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Training the “Right Stuff”
 In January 2008, Information Week (www.informationweek.com) cited compelling figures on the U.S. IT labor market:
Contrarians argue that outsourcing can continue to mitigate these skills demands and deficits—however, few have acknowl-edged the future impact of competition for these same skills from emerging economies in India, China and elsewhere. Our clients and business partners see this. Daily, we work together to ensure that the “right” kinds of IT skills are being trained so these skills can be immediately applied to technology that delivers competitive advantages to our stakeholders. We recognize as well, our responsibility as a professional training organization to deliver “work ready” skills that deliver to corporate “bottom lines”—and to an individual’s ability to attract employment. Today’s “right stuff” skill sets include hands-on know-how and problem solving in network architecture de-sign and operational execution; Web-based infrastructure management and application development; security; IT soft skills, and many other areas. All are central to NetCom’s in-class and online curriculum. NetCom training features the best instructors in the industry. These men and women not only understand the work of teaching and knowledge transfer—but are accomplished practitioners in their own rights. We never rest in our ongoing assessments of the IT market and the needs of our clients. We continuously meet with our business and individual clients—and we continuously revise our curriculum as technology changes. We partner with key technology provid-ers, and we work collaboratively to anticipate future needs, and to provide the training that facilitates technology adoption. At the same time, we recognize that measuring return on investment (ROI) from training is very challenging for corporate training officers and for IT. In IT, training needs to be measured in terms of timely skills delivery to projects, understanding that many of these skills deliver intangible as well as hard skills to the work they are applied to. In IT, these investments in human capital are often experienced as reductions in the need to go outside of the company for technology skills; reduced time lines for projects; and improved turnaround on critical new systems and networks needed in the business. More companies understand this, yet the eLearning Guild (www.elearningguild.com) released a study in October 2007 which showed that while 20 percent of businesses stated that they were able to measure what they wanted from the training that they had invested in, only 10.9 percent had data that showed that these measurable results provided value to the organization. One reason was the rapidity of change in IT—which is characterized by constantly changing priorities for projects and initia-tives. The need to train for today’s technologies while keeping an eye on tomorrow’s priorities does not escape us as an IT training company. It is central to our clients’ success, and central to our own. We recognize that training the “right stuff” begins with today’s results—but it also has to incorporate agility in problem-solving abili-ties that trainees can apply to a variety of IT issues that exist now and that will emerge in the future. This problem solving elasticity is carried forward in our training approaches, because the knowledge gained in training should never stop delivering value as long as organizations and individuals continue the ascent to their full potential. About the Author Russell Sarder co-founded NetCom Information Technology in 1997 with a view to help IT professionals get the best training to be effective in their corporate environments and careers. Differentiating NetCom with a focus on client excellence, Mr. Sarder has led NetCom to be recognized as a technical training leader. Today, NetCom⿿s success is driven by its successful alignment with industry leaders such as Microsoft, where Mr. Sarder in less than a decade brought NetCom to the global arena as Microsoft⿿s Global Learning Solution Partner for 2007. NetCom is a profitable, award-winning training leader that provides a wide variety of services to clients from over 20 major IT vendors. NetCom offers training solutions for more than 1000 technical, application and project management courses to Fortune 500 companies, businesses, government agencies and individuals. NetCom⿿s leading subject matter experts provide authorized hands-on education in the latest technologies from leading vendors including Adobe, Autodesk, Check Point, Cisco, Citrix, CIW, CompTIA, EC-Council, EMC, Intel, ITIL, Linux Institute, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, PMI, SOX and Zend. Comments? Questions? Send them to editor@technologytrainingmag.com. |
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