SLASSCO connects Jaffna University students with IT Industry

SLASSCOM (Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies) organised a two day industrial visit for the Computer Science undergraduate students from the University of Jaffna.

This is part of the SLASSCOM capacity building initiative to bring Jaffna students to mainstream IT/ BPO industry. The students visited IFS, Virtusa, MIT, eCollege, Cinergix Research and Sabre Technologies during their stay in Colombo.

The main objective of this tour was to provide students with the opportunity to meet IT industry professionals and engage in a knowledge sharing session while getting an orientation to the available career options within the industry.  Twenty four students including two senior lecturers were able to witness the working environments of the companies visited. They were also guided in CV reviews, interview preparation, and career selection during the sessions.

This initiative comes under the SLASSCOM Capacity Forum with its primary focus on initiatives to expand the Sri Lankan IT and BPO talent pool to be globally competitive.

SLASSCOM acts as the catalyst of growth for the Sri Lankan IT and BPO industry by facilitating trade and business, propagating education and employment, encouraging research and innovation, and by supporting the creation of a progressive national policy framework. Sri Lankan IT/BPO industry is fast emerging as a key industry sector in Sri Lanka contributing $275million in export revenue and creating large number of professional jobs especially for the youth.

“IT/BPO industry is one of the fastest growing industries in Sri Lanka and our aim is to ensure youth from all parts of the country gets an opportunity to be part of this exciting future. We are delighted to have been able to start the process of working with students from the north.”, Madu Ratnayake, Director/General Secretary of SLASSCOM said regarding this visit.

“This visit has given us as academics a chance to meet eminent people from the IT industry and to know the philosophies to be a leading and successful establishment. Each company has given a different perspective of the IT industry which gave us a clear picture about the industry. This experience will help us to train the students in the right direction such that they will be successful in the industry. The staffs were very helpful and open. Companies tried their best to give us the best not considering the time. They adjusted their times according to our arrival and stayed late to complete the activities”, Dr. Charles Eugene, senior lecturer, University of Jaffna said commenting on the tour. Dr. Ramanan, another lecturer at the University of Jaffna stated, “This is our first industrial visit in the last two decades. This visit has provided awareness not only to the cutting-edge technology in the IT industries in this country but also to their infrastructures.  I believe this visit will add more value and confidence to the students in their degree programme and in finding jobs. Also, this might give an opportunity to us to collaborate with the industry at some level of extents”.

One of the passing out students commented, “This industrial visit is good for us because last decade we didn’t know about the industrial training. But now we are first batch who visited these top IT companies. This is a good opportunity for our university students. This is a great opportunity to our university and is useful for us to look at prospective careers in the future. We request this industrial visit would be a continuous effort from the industry to boost and encourage us students”.

About SLASSCOM:

SLASSCOM acts as the catalyst of growth for the Sri Lankan IT and BPO industry by facilitating trade and business, propagation of education and employment, encouragement of research and innovation, and by supporting the creation of a progressive national policy framework. Follow @SLASSCOM on twitter or visit www.slasscom.lk for more information.