The first round of testing was organised last week for participation in the IT retraining programme of the IT and eGovernment Office. From the initially registered 12,300 candidates, a total of 9,279 candidates participated, out of which the best 2,042 advanced to the next selection stage.
During next week, the candidates will choose IT schools where they would like to attend a course, then they will be interviewed by those schools, which will enrol the best performers. The students will attend one of the courses offered in the most popular programming languages – Java, JavaScript, PHP, .Net and C – and will be trained to work as an entry-level programmer. The selection process will be completed after the holidays, then the training will be organised throughout Serbia for up to six months.
Successful completion of the first round included solving tasks to determine professional skills, interests and personality type, as well as an English language test. This was successfully completed by 8,380 candidates. All of the questionnaires are designed to reveal the skills that are required to successfully work with programming.
Participants can check their results at any moment via a link they received with the invitation to take the test.
The retraining programme has been initiated to cover a lack of staff in the fast-growing IT sector.
The training is a continuation of a successful pilot project initiated on the proposal of the Ministerial Council for Innovative Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, chaired by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić. 97 people have been trained under the pilot scheme. In the second round, 12,300 candidates applied for the retraining programme.