Certification of IT specialists can be centralized on the basis of the hh.ru platform

The Ministry of Digital Development and Headhunter representatives are discussing the idea of ​​establishing a single certification center for IT specialists based on the hh.ru platform. Previously, certification was carried out by training centers of Western vendors – Oracle, Red Hat, VMware, etc., but after 2022 they stopped working, and a niche became vacant. Now the volume of the IT certification market is estimated at 300 million rubles. with growth potential up to 1 billion rubles. by 2024. IT companies agree that new approaches to employee certification are necessary for the market, but they are wary of monopolization. The Ministry of Digital Development warns that the final decision has not yet been made.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the letter from the director of the department for the development of digital competencies and education of the Ministry of Digital Development, Tatyana Trubnikova, dated October 23 to a number of specialized IT companies and industry associations. It says that the ministry will hold a meeting on the issue of “creating on the basis of Headhunter LLC (owns the hh.ru portal) an independent technological platform that includes objective data on the state of the labor market for IT specialists.” This platform, it follows from the document, is also necessary to create on its basis “a system of voluntary confirmation of skills in the IT industry, taking into account different levels of competencies, regardless of the availability of specialized education.” A Kommersant source familiar with the situation clarified that the discussion should take place on October 27.

Russian software developers have been discussing the creation of a domestic employee certification system since at least September. The fact is that after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, certification centers of foreign companies (Oracle, Red Hat, VMware, etc.) left the Russian Federation. These centers issued documents confirming skills in working with company products; certification was paid, and its presence provided advantages in employment (see Kommersant on September 12).

A Kommersant source in the IT market suggests that the choice of hh.ru as the technology platform for the project is due to the fact that “the company has already created a ready-made competency map, described and verified 46 IT professions and 310 skills in them, and checked salary data.” The Ministry of Digital Development told Kommersant that the technology platform for certification of IT specialists has not yet been selected: “Headhunter took the initiative, but there is no final decision on the implementation of the project yet.” hh.ru declined to comment.

According to Kommersant’s interlocutor in the IT market, a number of companies are already engaged in technological and product certification of specialists: “IT Academy”, “Softline”, “T1 Digital Academy”, etc. According to the analytical report on IT certification (prepared in September by the Skolkovo Foundation, Kommersant has), the current volume of the market for certification of IT specialists in Russia is 200–300 million rubles, and “taking into account the cessation of the work of foreign centers and the growing demand for IT specialists by 2024, it may grow to 0.5–1 billion rubles.”

Now the certification market “is being formed by different initiative groups,” says Anna Kozlova, head of the knowledge department at PIX Robotics, “but there is a high demand for the formation of a unified system for confirming the skills of IT specialists, and this requires a common matrix of competencies, which many companies are currently working on” .

Centralizing the certification system for IT specialists is a losing option for the industry, argues Nikolai Komlev, head of the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises (APKIT). According to him, APKIT is not familiar with the hh.ru initiative, but in principle, certification involves coordination with market participants of approaches to training specialists, conducting exams and their classification. Mr. Komlev says that a council for the development of certification has already been created on the basis of APKIT. Approaches and mechanisms for implementing such a system are now being discussed, says the head of Softline Academy, Igor Morozov: “The key to success is the creation of an open market model, which will ensure recognition of issued certificates by the professional IT community.”

Nikita Korolev