What is better for the student of the training center: online profile or certificate?

What does the listener dream about when he comes to Java, testing or IT marketing courses? Of course, to gain knowledge and skills, apply them at the current place of work or successfully get a new place. Will the certificate obtained at the exit, reliable evidence of the full development of the material? Is the future employer sufficient name of the course, training center and the date of training?

Our answer: “NO! Paper sax! We need to break stereotypes. ”
For a year now, at the Uransoft training center, instead of the traditional certificates and certificates of attendance, we have launched online profiles for students. How we came to this and what results were obtained - read under the cut.

The last straw that prompted us to write this article was the resume that the applicant sent us. It consisted of scans of various diplomas (about 20) collected in a ppt-presentation.

Assessing the “beauty and informational content” of the solution, we understood: we are on the right path with the idea of ​​online profiles.
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“Perfect” profile and requirements for it

From the title it is clear that this is some information about the student of the course. Let's imagine the perfect online profile. To do this, take into account the views of three parties: the training center, the listener and the future employer.

Training Center Requirements

The profile of the listener is a great opportunity to show your product face. In this case, the goods can be understood as a training course, as well as the listener, who at the end of the course acquired certain skills and knowledge. What does the training center want to tell? Of course, first of all - about your educational content:

• Detailed information about the course: program, lecture topics and their theses, video with the teacher and course;
• The most interesting: information about practical classes - what task was put before the listener and how he performed it, assessments, attendance;

And also about the listener:

• Brief information - who he is, what he specializes in, why he went to courses and what plans he has for the future (for example, he wants to do an internship in an IT company);
• General feedback from the teacher about the student - assessment of interest in the topic / subject, work in a group and at seminars, homework assignments and final works, communication skills, personal qualities, and so on;
• Links to the listener's resume and his contacts in social networks;
• Video of the listener himself, where he talks about why he came to the course, whether his expectations were met, what was good and what needs to be worked on.

HR / employer requirements

The profile will solve the main task here - without inviting the applicant for an interview, it will allow you to get an idea about the future employee. Therefore:

• The profile must be available, open and distorted through search engines;
• Information must be authentic (authentic and reliable);
• Must be the identification of the applicant (uniquely identify - name, photo, age, education);
• Correct information on the course that the applicant has listened to must be given (since the courses are constantly being improved and changed, the information is relevant at the time of listening to the course);
• The ability to check the information provided by the listener (for this, there are public contacts of the teacher);
• “Video business card” - an employer will immediately be able to evaluate how a potential applicant expresses his thoughts.

Requirements of the listener as a potential applicant:

In addition to all of the above, the course listener needs the ability to:

• provide informative and objective evidence of the fact of training (not only in its presentation, but in the opinion of an independent competent party);
• demonstrate the desire for professional development, loyalty to the profession (spent money and time).
• self-promotion and additional information about yourself.

What we designed

After analyzing all the requirements, we formulated the main idea.
So, the online profile of the listener should be a page on the site of our training center Uransoft. It should be:

• personal information about the listener: his photo, full name, experience, IT skills and knowledge, links to personal profiles in social networks, links to sites with a summary)
• information about the course / courses with teacher feedback (detailed program and content, theory and practical tasks of the course, feedback from the teacher about the listener himself, as well as about his work and tasks performed during the course)
• feedback from the listener about the organization of courses in general, separately - about the course heard and feedback about the teacher.

Also, the online profile should carry, in addition to confirming the knowledge of the listener, the function of direct contact of the employer with the teacher or the course founders. Naturally, the listener can place a link to his profile in his resume on any headhunting site.

What and how it was implemented

1) Has allocated on a site the section "Profiles of listeners". As long as the volume is small (we didn’t reach the light idea at once, either), they are displayed on one page. Soon there will be a division into directions / courses / years.

2) The structure of the profile itself - see the clickable illustration. You can also see "live" on the site .

4) Integration with online resume. You can publish links to an online profile in a resume, regardless of the placement resource.

5) Social networks. You can post links to courses on your profiles in any business and not so social network.

6) On the day of the end of each group, we necessarily remove the video feedback of the listeners, photos of the whole group and each listener separately. The video is placed not only on the listener's page, but also serves as an illustration of the course description (for example, an IT marketing course, the “Video reviews” tab ). That video is well indexed in search engines and appears in the issuance of thematic and personalized requests.

Of course, not without difficulties

• Laziness of listeners and unwillingness to provide information about themselves (not for reasons of confidentiality), some have to be forced \ forced \ to be beaten over the head with a pointer
• Misunderstanding of listeners, why it is needed: “A profile is good, but we still want a piece of paper. What for? - To be! So familiar and in general. "
• To solve the previous item, a conversation was undertaken with a certain functionary of the native institute (SPbSETU - the co-founder of Uransoft; we wrote about this in Habré ). We now have the opportunity to issue state-approved certificates, but this is an extra value added, which is relevant only for students from the public sector and large corporations.

results

The first employer who took advantage of the information on the online profile was ourselves, taking several testers to our IT company for an internship.
At first, only a part of the students actively used the provided tool (we evaluated according to the site logs). One listener even asked to delete the profile, since I got a job not on my profile and did not want to have “extra” information about myself on the Internet. Now almost all students of each group are asked to create a profile for them - even those who are not actively looking for work.

Finally

From the requirements that students, employers and training centers have, it is clear: in order to confirm the skills and qualifications, course names, dates of passing and the name of the teacher - NOT ENOUGH . A traditional paper certificate does not cover even a hundredth of these requirements.

Time will tell how our idea turned out to be correct. Will other training centers copy it? Will such information be in demand among hunters and final employers?

In the future, we plan to supplement the profiles with stories about how the professional fate of our students has developed.

By the way, if this article is read by employees of IT companies from St. Petersburg and you are constantly looking for interns / novice specialists in our main areas - hello, we want to work with you, write to us .

Thanks to the co-author of the article - staskin1 , and for illustrations - thanks to Comandante_WilD .