Tuesday, February 13, 2007 Software industry to recognize exam takers
SOFTWARE industry players agreed to recognize engineering graduates who will take the Philippine IT General Certification Examination (Phil-IT GCE).
“This will simplify and hasten the recruitment process and guarantees that our pool of graduates and potential hires has the necessary knowledge in (IT) information technology,” said Robert Cheng, Alliance Business Software president.
The Phil-IT GCE, which Cebu Educational Development Foundation for IT Cedf-it initiated, is a set of examinations based on standards developed by Cedf-it, in collaboration with the www.itros.ph, the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines and the European IT Service Center Foundation.
Products
According Cedf-it executive director Bonifacio Belen, software companies that have established offices in Cebu have targeted to employ 1,500 to 2,000 programmers, software engineers, network and database administrators, among others, this year.
“Since some IT companies are developing their own products here, this will create a huge demand for employment related to high valued type of work,” said Cedf-it senior adviser Fred Kintanar during a press conference at the Cedf-it office in Asiatown IT Park last Friday.
Guarantee
However, Mike Tyler, president of Icomm International said that while a Phil-IT GCE certificate “will not guarantee” an applicant for employment, a certification is sure to increase an individual’s chances of getting hired.
Skills
“Apart from being equipped with the necessary IT skills, a person’s working attitude will also matter,” said Jonathan Tse, research and development manager for Advance World Systems Inc.
Kintanar said that because of the “successful run” of the two Phil-IT GCE exams in May and October last year, another exam will be scheduled this March.
However, the upcoming exam will include a larger pool of examinees from nearly 35 schools in Cebu and neighboring provinces.
Estimate
Belen has estimated that some 600 to 1,000 examinees will take the simultaneous on-line exam next month.
“Participating in the Phil-IT GCE will serve as a benchmark for smaller schools to level with the bigger ones,” Tse said.
Kintanar added that as more industry players continue to recognize the Phil-IT GCE exam, this will “raise the confidence” of other colleges and universities and encourage their graduating classes to participate.
Certification
“The certification will encourage IT schools to work hard on increasing the quality of IT learning because they will have to ensure that their IT graduates will pass the certification. This will also push our IT students to study and learn IT by heart in order to pass the exam,” Belen said. (MMM)
