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While most of her classmates are wondering how to kill time during the summer vacation, 20-year-old Vineetha (name changed) of VNR Engineering College, along with 108 others, is trying to understand the art of problem-solving at skilling start-up TalentSprint’s campus at Gachibowli near here.
Google has partnered with TalentSprint to launch the WE (Women Engineers) programme that will train 600 women engineering students so that they are ready for much bigger roles than the routine low-paying entry level jobs.
Most of the 109 students — from over 60 colleges in 20 cities across the country — selected for the first cohort of the Google-TalentSprint programme hail from families with an average annual income of ₹6 lakh.
Google is going to fund the whole programme, leaving no burden on the selected candidates. Besides taking care of the course fee, the US-based firm will also give them a scholarship of ₹1 lakh each.
Selection process
“The selection process is not easy. They were to undergo a rigorous screening process that tested their reasoning abilities and English skills. Code-reading too was part of the selection process,” Santanu Paul, MD and CEO of TalentSprint, told BusinessLine .
The programme will go a long way in improving the skewed gender ratio in the IT workforce, he observed.
The 600 women engineering students will be inducted in phases. “In the first phase, we have selected 109 students. In the second year, we will take 200 and in the third year, the remaining 300 candidates,” he said.
“For a variety of reasons, the representation of women is still sub-optimal in the tech industry and we are committed to correcting that imbalance through programmes such as this,” said Anand Rangarajan, Engineering Director, Google India. “We believe that innate talent or ability is not limited by socioeconomic class, but we recognise that opportunity is. For this reason, this programme specially focusses on identifying promise among young women from economically weaker sections of society.”
Developed jointly by Google and TalentSprint, the programme seeks to expose the students to problem-solving methods rather than equipping them with conventional programming skills.
TalentSprint also plans to explore similar programmes with other corporates.
Gender diversity
Achieving gender diversity is not about recruiting women in some insignificant roles; it’s about taking them in key roles, said TalentSprint’s Paul. “It’s not an easy task,” he added.
“Talent is out there. But it is difficult for companies to identify them and for women students to aspire for key job roles,” he pointed out. “The aspirational levels are so high that we received over 7,000 applications for the 100 slots in the first phase. We picked 109.”
Mentors and faculty from Google and TalentSprint will take classes over two summer vacations. Once the academic year begins, classes will be conducted over the web during the weekends.
At the end of the course comes a certificate and likely job opportunities, either at Google or other corporates.
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