In the rapidly changing technological landscape, the only way for developers to remain relevant is to become lifelong learners. Mastering in their chosen area of expertise requires curiosity, commitment, and an encouraging environment. Third-party certifications are a great way to validate these learning efforts and give our clients the confidence to entrust our teams with critical initiatives transforming their business.
As the co-founder and CEO of MediaAgility, now part of Persistent Systems, our leadership team aimed at creating this environment of lifelong learning. I started this program a few years ago by brushing up on my data engineering skills to become a Google Cloud Certified Data Engineer, and this set an encouraging tone for many in the company to follow suit. It was a matter of time before this turned into a movement, thanks to the Learnathon initiative we ran in collaboration with our partners at Google Cloud.
We became part of Persistent earlier last year with approximately 360 certifications and set a goal of reaching 1,000 certifications within a year. Little did we know that we would achieve this in just 9 months. Reaching this milestone is a statement to our teams, clients, and partners that we are scaling our delivery excellence and are ready for larger challenges.
Our Journey to 1,000 Google Certifications
Persistent University, our activity-based learning program, is led by an award-winning Learning and Development team. We partnered with them to develop a new Learnathon program to chart our path to 1,000 certifications. To encourage the team, I carved out time from building the new Google Business Unit and committed to completing at least one certification myself. That came in the form of Cloud Digital Leader certification after I took the proctored exam from a hotel room while on a business trip.
Thanks to the valuable resources from Google Cloud, we organized instructor-led, on-demand trainings and made numerous hands-on labs available to our team members. Small rewards, leaderboards, and statistics were published to encourage the team and keep the momentum.
The Persistent University team took the internal dashboard we had created to track and share Google Cloud Certifications and converted that into a company-wide dashboard. Total certifications across major platforms we work on are now approaching a whopping 10,000!
Engineering excellence beyond certifications
While reaching this milestone certainly provides validation that we’re on the right path, we cannot stop at certifications. This journey must continue beyond technical certifications to include industry domain knowledge, agile delivery skills, and eventually actual production project experience.
Persistent University assists engineers in gaining the experience needed to build disruptive software. Team members can apply their recently acquired knowledge and skillsets to real-life projects, creating a culture of ‘learning by doing’. A management curriculum is offered to help team members further their communication, project management, and leadership skills.
At Persistent, emphasis is placed on supporting women in tech by providing our women team members access to programs designed to help them restart or advance in their careers.
Our Talent Experiential Transformation (TExT) program provides developers a unique opportunity to utilize their time spent between client engagements productively by allowing them to apply their learnings to open projects as they await allocation to new ones. Through this program, our team has delivered 15+ customer-facing projects with a customer satisfaction rating of 4.75 out of 5.
What’s Next?
According to a LinkedIn Leading with Learning report, which surveyed 850+ Learning & Development (L&D) professionals across the globe, 64% of respondents stated that filling skill gaps by reskilling the current workforce is a top priority.
At Persistent, we have prioritized fostering a culture of lifelong learning and innovation so that we can continue to drive success for our people and our clients.
With this in mind, we believe that organizations seeking to modernize deserve a partner that has developed a mature intellectual infrastructure to drive technology-led business outcomes. When you partner with Persistent, you are partnering with a trusted Digital Engineering and Enterprise Modernization company that combines deep technical expertise and industry experience to help clients anticipate what’s next and take action.
