Michael Phelan

Closing the Circle: Industry & Academia

Michael Phelan

Summary

• Dell 360° overview

• Linkages to academia

• Optimising Dell skill sets– Dell Skills Portal

• Campus Consulting Unit (CCU)

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Dell 360°

Academic Linkages

Campus Skills Optimisation

Campus Consulting

Unit

Michael Phelan

Dell 360° Overview

• According to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, there are 2,000 vacant jobs to fill but a lack of suitably skilled candidates

• Develop focused relationships with Universities that are mutually beneficial

• Attract best skilled graduates (pre & post) graduation

• Reorganise & optimise internal skill sets

– Identify skill set strengths

– Up-skill / educate employees

– Target graduates skill sets

• Create a focused Campus Consulting Unit (CCU) to provide consultancy / solutions to campus teams

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Linkages with Academia

• There are various avenues to explore when developing linkages with academic institutions including:– Undergraduate (Cooperative Education, Final Year Project)

– Postgraduate (Masters [Taught/Research] & PhD)

• Academic institutions engage with industry for a variety of reasons including:– Cooperative education placements

– Research project data

– Funding (students / faculty)

• Dell needs to be focused on what they want from any academic relationship & put mechanisms in place to ensure maximum return

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PhD ProjectA PhD is typically 3-4 yrs FT and 5-7 yrs PT and inIreland is predominantly a significant researchproject assessed by viva & thesis. There is a movein some Irish universities toward a morestructured continental European / Americanmodel including more taught courses and journalpublications. The central hypothesis of a PhD hasto be unique, contributing new knowledge toacademic literature.

Co-Operative EducationTypically 6-8 months on site work experience,ideally in a relevant discipline. A targeted Coopplacement with defined goals & supervisionshould provide a student with 5-7 monthsfocused work

Masters ProjectTypically a taught masters (1 yr full time [FT], 2 yrspart time [PT]) course will have a dissertationproject (3-4 months) whereas a research masters(2 yrs FT, 3+ yrs PT) with be of min 2 yearsduration with a major research component. It iscommon for research masters to be convertedinto PhD’s.

Final Year Project (FYP)Most courses in UL have an FYP as a major part oftheir final (4th) year. The FYP can be a strongtalking point in interviews & can also act as agateway to masters / PhD research.

Academic Model (UL Example)

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Linkages with Academia Example

• Dell identify a specific project (e.g. forecast accuracy in planning team) & require a student with strong statistical skills

• A student is hired on Coop placement and integrated into onsite team, provided with project background and data

• The student could also be offered to continue their project as part of their FYP– Offering an FYP option has many benefits:

› Students’ academic supervisor is now engaged on the project

– The supervisor may have an interest in extending the project to masters / PhD level thus strengthening the relationship

› Student may decide to seek a position in Dell after graduation

– Student is already familiar with the setup & no need for a ramp-up time

– Student can bring best-in-class techniques to “freshen up” internal approaches

– Student may go on to further study, perpetuating the Dell 360° cycle

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Dell 360° In Action

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Academic Supervision

Coop Placement

Graduate Program

Final Year Project

(Follow on from Coop placement)

Masters (Taught / Research)

PhD

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Michael Phelan

Optimising Dell Skill Sets

• Audit campus employees to determine skill sets available

• Identify the skill sets required to optimise teams performance– Are these skills available in other teams where not required or duplication

within the team, can people be redeployed?

• Identify the skill set gap and how best to bridge this gap– Up-skilling employees

– Cooperative education placements

– Graduate placements

• A Skills Portal website was developed to demonstrate how to identify employees with required skill sets– This site has limited functionality but could be expanded as per users

requirements

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Optimising Dell Skill Sets

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Existing Skill Set

Desired Skill Set

RedeploymentUp-skilling

Linkages with academiaDell Skills Portal

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Campus Consulting Unit

• Establish Campus Consulting Unit (CCU) on Limerick campus similar to consulting units in third level colleges (that provide solutions for students & staff on college campus)

• CCU to identify Limerick campus projects & provide sustainable solutions for teams on campus

• Liaise with campus management to identify projects & categorise by complexity & time to complete, e.g. lower number less complexity

– (1) Excel based solution, (2) Excel / Access (extended Office) solution, (3) SQL Server solution, (4) Application / Web, SQL server driven solution

• Identify the Coop skill sets required to complete projects

• Implement solution & provide workshop on the techniques used and how to maximise teams potential with new solution

– Project teams comprised of coop student & campus team members with regular project update meetings

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Campus Consulting Unit Benefits

• Provide service to campus teams – attract more global teams

• Provide solutions that campus teams may not have the resources / bandwidth to complete

• Provide skills workshops for employees demonstrating techniques / solutions employed in team projects

• Strengthen links with academic institutions through focused projects (Coop, FYP, masters etc.)

• CCU projects add value to Dell & contribute to savings & efficiency

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Summary & Discussion

• Present overview of the Dell 360° concept– Academic Linkages

– Limerick campus skills optimisation

– Campus Consulting Centre

• Turn over to campus leaders for discussion, ideas & support

• Next Steps

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Backup

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Campus Consulting Unit

• Coop Placements– Paid student placements

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CCU

Coop Masters /PhD

JobReach

• Masters / PhD– Industry mentoring & data

source for research projects

• JobReach– Government sponsored program to

retrain & up-skill suitably qualified people

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Dell Skills Portal

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Dell Skills Portal Demo

(best viewed in Internet Explorer)

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Skills Mapping Profile

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Exact Match

Return users with exact skill set (e.g. C#, SQL)

Approximate Match

Return users with similar skill sets (e.g. Java & MySQL) that

can be up-skilled quickly

Mapping Profile: Managers can create their own mapping profiles for each search, i.e. if a manager waslooking for a C# programmer, but was also interested in up-skilling Java programmers, the mapping profilewould return Java programmers with a 75% match (or whatever level the manager had mapped C# to Java)

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Skill Mapping Profiles

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Example: if a manager is searching for a Java programmer, users with C, C++ will also be included in search but with a reduced similarity, thus not excluding employees who could be easily up-skilled

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Search User Profiles

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Search Profiles: Managers can create & save multiple search profiles for future use

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Search User Profiles

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Criteria Weighting: Managers can decide what search criteria are most important in their search

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Search User Profiles

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Skills: Managers select the skills they are looking for from a list of skills (regularly updated)

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Search Results

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View User Profile

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