initiatives. Two parallel Chairs with CSIS in Washington and ICRIER in Delhi support Indo-US Policy Studies. The foundation works across the higher education spectrum, leveraging Government resources and market forces to achieve scale. The Skills Colleges initiative has a goal of creating capacity for industry linked vocational education of 3 million students over the next decade. As the name indicates, it marries the usefulness of jobs driven skills into the pathway for prestigious college degrees.

About St. Joseph's Community College
SJCC was established in 2005 as a response to the present plight of the underprivileged youth drop-outs from schools/colleges in Karnataka. It is an IGNOU certified community college focused on providing employment oriented education to students who otherwise would not be able to pursue higher education. SJCC is part of Bangalore Jesuit Educational Society which is well known for its value based, quality education and service to the poor and the minorities of the society. SJCC was begun to directly address the need to alleviate the poverty of urban and rural poor by providing job oriented education to provide livelihood options for the youth. Secondly the concept of community college is adapted in this institution so that those who are engaged in work would enhance their skills so that there could be vertical mobility in their qualification and consequent employment. The present MOU is a witness to such an attempt.

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