Ascendum Solutions training boot camp
Who: Unemployed people looking for career path in the technology field that can learn quickly
What: Software consulting company conducts training boot camp for software testing. Upon passing an exam, participants are offered a job for $15 an hour that’s an estimated 32 to 40 hours a week. After a year with good performance, people are hired full-time with benefits.
Where: 10290 Alliance Road, Blue Ash. Depending on interest, training can be held at Vora Technology Park, 101 Knightsbridge Drive, Hamilton
How to join: Submit resumes to ken.venick@ascendum.com
Phone: (513) 792-5100
Website: www.ascendum.com
A lack of potential employees with software testing skills has forced a company to take matters into its owns hands to fill more than 100 jobs.
Since February, Ascendum Solutions in Blue Ash has offered a software testing boot camp for people to pursue a career in the technology field, said Tim Coulson, director of quality assurance at the software company, which is owned by entrepreneur Mahendra Vora, founder of the Vora Technology Park in Hamilton.
Participants are offered a week-long accelerated training course and a test is offered at the end of the week. If passed, participants are offered a job.
The pass rate has been 50 percent and has only yielded 26 workers from the training held in the company’s office Blue Ash and in Hamilton. The company needs more software testers quickly, anticipating to land a large contract at the end of January with approximately 70 jobs to be performed in Hamilton at Vora Technology Park, Coulson said.
Coulson said this is not just a local problem. He aid there’s a lack of people globally with software testing skills and there are no higher education degree dedicated to the subject.
The company has even offered people who participate in the 40-hour boot camp $25 a day to help pay for transportation, he said.
The job pays $15 an hour and after a year with good performance, Ascendum will hire the people full time with benefits. Until they’re hired full time, junior associates receive an estimated 32 to 40 hours a week, Coulson said.
Job seekers need basic Microsoft skills in World and Excel and an ability to learn quickly, he said.
“Given our economy, everything that’s going on, with so many of our jobs going overseas, this is the right thing for us to do right now,” Coulson said.
But with fast-track expansion plans and contracts in need of a large number of software testers, Ascendum needs more people who are unemployed but willing to work hard and learn, Coulson said.
Large contracts have been passed because the company didn’t have more than 100 testers ready to work, he said.
“We want to be able to satisfy those needs,” he said.
By the end of January, Ascendum hopes to hire 120 people from the program; 300 total by the end of next year and 250,000 across the U.S. this way within five years, he said.
If enough people from Butler County are interested and qualify, classes will be held at Vora Technology Park. The next session starts Nov. 28.
Ascendum is a 3-year-old company with 2,400 to 3,000 employees globally that offers software consulting to clients worldwide including Kroger, Coulson said. It can design, test, implement and do maintenance of software.
“It’s about the innovation, the creativity and the leadership encourages it, and really wants that out of all of their employees,” Coulson said.
Some of the jobs are coming from anticipated contracts. Some are also jobs the company is choosing to fill in the United States instead of at its location in India. Coulson said the company’s strategy in the past is to have some work done in the U.S. and some work done in Vora’s native India.
They have changed that philosophy to have work done by people with the best skills. Indian workers are better suited for high technology, data modeling and engineering and design of software, and U.S. workers are best suited for web page design and intuitive testing, according to Coulson.
To get in the boot camp, email resumes to ken.venick@ascendum.com. Potential participants will be screened before the boot camp, Coulson added. He said for people who have never sent an email, the job is probably not for them.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
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