One of Fractal Analytics Pvt. Ltd’s flagship programs is the annual preboarding and onboarding program for “Imagineers”—the college graduates who join the firm each summer. This three-year holistic program equips participants for their new role by training them on the relevant technical skills to an industry certification standard within an immersive learning environment with sessions on life skills, business skills and hands-on activities to enable a smooth transition from campus to corporate life. The goal is to meet the increasing demand for data analytics professionals who can hit the ground running in Fractal Analytics’ ways of working with clients.
Program Details
In the rapidly evolving fields of data science and analytics, continuous upskilling is imperative because skills and technologies obsolesce rapidly. Continuous learning, especially among adults, requires a high degree of motivation and commitment. Fractal Analytics is making learning more engaging by emphasizing interactive and immersive learning over conventional approaches. Hackathons, data challenges, and case studies mimicking actual Fractal Analytics engagements give learners the opportunity to apply skills learned to real-world problems. Besides enabling learners to translate learning into practice, this spurs innovation by creating an opportunity to explore new ideas and approaches without the fear of failure.
To foster personal growth and development, Fractal Analytics created learning paths tailored to each of the company’s six career tracks. By following these recommended paths and progressing from beginner to intermediate to advanced skills in the relevant career track, learners systematically build and improve the skills that are vital to their success in their chosen tracks.
The preboarding program is 12 weeks long and begins at the time the offer is confirmed and before the new talent is onboarded. This focuses on base level skills and “must-haves” at Fractal Analytics. After successful completion, the new hire moves to onboarding—a more niched tailormade “Fractalyzed” training program focusing on a specialized career track to prepare learner for the client projects. This is a five- to six-week hybrid program that beings when the new hire joins Fractal Analytics.
Key elements of the Imagineers Program include:
- Learners are allocated to a career track on the first day of onboarding (an outcome of the preboarding course). This allows them to be trained in a focused manner and also gives them a sense of belonging to a project account. It also encourages specific project teams to effectively mentor and coach learners aligned with their accounts and explain things in context.
- Learners can shadow project teams on a project and observe the real world and connect learning with application. Learners also can identify other professional skills, apart from technical skills, that are required to succeed in the job.
- Learners also get the opportunity to work in a simulated client engagement as per practice or account. This readies them to face challenges on their own and learn to work independently on projects and be ready for the job.
Refreshers, hackathons, and workshops are planned throughout the year for the next three years as a part of this program for the newly deployed Imagineer to refresh the trainings, listen to their challenges, and guide them further in their growth path. Imagineers also have a dedicated team of Fracta Analytics members who speak to each of them one-on-one and coach and mentor them.
Results
Some 245 employees were trained and 209 certified in 2022; with 54,328 training hours logged. The pass rate was 98.3 percent, and deployment on client-facing billed projects within Fractal Analytics was 70 percent.
