TechGig highlights the top 5 reasons to join tech communities

While most IT professionals agree that keeping abreast with the latest in the tech world is a necessity, they also agree that they don't have the time to keep scanning for the latest information across various disparate sources. This is where niche online communities play an important role.

Focused tech communities connect techies in the most interesting and focused ways. They have moved beyond just code submissions now. And are now crowd-sourced platforms for interacting with like-minded people, improving know-how and sharpening skills to remain cutting edge. So, if as a techie, you're still unsure about joining an online community (or not!),

TechGig highlights the Top 5 Reasons to convince you:

Interacting with like-focused people: The best part of being in an online community is that you get to interact and share with like-minded people with a shared focus. Arvind Singh, Director of Engineering, PayUBiz emphasizes the importance of being connected with peers pursuing the same tech focus. He says, “An online community allows a techie to brainstorm with his peers, while eliminating the barriers of time and geography. There are long threads of technology discussions that help a techie to upscale his knowledge. So, even if you are not able to contribute much in the community, you still have a lot to take away.”

Top IT Professionals regularly reach out to communities of their shared expertise to seek suggestions and offer help – thereby building their personal brand and reputation. TechGig.com has 86 active skill communities, where specialists discuss and explore the nuances of particular languages, applications and coding structures. For instance, Java aficionados can join the Java skill community to practice coding, discuss with the peers and resolve issues.

Get visible and get hired: This is the most lucrative reason for being associated with an online community. Tech communities not only enable members to upscale their technology skills, but also provide them high visibility among IT recruiters - giving them a unique opportunity to be identified and offered incredible careers and packages.

With a massive community base of over 2.5 million users across the latest niche technologies, TechGig offers IT professionals the opportunity to interact, sharpen and showcase their cutting-edge skills with one of the largest IT communities in the world. TechGig also offers the innovative TechGig Tech Quotient (TQ) industry benchmark that has been adopted by top tech recruiters for hiring talent.

Nilanjan Roy, Head of Strategy, Times Business Solutions, explains the unique career opportunities that a robust tech community offers to IT professionals "Being discovered by recruiters greatly improves your negotiation capabilities. It is always better to be approached for a position by a recruiter, rather than just applying for one of the job vacancies that are listed. Top tech recruiters cherry-pick talent based on their TQ and demonstrated skills on TechGig. The platform allows them to get hands-on experience with technology, benchmark their competencies against the best coders and up their TQ and leaderboard standings. A higher TQ gives techies better visibility and increases their chances of getting hired for top projects with the best IT companies in India and abroad."

Cutting-edge know-how: Online tech communities today are not just about knowledge sharing today. They are abuzz with the latest developments in technology. Dr. Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Samsung India, asserts, “Being associated with an online community always brings a host of advantages. While one gets to brush up his technology skills, he is also updated about the latest developments in technology. People discuss the latest tech developments and opinions come from all levels, making the discussion more comprehensive.”

The popular TechGig Tech News section leverages TechGig.com's active community, where users blog, discuss and share information and crowd-sources a constantly updated newsfeed and newsletter with relevant developments from across the IT industry.

Real-time problem solving: Experts claim that the online tech community in India is more responsive and collaborative than in any other nations across the globe. TechGig.com is a great facilitator for real-time interaction amongst the techies. There are several open challenges being held on TechGig.com's online community that enable techies to work in close collaboration towards solving problems.

Online communities really come into their own when techies are stuck with technical or security issues such as handling a cyber breach. Adam Clay, VP of Worldwide Sales at Black Duck explains, “There is a growing awareness of the threats that organizations face and I think there is a growing appetite for solutions. My sense is that India seems right to tackle the challenges associated with cyber security, from the community perspective, which we don't often see in all countries that Black Duck works in. There certainly seems to be a spirit to solve problems collaboratively. This is not seen in every country.”

Learn from Experts: Online communities also act as a bridge between the experts and learners. TechGig.com, for instance, associates with industry experts and tech top-shots, who share their expertise with community members through webinars. Experts on TechGig.com, who conduct webinars on some of the most relevant and niche technologies include Dr. Karthik Sankaranarayanan Research Scientist, IBM Research on Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Mr. V. R. Vijay Anand, Practice Director, IoT Business Solutions, Wipro on IoT, Mr. Sudhir Rawat on Big Data and Hadoop, just to name a few. All TechGig webinars are curated and uploaded as soon as the live sessions are done to serve as reference materials for people working on those specific technologies.

Online communities have made it easy for IT Professionals to crowd-source their knowledge, display their technical prowess, and reach out to like-minded techies and subject matter experts. However, not all online communities possess the requisite depth and breadth of expertise – so choosing the right one becomes paramount. Be sure to chose the one which is able to leverage all the advantages of a large, active user base and access to the kind of experts that add value to your chosen area of expertize. Considering the above, TechGig.com seems a good place to start.