Infosys to train students in US for digital jobs

Infosys is partnering with the Community College of Rhode Island to set up a digital economy aspirations lab for training students in the US for digital jobs, said the software major on Wednesday.

"Our digital innovation and design centre at Providence in Rhode Island will help bridge the gap for design and human-centric skills and provide digital technologies to our clients," said the city-based IT firm in a statement here.

The centre offers designers and design graduates training in digital skills, exposure to systems, platforms, strategy and organisation domains to make them employable in a digital world.

The $11-billion IT behemoth has so far hired 100 techies as part of its goal to create 500 jobs in the northeastern state by 2022.

"We have hired 7,600 American workers since spring 2017 as part of our commitment to speed up digital innovation of enterprise clients in the US," said the statement.

The outsourcing firm committed on May 2, 2017, to hire about 10,000 American techies to bridge the IT skills gap in the US and set up six technology-cum-innovation hubs across North America by 2022-23.

Global clients across the US account for about 60 per cent of the company's software export revenue annually.

The company's technology-cum-innovation hubs are at Indianapolis in Indiana state, Raleigh in North Carolina, Richardson in Texas, Phoenix in Arizona, Hartford in Connecticut and Providence in Rhode Island.

By studying user-experience to how people interact with systems, the graduate hires will be equipped to create 360-degree solutions to business challenges.

"Critical thinking is key to building human-centric solutions our clients need to accelerate their digital transformation. As demand for talent with design skills will rise, we are training American workers in them," said Infosys Chief Executive Salil Parekh on the occasion.

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo lauded Infosys for setting up its new innovation centre at Providence to train its graduates for digital jobs.

"Our state has some of the world's top designers who testify the strength of our workforce for Infosys to tap and develop their talent," said Raimondo in the statement.

The digital lab is at the forefront of education and workforce development of the community college students for careers in the digital economy, said Infosys President Ravi Kumar in the statement.

"We will co-develop bridge programming to support the four-year degree course and enable the students to pursue careers in IT," added the statement.