As a part of the initiatives under the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) for ITE and Polytechnics Alliance (TIP Alliance), established by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), NCS and IMDA recently unveiled Fusion, an integrated work and study programme where Polytechnic graduates would pursue additional education and earn a university degree while working at NCS to hone their skill sets.
“I commend leading tech firms like NCS in stepping up to empower our ICT graduates, including those from our Polytechnics and ITEs to seize exciting new job roles in the rapidly growing digital economy,” says Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information.
In the first two years of the Fusion programme, NCS, a SINGTEL subsidiary will hire and train 400 Polytechnic graduates in areas like infrastructure, applications, software development, and cybersecurity. This programme will assist Polytechnic graduates in enrolling in the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) or Singapore Institute of Management (SIM). NCS wants to establish another new programme in 2023, targeting 400 ITE graduates in the first two years to work and study part-time to earn a diploma in a field connected to technology.
Fusion and ITE Programmes complement the existing NCS Nucleus Programme, which will hire 800 university graduates as digital specialists over the next two years, bringing the total number of tech jobs and training possibilities to 1,600. In addition, during the following two years, the NCS will offer internship opportunities in the field of technology to thousands of students enrolled in institutions of higher education.
As one of the largest homegrown tech leaders contributing to the growth of the country’s talent pipeline over the past 40 years, NCS has helped Singapore establish its core of tech talent. One of the biggest end-to-end digital powerhouses in the area, NCS has recently increased the scale of its digital services division tag as NEXT.
To cultivate a local talent pool of ICT professionals in Singapore, NCS has recently launched Fusion, the newest programme in its long list of talent development initiatives. Employees will receive centralised modular training at the beginning of the Fusion programme through a six-week boot camp on foundational training in functional, behavioural, and technical capabilities, followed by supervised on-the-job training and coaching.
After completing the Fusion programme and earning a degree, graduates will have the option to continue their education with NCS’ current Nucleus programme, expanding their areas of expertise while pursuing a Master of Technology degree at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of Systems Science (NUS-ISS) or other professional certifications recognised by the industry.
In Fusion, NCS pays for the tuition, offers apprenticeship-based learning opportunities, and arranges regular employment rotations with exposure to the region so that the tech talent may develop their depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise while working.
The TIP Alliance, which was established by IMDA in September 2022 and is led by SGTech and the Singapore Computing Society, consists of both international and domestic businesses that hire IT expertise.
This alliance aims to place and train Polytechnic and ITE graduates with tech credentials over the course of the following three years (2022 to 2024), promote the shift in hiring practises in the sector from qualification-based to skills-based, and modify the Polytechnic and ITE curriculum to stay current with industry trends.
The Alliance’s initiatives will boost the tech talent pipeline to support the expansion of Singapore’s digital economy, which will employ nearly 200,000 tech professionals yearly by 2021 after growing by roughly 10,000 new tech positions per year over the previous four years.
