On March 12, 2004 Microsoft (Moscow department), ECDL-F and Computer Training Center “Specialist” (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Learning Solutions) held the Seminar “Users and IT professionals certification: worldwide standards in Russia”, which brought together HR-managers, directors of IT-departments in Russian and foreign companies.
Implementation of staff skills corporate standard is one of the key issues, faced by today’s HR-managers. Corporate standard enables to easily evaluate the level of candidates and employees’ skills, as well as to improve productivity. It is aimed mostly at information system (IS) users and IT-professionals.

What are the knowledge standards? What criteria should be used while choosing or creating your own standard? What standard will make an impact? These and other issues were touched upon during the seminar entitled “IT-professionals and Users certification”: worldwide standards in Russia”, organized by Computer Training Center with cooperation of Microsoft and ESDL-F. The seminar involved professionals from Abbyy Software House, Caterpillar, Epson Europe B.P., Lanit, Lukoil, RBC Soft, Formosa and other companies.

Seminar program included reports on 2 most popular and worldwide acknowledged certifications for information system users - European Computer Driving License (ECDL) and Microsoft Office Specialist. Maria Lasareva, marketing director of ECDL in Russia spoke on the economical impact the implementation of Users certification system has in companies. She also gave an overview of ECDL certification history and major corporate customers in Europe. The speech was concluded with the demonstration of Microsoft Office exams samples.

Nadezhda Volpyan, IT Academy manager of Russian Microsoft office spoke about MOS certification which tends to be the only one approved by Microsoft as the certification created to test and evaluate the skills of Microsoft Office applications Users

Olga Voinich, training and certification programs manager of Russian Microsoft department, concentrated on popular Microsoft certifications for IT-professionals. She outlined the situation in the certified training market in 2004, and focused on new Microsoft certification. She emphasized the significance, benefits of IT certification in Russia and in the globe and presented research data collected in this field

Director of Computer Training Center Gudzenko Dmitry who took the floor at the end of the main conference, focused on the corporate standards development for information systems users. With reference to the recently deployed project he highlighted such key steps in training as tests creation and implementation, test results’ evaluation, design of new programs to upgrade staff skills, subject-oriented training delivery and training results’ evaluation