Absa boosts graduate programme

By Siyabonga Africa, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 17 Apr 2009

Absa Group will invest more than R6 million in ramping up its technology graduate programme.

Yesterday, 29 students graduated and Absa welcomed another 35 into the programme, with a promise to train more than 100 per year in the next five years.

“We had to increase our budget for the programme from R2 million to R6 million because we are making it more global by sending some graduates to study in India with one of our partners, Larsen & Tourbo Infotech,” says Ray Mashau, Absa Group's Technology Competency Centre GM.

The bank's technology graduate programme trains a number of recruits in IT skills needed in the banking industry, in areas such as project management, IT analysis and SAP business solutions.

Absa Group CIO Len de Villiers says this is the fourth year the programme is running and it will do so indefinitely.

Mashau says the bank hopes to get to a point where it takes in more than 100 students per year for the graduate programme. “If that is the case, then in five years our technology department will be fully transformed, and the aim is to drop the average age of our technology centre from 34 to 30.”

Bankseta skills development manager Trevor Rammitlwa says ICT skills are critical in the banking sector, and have topped the list of skills development ahead of back-office support and financial competency in Bankseta's annual Skills Audit Report since 2006.

Recruitment woes

The bank's recruitment drive for its graduate programme proved challenging. Paracon, Absa's recruitment partner, says it took more than three months, from December 2008 through to March this year, to whittle down the number of potential entrants from 6 000 to 35.

“It was tough finding the right people for this programme and it just goes to show that a lot of work still needs to be done in ICT skills training,” says Paracon CEO Mark Jurgens. “You shouldn't have to go through 6 000 CVs just to find 35 people.”

Mashau says Absa has had to up the standard of its recruits since it started the graduate technology programme in 2006. “Back then, we used to recruit students straight out of matric right to university graduates. Yet we found the matriculants would struggle through the course and wouldn't make it above entry-level positions in the company.”

Mashau says the bank will only recruit graduate students from now on.