How I Upskilled for the Second Phase of my Career with VMinclusion Taara

Restarting your career after a gap can be overwhelming. But here is Nidhi Gupta a proud mother, wife, an engineer and a recent graduate of the VMinclusion Taara program who’s recently found a job with a multinational firm after a career break. And here is her amazing story that defied several odds.

The decision to quit my job was not easy. I knew it was in the best interests of my new-born child and I genuinely wanted to devote myself to his care but, quitting a flourishing career was a daunting decision, to say the least. What if I was never able to find a way back into the workforce? What if by the time I was ready to come back, it was already too late, and my skills become outdated?

My fears were not unfounded. India has one of the highest female STEM graduates in the world. These graduates join the tech industry but post the 5 year or 8-year mark quit to focus on raising families or to attend some other personal needs, most of them never return to the workforce.

Even in a fast-growing economy like India, the contribution of women to India’s GDP is just 18 percent, one of the lowest in the world reflecting the fact that only 25 percent of India’s labor force is female.

I did not want to become a part of this statistic, but my son needed me. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy my time with my son. We had moved to a different country which was a big adjustment, and it was nice to be able to focus fully on my son. But after so many years of working, the humdrum of domestic life got monotonous at times. I craved the excitement of tackling a new challenge, of putting my brain to use to come up with innovations and most of all, of working and interacting with my team. I knew I had to get back to work sooner or later but I wasn’t sure how I would do that. The technology landscape is fast evolving with new trends disrupting the sector almost daily.

I was afraid that my skills were now outdated in a market scenario marked by disruptions and I convinced myself that no potential employer would hire me over someone who had remained in the workforce.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I heard about VMinclusion Taara. Here was a program by a global technology leader that addressed the exact need someone like me had — a need that addressed the fear of skills being redundant in a changing marketplace. VMinclusion Taara is a joint effort of VMware and Women Who Code to upskill women in India.

The fact that it offered women like me the chance to become VMware certified professionals via online courses free of cost was just the icing on the cake. The program includes advanced training on leading certified courses on digital business transformation, professional-level training courses on virtualization software for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud platforms, infrastructure and advanced tracks on data center virtualization, cloud management, and automation, network virtualization, and digital workspace technologies. Just what I needed to restart my career after a break.

Today I am a graduate of the VMinclusion Taara program, and a VMware certified professional. This is of vital importance because I believe it has allowed me to rejoin the industry on an equal footing. I believe the training and upskilling I received through VMinclusion Taara compensates for the missing years in my career and makes my resume shine as I can offer a potential employer the same skillsets as someone who did not take a career break. My potential employer will find me productive and my ability to contribute will be appreciated. To be honest, the cutting-edge nature of the technology sector today requires continuous upskilling, reskilling and multiskilling to stay relevant, and this is especially true for women who had to drop out of the workforce for any reason.

Today I have been offered a job with a multinational tech firm and I am really glad to find my wings back. VMinclusion Taara is indeed a unique initiative that helped me rebuild my bridge back to the industry and helped me re-enter the technology world with confidence and knowledge. I am hoping that through this blog I will be able to reach out to as many women like me who are keen to return to work in the tech industry but are unsure about how to do so. As I excitedly get ready to rejoin work, I would encourage all those women who are on a break to learn more about VMinclusion Taara and prepare to start the second innings of their career, as I did.