Community.

Anyone who has worked in our industry and had to find good, experienced developers will know that great dev people in this environment are rare enough to make recruiting them a very expensive exercise. We have launched the Exponant Skills Development programme (ESDP) to develop these skills as well as mentor new people in the industry.

There are two sides to the ESDP, Learnership and the Internship Programme.

Upon completion of the Learnership, the students enter an internship programme. Here they can elect to go into software services or infrastructure. Some of the students also progress to general office work and presales assistants.

On this programme the students are contracted for two years while they are trained up to be fully fledged developers, systems engineers and administrators with certifications and practical experience on site at the clients. During this time, many of the Interns act as change agents, helping with the adoption of the relevant solution by being on hand to help our clients complete certain tasks or demonstrating the solution as a refresher course after the client has been trained.

We currently have eight learners, who started in February 2019, studying IT Technical Support. They continued to study throughout the Lockdown period with online support from our service provider.

These students are also enrolled with the Media, Information and Communication Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority (MICT SETA) is a skills development institution established in terms of the Skills Development Act of 1998, to generate, facilitate and accelerate the processes of quality skills development at all levels in this sector.

The MICT SETA engages in learning programmes and quality assurance of education and training of implemented learning initiatives, which lead to employment and new venture creation, while at the engaging in programmes designed to bridge the digital divide.

Exponant also participated in an Internship programme with one of our clients last year, where we educated our Interns in CCNA (Cisco) and then we give them on the job training.

The programme was a great success. We lost a few students along the way who changed their minds about following a career in IT, but 60% of the Interns are now in permanent positions.