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Friday 12th March 2010

Rise of the Cyberella Competition - your chance to win a free IT training course worth £2,950!!


Please note: This competition has now closed! Details of the winner coming soon.

Cy-ber-ella - pronounced ‘si-ber-ela’
Definition:  A female with industry recognised IT skills and qualifications and who has recognised the lifelong potential that the IT industry offers

Women no longer sit at home waiting for prince charming to turn up on his trusty white steed and place a glass slipper on their size 5. They are out earning a living then buying the Prada/Gucci/Jimmy Choo (delete as appropriate) glass slipper on-line and have been doing so for a long time now. So why is it then, in a world of equal opportunities, equality and high powered female executives, that the IT industry remains dominated by men?

The answer is a mystery…
Girls achieve higher grades than boys in all subjects at GCSE level. Females consistently achieve higher grades than their male equivalents in IT related subjects. Kate Lilley from the National IT Learning Centre said, “We find that although only 15% of all our students are women they have a far greater first time pass rate and generally obtain higher scores”. You only have to look at the amount of females on social networking sites to see that us girls are more than au fait with the technologically advancing world”. The rewards are high and demand for IT professionals across all industry sectors is great. Information Communication and Technology are major driving factors for the growth of productivity in the EU.
 
Many IT job roles capitalise on women's greatest strengths - communication, collaboration and problem solving. Women also seem to have a natural affinity with what the industry call ‘soft skills’ – these are skills that separate a great employee from a good one. Soft skills are developed personal qualities enabling the employee to work more effectively; time management, presentation skills and team building. A survey commissioned by Microsoft revealed that lateral thinking and collaboration were some of the most sought after traits in prospective employees. Jemma Harris from Microsoft is quoted “Soft skills will reign supreme in the UK workplace over the next 25 years”.

So, how do we make IT that shiny glass slipper that no self-respecting Cyberella is able to resist? It is a must for our technical workforce which invents new tools, games, devices, software and hardware to be used by, amongst others, women. The IT profession needs women in order to be able to offer increased diversity and productivity which is proved to come from having a better balance of women in technical jobs.

And how can we attract women, their knowledge and the qualities they bring? Maybe, if we dispel the nerdy image wrongly associated with IT roles and drag this image out of the 1970s and into the 21st Century!  We must promote the reality that jobs in IT are not all about writing operating systems, working with geeks in brown nylon trousers or learning endless programming languages. Working in IT is about helping companies change the way they work. Making changes to generate more revenue, lower cost and improve customer service - these are solutions for all types of business. IT is everywhere and that isn’t about to change.

So as part of our strategic aim of increasing the number of women working and achieving in the IT profession, we have teamed up with the National IT Learning Centre to run a competition where the prize is a free IT training course worth £2,950!

All you need to do for your chance to win is to explain in no more than 100 words why you would like to win the free IT training course - it's as simple as that!

The competition is open from Monday 18th January until midday on Monday 15th February 2010.




To be in with your chance to win a free IT Training Course worth £2,950 - either CIW Master Designer Course, IT Technician Course or CCNA Course from the The National IT Learning Centre, please click here!