Diversity in Action

New hires learn on the job in CitiTech training program

CS and engineering students work year round as developers and analysts and earn intern pay; the first groups included many women and minorities

Learning doesn't just happen in the classroom. Any computer science grad will tell you that you can learn as much during the first few weeks on the job as in a semester of lectures. But CitiTech Services, a network of IT organizations that support Citigroup's global corporate and investment banking group (www.citigroupgcib.com), takes the idea further by providing unique on-the-job learning opportunities for students at work.

CAPP participants pose in front of a Citigroup building in New York City.

Citigroup's global corporate and investment banking group is not the credit card, consumer banking side of the business. Instead, it provides complete financial solutions to corporations, governments and institutional investors around the world. Businesses include the corporate and investment bank, sales and trading, transaction services, commercial finance and insurance products. The global corporate and investment banking group and Smith Barney, another division of Citigroup, rely on CitiTech for all their technology needs.

The program, the CitiTech Advanced Placement Program (CAPP), began last year in the New York City area. It started with twenty college students working on computer science or engineering degrees. They gained hands-on experience through year round, part-time positions as developers and analysts while earning intern- level salaries.

CAPP's early success will likely see the program expand in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area and to other CitiTech sites like Boston, says Augie Campos-Marquetti, who runs the program in addition to other management duties.

"We'll recruit fifty students for the 2004-05 session," he says. "I'd like to raise it to 100 after that but I want to do it in manageable chunks. In ten years we could take on as many as 200 students. Our organization is large enough to handle it."

Campos-Marquetti says the program was the brainchild of CitiTech's CIO Tom Sanzone and has his enthusiastic support. CAPP targets full-time students at New Jersey's Stevens Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, and New York's SUNY Stonybrook, Pace University and Baruch College. It will include the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2004.

CitiTech recruits for CAPP in February for a session that runs from June to May. The students work full time during the summer and a minimum of twenty hours a week during the school year. Of the initial class of twenty, CitiTech assigned 80 percent to developer positions and the rest to business analyst slots. The range of projects includes developing and enhancing trading floor technology and developing systems to support retail marketing products and processing for trading activity data.

Beyond learning on real projects, the students take sixteen online programming courses at CitiTech, says Campos-Marquetti. "The courses range from C++ to Visual Basic to Unix, essentially classes that are well-rounded from the technology perspective. These languages are used within CitiTech," he says. "What's nice about the classes is that they are online and the associates can take them while they are at work - up to six hours a week."

Other training involves client server application development, database administration, systems administration, data center and PC-based applications, as well as an orientation to the financial services industry and skills like project scheduling.

The program is open to sophomores, juniors and seniors, with the expectation that students will stay until they graduate. CAPP has been a pipeline to permanent status in its first session, with fifteen of the sixteen seniors joining CitiTech as full time employees and all four juniors staying on for the second year. The 2003 session had thirty-five students and started in June.

CitiTech Services www.cititech.com Headquarters: New York, NY Employees: 36,000 (Citigroup: 270,000) Revenues: $20.2 billion (Citigroup $75.8 billion) Business: Global services for equities, fixed income, investment banking, securities, and cash, trade and treasury services

The usual path into CitiTech at the entry level is through the IT Associate program. The decade-old program hires recent college graduates into entry level positions, where they work as developers and enroll in internal training classes on soft skills such as presentations, effective business writing and management. The associates commit to this program for two years in hopes they will become future project leaders.

Campos-Marquetti says the CAPP program will largely take over the role that traditional college interns once served. In fact, CAPP program grads often plug right into IT associate positions. And their experience in CAPP means that they may be offered a higher salary than otherwise, he says.

Though CAPP is relatively new, Campos-Marquetti says he's already sorting through 300 to 400 applicants annually. The program seeks candidates who are sophomores or better with at least a 3.2 GPA in a computer science or engineering major. CitiTech then conducts initial interviews on campus and final interviews at its offices.

"We have two days of interviews," he says. "Each candidate goes through three interviews with three managers. Once all the managers have given feedback, I make the final decision about hiring and also do the placements. What's nice is that they have the summer to work and get wrapped up in understanding what's expected of them."

While CAPP was not intended to be a diversity-based program, Campos-Marquetti says it has had remarkable success in attracting a diverse group of students. Of the first class of twenty CAPP participants, nineteen were of diverse backgrounds, including ten women. In this year's class of thirty-five participants, 84 percent are of diverse backgrounds. Campos-Marquetti says he maintains active contacts with SHPE, NSBE and similar groups, as well as with diversity organizations based on campuses. CitiTech also maintains contacts with IT organizations on campuses, and makes contributions to SUNY Stony Brook and Baruch. "When I initially contacted each of the schools, I was surprised by the reaction," he says. "They were excited about this program because a lot of companies lack funding and no longer have these kinds of internships. They did everything in their power to make this a success."

D/C