NTT DATA and NLB Services Announce ‘Bridge The Gap’ Hackathon for Women IT Professionals

 NTT DATA – a digital business and IT services leader, and NLB Services - a leading transformational workforce solutions provider, today announced their alliance on a women-only Hackathon titled, Bridge The Gap. Through this initiative, NTT DATA and NLB Services aim to break biases and tackle the gender gap in the information technology sector, by recognizing promising women in technology. The month-long hackathon will be hosted from March 8, 2022, to April 11, 2022.

Kicking off on March 8, 2022, International Women’s Day, the event will offer Java and .NET developers a platform to showcase their skills through a series of challenges. NLB aims to enable finalists/winners to get an opportunity to interview with top IT/tech companies in India, including NTT DATA. As a drive to raise awareness about career opportunities for women in the technology field, NTT DATA is aiming to offer over 1,000 jobs for women in its workforce by way of this Hackathon, contingent upon successful participation of contestants and completion of an interview process.

“We are thrilled to launch the Bridge the Gap hackathon to seek out top tech talent,” said Ankur Dasgupta, Vice President – Marketing, Communications & CSR, NTT DATA Services. “We are committed towards expanding our diversity goals and this event is all about promoting and providing a platform that leads to hiring of top talent at NTT DATA” he added.

The hackathon will consist of two phases. In the first phase, participants will be given a coding challenge in Java & .NET. After the successful completion of the coding challenge, participants will be tested with a Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) challenge. In the second phase, the MCQ challenge will be conducted on ClearedTalent, an online platform for vetting technology talent and a strategic partner of NLB. ClearedTalent is aimed at building the world’s largest digital talent community of vetted and engaged technology professionals.

Based on performance in the above two challenges, participants will have an opportunity to interview for and secure various tech-based roles at NTT DATA.

Speaking about the Hackathon, Sachin Alug, CEO, NLB Services said, “The upcoming hackathon is all about making diversity a part of the technology domain. It will be a huge step towards bias-free hiring and offering opportunities to those who get overlooked the most. Surveys suggest that women represent only about one fourth of the present tech workforce. And it’s time we turned the tables. Through the hackathon, women coders will not only get a chance to show their skills but also get a shot at bridging the widespread gender disparity.”

Registrations for the Hackathon challenge are now open, and interested candidates can register using the link https://www.techgig.com/challenge/nlb