Skilling Entry Level Engineers in IoT - A Practical Approach
1. Skilling entry level engineers in IoT
A practical approach
Jayakumar Balasubramanian
2. THANK YOU
We are an EdTech company
Established in 2003
Embedded Systems | IoT | FullStack Web Development
• Employability: Fresh engineers with Immersive
training programs
• UpSkilling: Organizations & Working professionals
with custom training programs
What problems we are solving?
3. Lower Hiring Ratio
Higher time for ramp-up
Behavioural orientation
Every year about 15 Lakhs engineering
graduates are passing out from various
colleges, with hardly miniscule percentage
of them having employable skills.
This issue poses multiple challenges for
organizations to hire entry level engineers.
With domains like Embedded Systems and
IoT where specific skills are required,
challenge becomes even bigger.
The Challenge
Higher cost for hiring
Challenges faced by organizations working in IoT
4. Faculty Development Programs
Short Term Workshops
Summarize
time
Industry Sponsored Labs
Not Addressing the core issue!
Both Quality & Scalability issues
Current Situation
Internship Programs
5. Phase 5 PLANCHECK
Foundation Building
Phase 2
Differentiation
Constant Mentoring
Continuous Improvement
Showing the mirror
Strength Finder
A Practical Approach
6. Foundation Building
• BTech (IoT), BTech (AI), BTech (ML), BTech (??)
• Programs vs Programming
• Building strong foundations by problem solving:
• Algorithms, Data Structures, Optimization
• Programming language is for expression
• Takes time and patience
• Unlearn-Learn-Relearn
• Learning by Doing (70-30 approach)
7. Showing the mirror
• Outcome based assessments
• For example, let us take an assignment program:
• Comments
• Indentation
• Logical correctness
• Ability to handle errors
• Nice to have feature
• Make the complexity higher as they progress in subject
(ex: C pointers)
• Have a 360 degree based approach
• Make every day as a assessment day
• Get them exposed – No more comfort zone!
Attendance
Weekly Tests
Assessment
System
8. Strength Finder
• What do we mean by “exposing”?
• 72% -> 40%
• 54% -> 78%
• MBTI tool, discover their strengths and passion
• Give the bitter truth that not everybody is cut
out to become great engineers
• MTech (Embedded & VLSI) -> HR professional
• BTech (15 hour programmer) -> Tech marketing
• Nobody has told me so far
9. Domain Skills
• Start building domain skills (IoT)
• Pushing to do more projects
• Start playing with OpenSource (Tools, Community,
Meetups)
• Learning as a continuous journey (Online,
Conferences, Contests, Quizzes, Exploring cross-
functional topics)
• Placement thinking -> Skill thinking
• Tell them 40+ stories
10. Domain Skills
IoT Device: Using sensors
gather Information from
multiple sources
IoT Gateway: Integrate
multiple IoT devices and
collect data from them
Network: Centered around
Internet all the information is
exported to cloud
Cloud: A platform that
connects to Internet and
analyses the data
Applications: Synthesized
data for the end user to
derive meaningful insights
01
02
03
05
04
Embedded FullStack
IoT developer’s view
Application FullStack
IoT developer’s view
Our Focus:
Integration with IoT
cloud
Our Focus:
Design & Program
Embedded IoT
11. Domain Skills
Get-Exposure: Know about sensor / device / network / cloud / applications
“Get-hands-on”:Electronics&Embedded
Embedded – Full Stack IoT
IoT Architecture
Setting up IoT workflows
Advanced C Programming
Micro-controller programming using Arduino
Python programming
Building IoT applications using Raspberry Pi
IoT Cloud Infrastructure
Performance and Security in IoT
Build YOUR resume – IoT Developer
Complete Embedded IoT skill-set
Problem Solving Skills
7-8 projects, Ability to work on real-time
Ability to program a controller / gateway
IoT protocols & integration knowledge
Open S/W (Ex: Linux skills) & Open H/W (Ex:
Raspberry-pi)
IDE / Development tools
12. Constant Mentoring
• Gyan giving uncles!
• Participative mentoring
• Aspirations are super high
• Attention span is far less + So much data
• Let us not call it as attitude problem
• Use all possible approaches (Inspire / Motivate
/ Coach / Threat / Punish)
• Believe me it works!
13. Continuous Improvement
• Fine turning the system
• Constructive Feedback
• Growth mind-set among mentors & organization
• Digitization and Automation
• Three thoughts to ponder, would love to hear your
thoughts!
1. Scale vs Engagement
2. Personalized learning (AI / ML – But how much?)
3. We believe its going to be hybrid
14. Key Results
~50% reduced time & cost of hiring
< 2% offer rejection
Top 10% Students bagging premium
salaries
Skill India / NSDC / ESSCI – Training
partner & NoS committee
Many happy tears!
Top 10% are able to match experienced
(18 – 24 Months) Engineers
~30 Placement Drives / Month
~350 Placement Drives / Year
70% repeat Recruiters
~1200 Graduates Trained / Year
Key
Results
Some numbers measured, keeps us on our toes.
4.7 / 5.0 – Average Student Rating
75% Placement Conversion Rate
15. Contact Details
Name Email ID Phone Number
Jayakumar Balasubramanian b.jayakumar@emertxe.com 98451 23380
Office Address:
Emertxe Information Technologies,
#83, Farah Towers,
1st Floor,
MG Road,
Bangalore – 560001
Landline: 080 41289576