IT consulting firm Mantel Group launches tech skills training program

Melbourne-headquartered IT consultancy Mantel Group has launched a tech skills training program aimed for both graduates and experienced professionals.

Called the Emerging Talent Program, the company aims to bring in some 150 trainees over the next three years, ranging from self-taught coders, career changers, university graduates and bootcamp graduates. Some 23 trainees have already signed up this year.

The program consists of three separate programs, supported by an in-house learning “academy” called Peak Academy. The academy aims to support trainees with a blended curriculum of technical upskilling and professional development.

Pathway Programs was the first to launch in July 2021, which is a 12-week traineeship focused on further enhancing prior work experience and recently acquired tech knowledge by immersing trainees in practical on-the-job experience, one-on-one mentoring and development workshops.

Launched this week was Future Associates Program, a 13-month program to allow employees to co-design their own journey into a tech career, with an option to join Peak Academy or rotate across Mantel Group’s brands and disciplines.

Also launched this week was Emerging Tech Talent Academy, a six-month early career program for students starting their studies and looking to gain first-hand insights, practical experience and grow their tech and consulting skills. It will include workshops, fireside chats, team challenges and micro-internships across Mantel Group’s brands.

Mantel Group said the program was devised by people and culture specialist Kerry Callenbach with the aim of addressing “various bottlenecks in the talent pipeline”.

“Companies across Australia and New Zealand are struggling to find great people with technology skills. What amazes me is that most of those companies are running the same internships and graduate programs they were ten years ago,” Callenbach said.

“Going down traditional institutional pathways doesn’t automatically equate to role success and bypasses a big pool of talent. Rather than limiting ourselves to these pathways alone, we are taking a bigger picture approach to allow people to bring their talent to us, whether through a traditional degree, skills acquired in the workplace, or raw passion for tech, and nurturing that talent in one of our programs.”

Mantel Group is a collection of Australian technology consultancies, including digital services consultancy DigIO, data science specialist Eliiza, AWS Premier Partner CMD Solutions, Google partner Kasna, design principle thinking consultancy Pretzel Lab, Microsoft partner Azenix and Databricks partner Cuusoo.

Commenting on the program, CMD Solutions co-CEO Adam Durbin said, “I started my career in IT over 15 years ago in IT software support moving to system engineering and virtualisation, then into cloud. After working in various roles across private enterprise, government and consulting organisations, I took the leap and co-founded CMD Solutions.

“Going straight into the workforce at a young age, I never got a uni degree and don’t feel it has ever held me back. With the pace of technology change, the level of focus put on formal qualifications in IT has changed.

“This program removes the hurdles that companies put up unnecessarily on degrees and experience. Instead, we focus on attitude and aptitude. If you’re interested in a tech career and have the skills and willingness to learn to be a great consultant, we can find a place for you and help you build the role.”

CMD Solutions in July this year also launched its own employment pathway program, learnCMD, which is focused specifically on cloud skills and for experienced IT professionals. The program aimed to upskill those in ‘traditional’ IT roles in the latest cloud technologies, specifically on AWS.