There is no change at the top with the U.S.A. and India taking the top two positions (as they did in 2005), in terms of the number of Information Technology (IT) and professional certifications, according to the 2006 Global Skills Report published by Brainbench.
Eastern Europe remained steady with Russia, Ukraine and Romania still leading in terms of total certifications, while Asian hotspots such as the Philippines and Malaysia fared far lower. Latvia and Lithuania, also touted as the emerging contenders for offshoring, actually dropped by over 40% in their total number of certifications. Pakistan, at No. 11, is the dark horse.
Brainbench assesses one or more skill areas of an individual in its online-certifications site. These skills are in six categories, including IT, finance, customer support, sales and marketing, management and health care. In order to be certified, an individual must have achieved a score high enough to be officially “certified” for the given skill, which is a score of 2.75 out of a possible score of 5. The 2006 report represents 298,495 individual skill certifications.
India has moved up by 48% over its last year’s performance with the total number of certifications at 89,374, while the U.S.A. has in fact dropped by 18% with the total number of certifications at 103,380. Now the numbers confirm that the skills gap is closing.
In the IT arena, India dominated all database development and most programming language categories, with the exception of C#. In the areas of DB2 programming and software testing, India is the clear leader with a staggering 71% of the market share tucked under its belt. No other player looks poised at unseating it for a long time to come. The U.S.A., on the other hand, maintained its domination over the systems and network administration and technical-support categories. The U.S. fortune as a skill leader may falter in 2007, predicts Norbert Walter, Chief Economist, Deutsche Bank, unlike other American trading partners, India will remain unaffected, thanks to government management to its GDP, the experts added.
In the U.S.A. California topped the charts, though the total number of certifications dropped by 21%. Texas and Florida followed at second and third place.
The Latin American visibility increased with Mexico climbing by 73% in the overall certifications. Brazil grew by 15%, and there was a surprise entrant in Cuba, which was above Chile and Argentina.
Amid the entire hullabaloo, one might wonder what happened to the dragon? China grew an impressive 82% in its certifications, but is estimated to take many more years to gain the prominence that India enjoys. China was 34 on the list with most of the Latin American countries ahead of it. There are essentially two factors inhibiting its growth — the students despite taking all the right courses find it difficult to apply their learning to real business issues and secondly, English is an issue in terms of both oral and written communication China has to also wake up to the reality that it is not the only alternate for India when it comes to skilled labor. Tata India is all set to impact the technical pool in Hungary with its newest facility there.
Surprisingly, all the other Asian destinations considered as hotspots for offshoring/outsourcing actually dropped in the certifications, barring Singapore. The Philippines and Indonesia dropped marginally, while Malaysia had to bear a re-sounding thud with a 30% drop.
In the nontechnical skills category, almost all the categories, including accounts payable, business communication and customer service had the U.S.A. at the top. Nontechnical skills have gained more and more foothold on the BPO landscape over the years, especially in the area of customer service. Brainbench finds that certifying individuals over the Web in the area of soft skills is indeed an emerging trend. A Java or DB2 certification has always been there, but what is new on this front is individuals wanting to rate themselves in nontechnical skills.
