Business
Solutions
The head of IS at a major telecommunications corporation in the Capitol region made a public commitment to build a world class IS staff to develop and maintain enterprise-wide information systems that support the business. To meet the challenge, the hiring profile for new programmers was drastically revised. The training curriculum for new hires had to be just as drastically retooled. New-hire programmers and transfers had been herded into a twenty-week lock-step curriculum with few interim opportunities to assess technical skills. Top students were forced to wait for slower students before progressing, and slow students would frequently advance past their true skill level only to fail later. Testing came under serious scrutiny in response to problems with students' ability to perform on the job after leaving the training facility. The IS Education Center was charged with providing world class training.
The Benchmark Publications solution makes use of the best existing self-paced courseware, augments it with original courses where necessary, and adds custom “wrap-around” material that pulls the pieces into one whole, stamped with the corporate look and feel. BPI also managed the sourcing and evaluation processes and delivered an objective assessment of the top three to six vendors for each required course with recommendations and alternatives.In response to the students’ on-the-job productivity problems, EEO-compliant pre-tests and mastery certifications were developed. Basic data processing principles and cooperative problem solving were reinforced through innovative use of original games and hands-on exercises. One course requires students to assimilate specifics about their future work environments while still in training.
The Team
Project Deliverables
Project Manager
High-potential new hires complete the curriculum in less than half the time once required. Bottom line: New hires are learning more, faster and better than ever before with a more immediate ROI for the corporation. This curriculum was awarded a rating of eight college credits by the American Council on Education: four for the COBOL core, eight for the full program.
From the Benchmark Publications portfolio of informative briefs, Business Solutions.
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