From 15-week crash course to workforce
NPower gives students interested in IT the skills they need to build a career
At 19, Thievejakan Neethirajah of Markham had already dropped out of university. Like many young people in Ontario, he went straight from high school into the University of Toronto for humanities. And like many more, he struggled to adapt: The lecture sizes were off-putting, and he felt isolated and alone. Burned out and disillusioned, he turned his back on university and left last winter.
Difficult months followed, with stop-start attempts to self-educate online and through night school in Toronto. Before long, a year had passed.
“By the end of the year, I was really demotivated,” Neethirajah, now 20, explains. “I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I just stuck around at home, which I hated and which my parents hated.”
Killing time one day last summer in a Markham public library, he was looking for a sign. Then he literally saw one. A company called NPower was advertising free IT training with a paid internship and career placement. He wanted in.
“Looking back at it now, it feels so good that I was there at that exact moment. The feeling of luck is still there. I’m actually doing this,” he says.
He’s more than a month into “this” — a 15-week crash course in IT specially designed for youth aged 19 to 29, without a post-secondary education and struggling to find work. There are no tuition fees, and participants in the program go directly from their training to a paid internship lasting eight to 12 weeks. More than 88 per cent then go on to full-time employment with the same company at which they did their internship. If positions aren’t available, NPower helps them find full-time work somewhere else.
Students are in class a few hours a week understanding the nuts and bolts of IT via the service analyst or software development and testing streams of the program and by spending time with industry leaders, who give first-hand perspective on the job. NPower works with dozens of companies — Cisco, D-Link, Deloitte, Rogers, Telus and most major financial institutions, including BMO, CIBC, RBC and TD — to place students and bring in guest speakers.
A full-time social worker provides counselling and support to students, all of whom have had difficulty finding employment in the past. To apply, students need a high school diploma (or equivalent) and must have a valid social insurance number. Potential students are invited to introduction workshops to see if the program would be a good fit. From there, they start the crash course.
The supportive environment, small classes (never more than 60 stu- dents) and path to employment are a far cry from Neethirajah’s impression of university.
It was overwhelming,” he says. “One day you’re in high school, you have friends, you have this support system, you know what you’re doing; in university, there’s this wave of uncertainty and you’re on your own. I wasn’t prepared or ready to do that. And you don’t know what happens after you graduate. You’re committing four huge years to this.”
At least one of his NPower classmates, Jenna Huang, shares his experience. At 20, Huang has tried university twice, and left both times. She went from high school to Wilfrid Laurier University and left before the first term was up.
Last January, she enrolled in management at York University and found her feelings about university hadn’t changed; she still felt isolated and frustrated. Though she’s still enrolled, she does not plan to return.
She saw the same poster that Neethirajah saw for NPower near Markham. “This is too good to be true, I thought,” she says. “It’s only 15 weeks and they offer an internship and certificate for free?”
Andrew Reddin, the regional director GTA of NPower Canada, explains the program is supported by the United Way and the corporations who place students and loan expertise to the classes.
“Our industry partners see a clear economic benefit to having custom-trained, diverse and motivated young people who they can employ,” explains Reddin.
The NPower team is proud of their students’ success, but don’t consider finding jobs the last step of their program.
They encourage students to return to post-secondary education, but they’re also happy to get students on the work track.
“People should really be open to taking different routes instead of post-secondary,” Huang says.
“I believe hard work and dedication can get you places. Options are open. People should look into different routes. ”