Female Technology Students Keener Than Male Students To Strengthen IT Skills: byteXL’s Trends Report

Upskilling or skilling for immediate jobs – That’s the question looming large on the IT Students of the country for a long time. While the technology industry in the country is continuing to grow at a faster pace than its peers, the employability factor continues to haunt the students and recruiters alike. With an aim to understand the way Indian Technology student’s community, as well as academia, are trying to address the concerning issue, Hyderabad-based byteXL – one of the leading experiential learning platforms for IT career aspirants, carried out a study on the trends in terms of employability in the IT industry, the existing skill-gap in the IT-sector and the measures to overcome it. The study was based on byteXL’s proprietary in-house database analytics and their interaction with students, universities, and corporates in the most discerning way. The study is based on a large sample size of 55,000 students from 60 institutes. The study has made some interesting revelations in IT education and skilling trends across byteXL’s purview of tier 1, 2 and 3 institutes.

In terms of student participation rates, it appeared that females are keener than male students to learn and strengthen new emerging technologies as reflected in both online and offline participation. A shift in focus on technical know-how than aptitude and communication skills has also been observed as well as more focus on part of the universities/institutions to help students be placed in Product based companies such as Facebook, Google, etc. instead of merely training students for coding.

While there is a growing awareness among students of the kinds of courses they must choose viz., the New wave of technology such as AI, UX/UI, Full stack, Cloud, there is a lack of the right curricula that can deliver the same in alignment with the industry needs. That is why students are looking up to specialized platforms. Based on the trends, 2022 is anticipated to witness growing interest among the students towards emerging technologies including Full stack, DevOps/ cloud computing, UI/UX, Backend, IoT, AI/ML, Cyber Security, and programming languages like Python that can help in creating a base for Emerging Technologies. Students are also keen to learn additional certification courses like AWS, MS Azure.

Commenting on the findings of the report, Mr. Karun Tadepalli, Founder and CEO of byteXL said, “It’s a known fact that the industry is facing the challenge in terms of the gap in the skillsets of the available candidates than the required skill. With byteXL’s Trend Report – Deep Tech Insights 21-22, we aimed at understanding the changing thought process of the education institutes and students as they are realizing this issue and taking up effective measures to become Career Ready by acquiring the domain knowledge on the new-age technologies. The specialized programs run by the experts are gradually showing positive signs. The students are showing growth in their assessments on new-age technologies which is a great sign of enhancement in their employability quotient. This year is certainly witnessing their keen interest in emerging technologies like Full stack, DevOps/ cloud computing, UI/UX, Backend, IoT, AI/ML, Cyber Security, among others.”
Some of the key highlights of the current study ensuing from the IT industry’s and students’ current pressing needs are:

* Tier 1 students preferred skilling with 96% of students opting for a combination of languages and programme, while Tier 2 and Tier 3 were at 55%.

* The ratio of students undergoing training for immediate IT career placements was witnessed highest by Tier 3 at 44% followed by 29% and 27% by Tier 1 and Tier 2 respectively.

* Maximum interest was witnessed in the combined group of languages ‘C’, ‘Python’, ‘Java’ with most students selecting the group at 35.9% of overall students.

* While C, Java & Python were most popular in Tier 2 & 3 students, Tier 1 students showed additional interest in Data Structures besides these three.

* Phenomenal progress was witnessed in the performance of female students of Tier 2. With only 1.39% securing 80-100% marks on day 1 of the technology assessment, 51.11% of students secured it at the end of the specialized skills development programme, which was seen a 37 times growth.

* An overall 18.27% of students across categories achieved the feat of 80-100% on Day 1 and by the end of the programme it reached 64.78% of students securing this marks category.

* The offline session has a higher participation rate of students at 85.2%.

The above outcomes also serve as the forecasts for trends in IT coaching platforms and trends for the year ahead. It also serves as a roadmap for EdTech companies at leveraging digital education and help bridge the skill gap in emerging technologies among educators.

The need for the study encompasses the fact that only 4.7% of technical graduating engineers in India have the ability to code and at least 93% of the graduating engineers in India are not fully equipped with the necessary IT skills to embark their career in IT companies. It also appears that reskilling has become mandatory every 4-5 years especially in the IT sector. This is a good indicator of the skill gap and a call for urgency for making students IT career ready right early on in a way that they can take the industry level challenges head-on from Day 1.