Changing The Face Of Technical Education — One College At A Time
I have taught people from 12 countries. While working for ThoughtWorks, I have trained freshers across the world, and conducted trainings for the trainers too. Some of my Android workshops have been attended by participants from Barclays, FirstCry, Persistent, TownScript, etc., and have also conducted bootcamp for Android at IIT Bhilai. All this after spending 10 years in the software industry.
But this post is not about any of those. This is about a training I did last month, which is one of my most impactful trainings till date.
The Training
This year major recruiters have changed their hiring process to include multiple coding rounds, and more programming related questions. Being one the proactive colleges in the Pune region, Sinhgad Group of Institutes wanted to get their students prepared for this new process.
The Dean of Placements, Mr. Jai Prakash Pitambare called us to conduct a training as per new hiring process for 200 internally shortlisted Computer Science students.
The results of Pre-assessment Test used to shortlist these 200 students were shocking. While the median score of basic programming test was zero, average was just 16.67%. That meant 51% students of graduating batch can’t right a compilable code for a simple problem statement.
We decided to design a training program that’s not just about teaching, but which actually helps the student to built an approach to coding problems.
We wanted to design a training program that was —
1. Scalable: Capable of providing high-quality training to 200 people.
2. Hands-On: They needed more practice on hands-on programming, specifically designed around things asked in recruitment programming rounds.
3. Targeted: Since we had only 4 days of teaching and 4 days of 1-hour take home tests, we wanted it to be very targeted, so that we could maximise learning in the minimum amount of time.
The Structure
We ended up designing a training focused on C programming, data-structures and algorithms. A course where majority of concepts were delivered through videos, and had programming assignments at suitable checkpoints to apply what they have learnt.
We were always around to help, and explain concepts right at the students’ desks whenever they were stuck. After they have tried it hands-on, assignments and tests were discussed on the board so that students can learn from each others’ mistake. Now, the students can learn at their own pace, have personalised attention when they get stuck, and can interact with peers to develop problem solving skills at a faster rate.
The Results
This way, the students were much better prepared for the interviews that happened next. This year, when Cognizant recruited at a higher salary and a more programming centric interview process, students from Sinhgad beat students from all other colleges in Pune in the number of shortlists, and in the final selection numbers. While 77 students cleared the first round, 53 cleared the second, 23 students finally got offer from Cognizant.
Other companies are now reaching out to us asking for resumes so they can also interview the people who attended the training.
Since I have worked in the IT industry for so long, I can see the impact this training has had on the students. They are now inclined towards practicing problems on codechef, hackerrank et al. They will be better prepared not just for this recruitment season, but for all interviews and programming tests even later in their career. They will also be able to perform better in their jobs and get better growth, because now they understand programming concepts and enjoy solving problems.
We will be conducting more of such trainings in near future, so you can reach me at abhinavmanchanda@gmail.com if you believe this can be helpful for your alma-mater.
