Shashi Tharoor’s professional training academy opened at technopark

Former UN under-secretary general Shashi Tharoor’s professional training academy opened at the Technopark campus,for bettering the business communication and technical skills of professionals, including fresh recruits, working in the knowledge and service industries.

Quoting heads of Technopark-based firms with whom he had interacted recently, Mr. Tharoor said most young employees had a “book knowledge of English.” They could write a paper, but could not speak their ideas confidently in English. Hence, such employees, even though highly talented, could not be presented before foreign clients.

He said his academy had hired the services of eminent U.S.-based speech language pathologist Tina L. Parson as executive director (training). She had designed a course which used the latest computer-based interactive voice recognition software for training students. Mr. Tharoor said the idea was not to make Malayalis sound like Americans but to help them communicate clearly.

The academy will offer a limited number of scholarships for trainees from poor families. The two-month course will cost a student approximately Rs.30,000. A batch will consist of 20 students. Application forms can be downloaded from the academy’s website http://www.aabc.in

One more training accademy also will be launched by the CMC Limited, an IT solutions provider, will open the second such facility, a technical school for improving the soft skills of young graduates freshly-recruited by global businesses, in September this year. Mr. Nair said Technopark would sign an agreement with CMC Limited this week concerning this. The government will invest Rs.2 crore in the technical school