Digitalisation continues to accelerate, and demand for skilled IT professionals is growing. For many reasons, companies are struggling to hire enough IT experts. We cannot rely solely on colleges and universities to fill the growing needs – also other paths are needed for people interested in careers in IT and companies looking for new talent. Solita Academies have been one successful way to train new data, cloud and software development professionals with know-how tailored to meet the needs of today’s companies’ in transformation.
Hands-on training as a part of an experienced team
Solita has organized Academies for young professionals and career changers since 2016. Most of our Academians are recent or soon-to-be graduates and many already have 1 – 3 years of experience in the field. Academies have been successful in broadening the competencies needed in Solita’s customer projects. Academies function as a stepping stone for new Solitans: learning relevant tech and gaining insights on market phenomena. After a 4 to 6 week intensive training program, our Academians have deepened their hands-on skills and are ready to jump into customer assignments.
Typically, we have organized two rounds of Academies a year, in spring and autumn. The content is always tailored based on our understanding of the existing and future needs of our customers.
In November when our Academians are graduating, there may come a slight sigh of relief also for some of our customers. The skills of a data engineer, data scientist and software developer really are on demand. Still looking for those resources? Please contact us to discuss.
IT industry is about constantly learning – and it’s done best together
Our Academians are first and foremost Solitans – we invest a lot of effort in both finding the best candidates for the program, but also making sure their training is top-of-the-class. Nobody is left alone to learn – everyone gets to hone their skills together with our more experienced consultants. Solita Academy is our way of giving these young professionals the support and kick-start to their consultancy work at Solita. During the past 6 years over 260 of Solitans have participated in one of our Academies and gone to work with our customers. One of the absolute highlights of the Academy-time is when Academians get to start in their first customer case and the eagerness to learn and get to work and deliver value to the customer shines through.
May the Dev, Data, Cloud or Connectivity power be with you
IT skills are never all-in-one – it’s about team work and special powers that demand constant learning. Our Solita Academies are tailored to fit the needs of an aspiring Dev, Data or Cloud professional – or customer. The core competencies covered are as follows:
- Cloud: Azure and specific Azure certifications, Git, CI/CD, Terraform, Datadog, Ansible, Solita CloudBlox and Solita Cloud Platforms, service operations & monitoring, project and consulting skills
- Dev: Git, SQL/noSQL, consulting and Agile methodologies, test automation, CI/CD, OWASP and secure software development, low code, code quality. In addition they will hone their full-stack development skills on chosen programming such as Java, Clojure, .NET, TypeScript or JavaScript with modern frameworks like NodeJS or React.
- Data and Connectivity: cloud data platforms, ADE, Python, SQL, master data management, data visualization, Git, data modelling, Azure, consulting skills, Snowflake, CI/CD, Dev/DataOps, Agile methods
Benefits for everyone
Solita Academies are one effective and practical way to train new experts to help companies stay competitive and find skilled workforce to boost digitalization, and help people find new career paths they are passionate about. For Solita, the one obvious benefit is to be able to improve our future capability to serve our customers.
Are there also benefits for our customers? Sure! According to our experiences and customer survey data, there is. Also the academic research shows that diversity in development teams is something that should be nurtured: Teams with more diversity on the average are more efficient than less diverse teams. The second major benefit is simple but perhaps even surprising: The high motivation and enthusiasm of the Academians have proved to fit well projects needing problem solving, can help boost teamwork and find long-term team members for on-going projects. And finally, when it comes to the financial matters, usually the new Solita Academians have less work years on their roster, offering an appealing price/quality ratio.
Some IRL experiences from our customers and Academians
“Reetta and Tuuli joined our team to boost up our ADE migration. Onboarding went smoothly with the help of our senior data engineer and scrum master. This felt like a natural way for us to provide opportunities for new people to join our project as we have had good experiences in taking in more junior candidates previously.”
– Solita’s strategic customer from the construction industry
“All new team members coming in via Solita Academies have been very fitting with their attitude and technical background. Academians have shown initiative learning the tech & tools and our business. We have valued the humble attitude and readiness to tackle development. Our tech stack (Azure, PowerBI, ADE, Snowflake) is modern and finding the right talent hasn’t always been easy. Academies have helped here.”
– Solita’s customer team at a leading Oil and Bioproducts wholesale company
And feedback from our Academians:
“I feel like I was shown a big picture of the data business better than before I came here”
“I feel good and confident to start working with the tools we had training for”
“I think none of my previous employers have done as well as Solita in terms of delivering this “feeling of belonging.””
“It’s good that we went through the most important tools for our jobs”
“I have the basic tools and understanding to start actually learning a skill in a project (no training will teach like real work)”
“Minna from Solita Dev Academy 2021 joined our customer project team to renew a client’s system by developing a new interface for mobile usage. Minna is nowadays handling the maintenance, development and the customer support of the application independently and is an essential part of the team.”
“Touko and Aija also from Solita dev Academy started in another interesting customer project as software developers one year earlier. Excellent attitude and a learning curve in a wide project environment they have had!”
Interested in knowing more?
Dive into these materials to know more about Solita Academies:
