From Student to Software Engineer in the Indian IT Industry: A Survey of Training

The benefits of Global Software Development are now well known and India currently has the lion´s share in outsourced offshore software development. As a result, the demand for skilled IT professionals is increasing in India. In order to meet the demand, new academic institutes are being established and the existing ones are increasing their intake in IT-related courses. However, according to the latest report of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in India, only 25% of the fresh graduates are considered readily employable by the IT industry. To undertake their jobs effectively, most of the companies provide training to fresh recruits before putting them on actual jobs. In order to understand the nature of the training that is conducted, the topics that are covered, and the adequacy of the preparatory education for the first job in the IT industry, two surveys were administered. One was conducted with human resource managers of some of the leading IT companies in India and another was conducted with fresh company recruits. The findings are reported in this paper and recommendations for the curriculum are proposed.