HCL launches Career Development Centre

Bangalore, Aug 22 (UNI) HCL Infosystems today said it will open 100 career development centres across the country over the next 12 months to meet the growing demand for skilled IT professionals.

The company unveiled its Career Development Centre (HCL CDC) here today with Karnataka Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science and Technology Secretary M N Vidyashankar formally inaugurating it.

Talking to newsmen after the launch, HCL Infosystems Executive Vice President Rajendra Kumar said the centre would provide specially designed courses to groom students into industry-ready professionals.

The company already had fully operational HCL CDCs in nearly 30 cities across the country and planned to set up similar centres abroad, including in West Asia and Africa.

To a question, he said the centres were both company operated as well as run by franchises. At present, of the total 30 centres, six were company-run and remaining operated by franchise's.

In Karnataka it was proposed to open centres in Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli, Gulbarga and Davanagere to help students from rural areas to improve their skills.

According to a Cisco-IDC study, a third of companies were not able to fill their demand for networking professionals and according to an estimate by E-Value, there was an estimated annual demand of around two lakh networking professionals in the country while the supply was limited to about 60 per cent of the demand.

The deficit was further estimated to grow at a CAGR of 21 per cent till 2010.

Centre Head S T M Eswar said ''our mission is to transform students into industry ready professionals who are ready to take on enterprise-wide IT deployment and integration assignments from the day one without the need for any further training by their prospective employers.'' UNI