During CompTIA’s Colloquium conference in Washington, D.C., last month, executives from over 30 leading IT training companies heard from some of the largest tech companies on how they’re training their own staffs. How are they setting an example for their partners? How are they inspiring their employees to continually learn and improve their skills?
CompTIA Executive VP Terry Erdle led off the conference and gave a quick rundown on the core education trends:
- Personalization.
- User control.
- The smart Web.
- Visual learning.
- Data engagement.
- Thinking 3-D.
- The social Web.
- Ubiquitous learning.
- Openness.
- Flipped classrooms.
Erdle asked the audience how it was going to use those trends to “make IT cool again and make the process of learning less uncool.”
For Verizon, Marianne Groth, learning architect manager, technical training at Verizon Wireless, said its top training priority focuses on security on mobile apps. Certifications are not required for hiring, but are highly desired. Certifications also aren’t required for promotions unless the worker is moving from customer care to being a tech rep.
To help their employees learn fast and more easily, all Verizon engineers carry tablets, so all training has to be tablet-ready. The company has always given learning in small chunks and “now that’s more important than ever,” said Groth, so that they get the training they need when they need it.
Panelist Chris Roy, director of learning evangelism at Microsoft Learning Experiences Group, said the group has considered if it needs to require certification for its employees like it does for the company’s partners. It has been investing in a “modern learning platform” – taking advantage of mobility and personalization.
“We have thousands of courses for our employees to learn, but when we started making them compete in our various learning apps, that made them want to learn more,” Roy said. For partners, Roy maintains that there are a lot of IT skills that are fundamental and don’t change. Microsoft is looking at a baseline certification that it can build on with specialty certifications. “The Microsoft Partner Channel will have over 500,000 jobs open this year that require certifications,” Roy said.
Where should IT trainers focus training to match the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are open? Tejas Vashi, director of marketing and product management at Cisco Systems, said Cisco training is targeted at four areas: security, business relevance, network programmability and applications. Cisco announced new specialist certifications two weeks ago for niche IT areas. It will look at key IT processes as it adapts to particular applications.
At CA Technologies, for any of the company’s products a group of its employees may support, they have to get certified in it, said Shafiq Hajee, who works with the certification and accreditation program at CA Technologies. CA also demands that its partners are certified for the CA Technologies products they support. His instructors want to bring real-world data breach examples into the classroom, so that their students can see how to apply their training.
An attendee asked the panel how to move training to an international level. W. Hord Tipton, executive director of (ISC)2, said, “you must be scalable and agile.” He said the most difficult question the training industry needs to ask is, “What’s the right certification for a particular worker?” The best training and certification needs to be specific to the job.
The panel also considered how academia is responding to real-world demands. Roy said Microsoft is investing heavily in breaking down that barrier with academia. The company worked with one group of students to build 1,000 apps, which helped Microsoft see how it could make IT cool to learn.
Cisco sees universities coming to them for joint partnerships so that they can build practical applications into classroom teaching. “We’re beginning to see those barriers break down between academia and industry,” Vashi said.
Erdle brought up the University of Phoenix, which is changing its branding to show not just how good their academics are but how they’re preparing you for a great career. “For years in the medical field, they’ve incorporated certification all along the way of their academic learning,” Erdle said. “Now we’re starting to see that in universities with IT. It’s changing rapidly.”
