This year, from August to September 2022, the selection for the IT Generation pilot project from the Ministry of Digital Development took place.
Recall that this initiative was aimed at the digital technology industry development, which will become a driving factor in the recovery of the Ukrainian economy.
Thus, new talents get a chance to become real IT specialists and contribute to the development of the Ukrainian economy, in particular, the IT industry. To participate in the project, the participant must:
This year 21 IT schools have joined the project. All of them offered training in different areas, both technical (programming or QA) and non-technical (Project Manager, UX design, etc.)
Each participant could choose several schools and several directions to increase their chances. The most motivated was to be selected for schools, and the state with partners would pay for the winners' studies. It looked simple, logical, and consistent. But let's see how it went.
This initiative has received a lot of attention. And considering that many lost their jobs due to the war, their income and standard of living fell sharply, for them it became almost a lifeline, a breath of hope for improvement.
According to the same Ministry of Digital Development, 47,996 citizens applied for a grant, and the total number of applications for schools and directions reached 211,312.
That is, schools received tens of thousands of questionnaires, several thousand per direction. Of course, this led to:
How it looked in practice: for example, a participant went to study as a QA tester at school X. And 11,500 more people like him applied, and let's say 156 available training places.
That is, 74 people (at least!) could apply for one place in the school, and the more popular and promising the direction, the greater the competition.
Because of this number, the Ministry of Digital Development increased the number of grants from 1000 to 1830, and some schools agreed to teach additional students at their own expense.
Of course, to single out those who are motivated to become an IT specialist among the thousands who want to, schools resorted to their selection methods:
Also, for the final selection, many schools conducted interviews.
Since each school applied its approach and solved the problem as best it could, it was not without curiosities, and sometimes without scandals. Not surprisingly, some participants compared the selection for IT Generation to playing squid.
GoIT is one of the most popular IT schools. As part of the selection, she held a marathon, where candidates got acquainted with their chosen areas and completed simple test tasks. After that, it was necessary to go through an online webinar with a survey in the direction, then test in English and send an English-language video, 1 minute long.
Those who passed all these stages got to the interview and after that their fate was decided. At the end of the selection, everyone received letters with the result and the results of the selection.
The information appeared several times that these 150 lucky ones included a lot of people who already had experience in the IT field and are even now working on projects (2 per person on average). Although the Ministry of Digital Development clearly noted that it is precisely those who have no experience in this area or education that can apply.
Further, the question on this matter was not particularly promoted, and the participants themselves commented on this with jokes like "Real Madrid will play for the school team."
Many schools tried to make this selection as objective as possible (as far as they believed). But often this was done hastily, which manifested itself in testing problems:
Actually, periodically there were tasks where there was an error in the question itself. For example, in the same English:
But there were also schools that made successive selections. That is, the participant was required to:
But even under such conditions, it was necessary to give everything to 100 in order to get into the number of scholarship holders. So, the lowest indicator of the winner reached 94% (the average percentage for passed technical tests and English).
However, this does not mean that the project itself did not achieve its goal and generally seemed to be something wrong. Undoubtedly, with so many people wishing to enter the promising financial sphere, there will be great competition.
First, even if you pass the test perfectly, record a motivational video where even your English is without an accent. There may be technical errors (the video never made it to the school's mail) or the organizers were convinced by another candidate.
Secondly, the schools are different, and the approach to selection is different. The purpose of participation in the project is also different for them. One team may want to provide a chance to get a new specialty. Another may want to recruit a team of new IT people for herself, and someone else will see a good PR opportunity in the project.
IT blogger Dima Maleev made an interesting review of the project, where he expressed his opinion on what is generally wrong with IT Generation. True, some moments were very similar to black PR: for example, several schools were criticized in general terms, but the Logos IT Academy school got the most ... out of all 21 schools.
In any case, IT Generation turned out to be an interesting project where you can at least:
By the way, participants who did not pass the selection, but had a real desire to become Aitovtsy, received discounts on training, sometimes at 50%. And some people just got inspired by the project and are already learning Python or JavaScript even by their own means.
Therefore, first of all, believe in yourself and your dream, and life will always provide you with opportunities for its implementation. The same IT Generation will still recruit students, by the way;)
LCWork wishes you good luck in whatever field you choose!