Hacking Education, Employability & Entrepreneurship

Information Technology (IT) industry offers the highest career potential to Gen-Zs. But, the challenge to keep up with the dynamics of IT industry is tedious. In order to ease thing out, Skill Lab keeps the undergraduate students informed, help them plan their engagements and connect them to appropriate opportunities.

Security Pal , one of our industry partners, a leading IT firms in Nepal shares similar mission as ours. ?We are both committed to create platforms for students in order to get them job ready. Through career dialogue, interactions and simulations like hackathons we consistently build the capacity of the students.

On 22nd February2023, over 50 students in 8 teams participated in a Hackathon jointly organized by Security Pal and Skill Lab. Each team picked their own unique problems and dedicated most of their time designing solutions with IT interventions at the core.

PS. Each team shared a selfie with a caption that reflected their experience. ?

Each of these teams picked up problems that they could connect, and tried exploring possible solutions with IT intervention. The facilitators encouraged them to focusing on the process than just the solution itself. ?The observations and experience shared by the participants during the sessions were intriguing.

While brain storming, one of the participants shared,” we often design solution for human but fail at having enough social interaction and that is one problem among we, youngsters”.

Yet another participant who has applied independently and was teamed up with a few independent participants said,’ the whole process of syncing the energy in the first place and building up a team was a great experience. Winning at the end adds an extra reason to keep up the connection.

As an observer, the team dynamics was such a pleasure to eyes. For the entire time, they worked with no deviation or need of break. They tried pulling resources, technologies and ideas in whatever ways possible. One of the teams, the one mentioned above acknowledged the fact that the diversity in their team made them the victors.

Beyond these competitions, the interactions that Skill Lab facilitates among the students and the industry leaders help them have better insights of practicalities of industries. During the Hackathon, they had the HR head all the time to talk to them, the operations head shared his contact details in case they wish to connect in person and responding to the request of a few participant, they got an office tour. Guess what, post tour the sparkles in their eyes said it all.

?But it was not all flowers, the judges did get them a quick reality check. When it comes to business- market can be ruthless and a quick taste of the same was given during the presentation round. For the scope and implications of their work is tremendous, so is the knowledge requirements. The questions asked, tried testing their knowledge on research, empathy, budgeting, scale and what not. They undoubtedly had a tough time but it was very well summarized by one of the judges in the end.

One fun observation was to look at all of their faces at once. With every question – similar emotions would run on all of their faces. If one team was grilled, each of the participants felt the pain and if one received appreciation, they all smiled. This was indeed a beautiful carnival of team spirit.

The session stands tall as a mile stone for Security Pal, for they offered a platform for aspiring tech enthusiasts and gave them opportunity to understand the industry in the closest possible ways. For Skill Lab, the sense of accomplishment is truly encouraging. The enthusiasm and experience shared by them, adds energy to create more platforms like this. This was also one great opportunity to have students from all our partner colleges come together and share one platform for collective growth. At the end, the students, who holds the center position, walked out with a great experience, connection, better team spirit and most importantly happy faces.