Customer Stories / Professional Services / India
Kyndryl Invests in Early-Career Talent and Scales Cloud Skills Training with AWS Educate to Drive Business Growth
Learn how Kyndryl worked with AWS to identify and prepare new talents, implementing training courses from AWS Educate to train and onboard 480 new early-career AWS-skilled employees.
480
new employees trained and onboarded quickly with AWS Educate
More than 40%
reduction in AWS training hours for college graduates hired
Overview
Kyndryl is a global information technology infrastructure services provider and AWS Partner with more than 5,000 AWS Certifications as of September 2023. To meet the demand for AWS-skilled talent, Kyndryl wanted to increase its recruitment of new hires and ability to onboard them quickly. Kyndryl worked with AWS to implement a cloud literacy training curriculum across 23 colleges in India, which included digital training courses and hands-on labs with AWS Educate.
Through AWS Educate, Kyndryl trained early-career talents from colleges in India, 480 of whom were subsequently hired. This helped Kyndryl reduce training time for new hires from four to six weeks to just one week, providing the new hires with the necessary skills to contribute immediately to solution development.
Opportunity | Supporting a Growing AWS Business with Early-Career Cloud Talent
As a global information technology infrastructure services provider, Kyndryl relies on a global network of skilled professionals to serve thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. The company designs, builds, manages, and modernizes complex, mission-critical information systems. An Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner, Kyndryl has over 5,000 certifications on AWS as of September 2023, and delivers cloud-based solutions on AWS. Somak Banik, associate director of cloud and infrastructure architecture at Kyndryl, explains, “We have a strong relationship with AWS, and we work closely together to deliver the right solutions to our customers.”
In recent years, Kyndryl’s AWS business faced an increased demand for its cloud services. As a result, it encountered challenges sourcing enough cloud-skilled employees to support current and future customer projects on AWS. To meet the demand for AWS-skilled talent, Kyndryl expanded its recruitment efforts and focused on new early-career hires from colleges. However, it sought to expedite the onboarding process for new hires and accelerate their time to productivity. This proved challenging because the company needed more cloud learning and hands-on exposure to AWS technologies. Raj Mohan, director of delivery management at Kyndryl, says, “We decided we really needed to have resources from colleges in India who were trained in AWS skills and would be ready upon graduation to step into our company and help with new projects. We also wanted to accelerate their onboarding time once we hired them, so they could begin making an impact right away.”
With AWS Educate, our new employees receive both theoretical and practical AWS training, which helps them be more productive when they’re onboarded with our company. Typically, it would take between four and six weeks for new hires to be ready to help. Now, new hires are ready within the first week.”
Raj Mohan
Director of Delivery Management at Kyndryl
Solution | Building New Early-Career Hires’ AWS Skills through AWS Educate
To help Kyndryl train new early-career talents at scale, AWS proposed an onboarding and training program based on AWS Educate, which offers self-paced AWS skills training and hands-on labs through the AWS Management Console. Kyndryl chose to require the completion of two AWS Educate courses—Cloud Literacy and Cloud 101 Lab—for students pursuing their eighth semester of university and planning to begin employment at Kyndryl. Prospective hires also have the option to take Cloud Support Engineer, Application Developer, Cybersecurity, Solutions Architect, or DevOps Engineer courses.
“The mandatory courses were critical in helping students understand what the cloud is and how AWS services work,” says Mohan. “With the Cloud 101 Lab course, students got to work in an AWS sandbox environment to really see what working on the cloud is like.” Students completed the courses over a 90-day period.
Outcome | Accelerating New Hires’ Time to Productivity with AWS Educate
Between June and July of 2023, Kyndryl hired 480 cloud administrators and Terraform developers from 23 colleges across India who were trained through this program. “With AWS Educate, our new employees receive both theoretical and practical AWS training, which helps them be more productive when they’re onboarded with our company,” Mohan says. “Typically, it would take between four and six weeks for new hires to be ready to help. Now, new hires are ready within the first week. They know AWS basics, so we don’t have to start from scratch, and they can begin working on customer projects right away.” Kyndryl now enjoys a distinct competitive advantage with the resources in place to support new solutions and services for its global customers.
Going forward, the company plans to continue working with AWS Education Programs, including AWS Educate and AWS Academy, to train new early-career talents from more universities across India. Specifically, programs from AWS Academy offer higher education institutions with a complimentary, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students to pursue industry-recognized certifications and in-demand cloud careers. “We’ve seen more and more colleges recognizing AWS Education Programs through word of mouth,” says Mohan. “Students and professors are hearing about the success of the program, and it keeps growing. We’re seeing a lot of value from working with AWS in this way, both for our company and for students interested in furthering their technology careers.”
After completing this portion of the collaboration with AWS, Kyndryl will work on the next phase, with the help of the AWS Training and Certification team, to provide new employees with industry-specific training. “For example, we’ll have training modules for healthcare, so employees can learn the tools, services, and compliance procedures common to that industry,” says Mohan.
About Kyndryl
Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider serving thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. The company designs, builds, manages, and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com.
AWS Services Used
AWS Educate
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AWS Education Programs
AWS Education Programs help individuals build and validate cloud skills. AWS Education Programs are specifically designed to prepare the next generation of diverse, cloud-skilled talent for in-demand cloud roles around the world.
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