Subscribe

EOH MC Solutions takes skills shortage in hand

* Faced with a dire shortage of skilled .Net developers, EOH MC Solutions is training its own new developers in what has been described as 'one of the toughest boot camps in the country'.
* The EOH MC Solutions Academy selects top graduates and puts them through an intensive three-month training course, says Clydie Cronje, director of projects & risk at EOH MC.


Cape Town, 21 Jan 2016
Clydie Cronje, EOH MC Solutions
Clydie Cronje, EOH MC Solutions

Clydie Cronje, director of projects & risk at EOH MC, heads up the EOH MC Solutions Academy, which was launched last year to provide a skills pipeline for the company. He explains that the academy selects top graduates and puts them through an intensive three-month training course, after which only the best candidates pass and are employed by EOH MC Solutions and its partners.

"There is a huge shortage of .Net developer skills in South Africa," says Cronje. "We are currently looking for 40 people in our company alone. If I had 100 skilled .Net developers right now, I could place them all in jobs - just in Cape Town."

However, universities, colleges and technikons are not producing graduates with the right level of skills, he says.

"Certain colleges and universities do not provide enough specialised training, and after a three-year degree or diploma, the industry is presented with IT professionals who are not sure if they want to be project managers, business analysts or developers," Cronje says. "The market requirement is usually a junior developer, skilled specifically in a certain language, be it PHP, Java or .Net, with a basic understanding of data modelling and object orientation principles. In short, the job seekers do not have the specialised skills required by IT departments and software development companies. This problem is growing and needs to be addressed.

"We tried everything, but we could not find people with the level of skills and experience we needed to be productive quickly," he says. To address the shortage, EOH MC Solutions developed its academy programme and accepted its first candidates early last year.

"We decided to teach what the industry requires, but at the same time mimic the current pressures of projects, as well as expose the individuals to the tools, practices and patterns required by the industry. EOH MC technical leads, who run our commercial projects, were asked to define and run the course, as they are in the field defining solutions for blue-chip clients, and know exactly what is expected from juniors in the team.

"The real shock to me was when we started advertising the idea and I came to realise how many unemployed people in South Africa have a three-year IT diploma or degree. Most of them had no experience and were never given a chance to get some real world exposure. For most of our courses, we get over 400 applications," he says. "Of these, we interview only 20% who qualify for the course."

Cronje explains: "Our academy starts with approximately 20 learners and takes the form of a 'boot camp'. Every morning, a new principle is explained by the tech lead, additional material is then provided to the learners to do self-study, and at the end of the day a practical test is done, which is then marked and the results and learnings explained to the entire group.

"The learners accumulate points each day, and by the end of the first month, we cut the learners that have not achieved enough points to continue. The process then continues into month two, and another cut is made, leaving the final few candidates.

"The last month culminates in a final project where the learners have to produce a small system, encapsulating all tools, processes and principles they have learned into their final solution. This solution is then evaluated, and the successful candidates are offered a permanent job in the company. The pass rate is around 30% and it is deemed one of the toughest boot camps in the country by the developers. Some of the developers who have successfully completed the academy 'boot camp' have said that they learned more in three months in the academy than they did in the three years they attended college."

The EOH MC Solutions Academy has now run four courses, with its graduates proving highly successful and productive on projects, says Cronje. This year, EOH hopes to expand the academy and step up the number of successful graduates it employs.

While training candidates requires a significant investment in terms of the billable hours technical specialists must dedicate to training candidates, Cronje says securing the right level of skills for the company delivers immediate returns on the training investment. "Every company should be investing in skills development and knowledge transfer," he says. "The benefits are broader than just adding skills to your own resource base - you also contribute to upskilling the sector as a whole, so growing the market you operate in."

Share

EOH MC Solutions

EOH MC Solutions (EOH MC) was founded in 2004 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EOH Mthombo, a company in the JSE listed EOH Group. Specialising in IT solutions across the Microsoft technology platform, EOH MC is the largest Microsoft development partner in the Western Cape, successfully delivering significant projects to a broad spectrum of businesses across diverse industry sectors. The brand represents uncompromising quality, a commitment to excellence and an innovative approach to delivering real business solutions.

Editorial contacts

Hayley Turner
Black Book Communications
(021) 701 1095
hayley@black-book.co.za
Clydie Cronje
EOH MC Solutions
(021) 425 3430
clydiec@eohmc.co.za