Irish companies are being presented with an opportunity to fill IT skills gaps in their workforce without charge, by enrolling staff members on free, degree-level courses at National College of Ireland under the HEA ICT Skills programme.
Starting in early 2017, the courses are tailored to meet key growth areas including fintech, cybersecurity, data analytics and more. View the full list of courses, which are internationally recognised, fully accredited and available free of charge to all qualified applicants, regardless of their employment status. The programmes are running part-time in the evenings and online and there is no cost to any organisation or individual student availing of this opportunity.
The question for managers is: why work with NCI to develop your team?
Steve Preece, Managing Director, Egis Ireland, has supported a number of staff members to further their education at NCI. He said: “There is a change…they actually challenge my decisions more, which is good, because they challenge it with materials or thoughts which are properly structured. We’re now looking at identifying people who need to be further educated in different fields, and we’ll be speaking to National College of Ireland on that.”
Robert Ward, Marketing Director at NCI, commented:
“These ICT Higher Diploma courses are available free of charge to anyone regardless of employment status. If you have people on your team who would benefit from upskilling and earning an accredited qualification, then these courses are available free of charge to the organisation and to the individual student. Many people probably think Springboard+ courses are only available to the unemployed but we are telling companies no, these ICT courses are available to your employees too. It’s a great opportunity but the courses start this January and February, so companies might miss out if they don’t realise this opportunity and act fast.”
For individuals, this is a fantastic opportunity to progress your career or indeed change career direction, by gaining valuable skills which are in high demand by employers.
If you have members of your team or indeed your wider network of colleagues or friends that would benefit from these degree-level programmes they should contact NCI’s Springboard team on 1850 221 721 or email springboard@ncirl.ie
Applications are filling up fast and many of the courses have a closing date of January 5th 2017, so applications are encouraged as soon as possible.
