The Government has presented this Monday a new degree of professional training (FP) of “high level” to instruct customized professionals with which to nurture the digital hubs and the Catalan start-up sector .
The initiative is endowed with 1.75 million euros to constitute a pilot program with which to train a total of 540 peoplein its first edition. The course will be free for students, who must previously have a university degree.
These will be able to register as of September of this year in any of the seven modalities and women and the unemployed will have priority. The training will have a maximum duration of 300 hours; as explained by the promoters of the Barcelona Digital Talent public-private alliance.
The concept, described as a pioneer by the representatives of the Government, is to knock on the door of companies in the digital sector and make them a tailored and formal suit the profile they ask for.
According to data from the Catalan administration, the demand for digital professionals has increased by 80% in the last two years, while the offer has only increased by 23%. That is, there is a lack of web developers, programmers, data analysts and various ‘techies’.
And the Government has moved tab to put them and thus encourage more technological projects to be installed or continue to grow in Catalonia. Promoting the growth of the digital sector is one of the priorities that the Catalan administration has been cultivating in recent years. As a sample, one in three euros that the public agency ACCIÓ captured from foreign investments in 2020 came from digital signatures.
The objective is to satisfy the demand for labor at the ‘hubs’ of firms such as Novartis or Zurich and at the 1,500 ‘start-ups’ currently operating in Catalonia; as well as diverse companies that to accelerate their digitization look for new profiles.
The money will be provided by the Generalitat, specifically the SOC through EU training funds, and the management will be private. This June the Catalan administration will open a public competition for code academies, universities or high-level training centers to apply to offer these courses.
When are registrations open?
Once the training centers win the tenders, the Generalitat’s forecast is that students can register as of September. The purpose of the public investment of those 1.75 million euros also seeks that it has a direct return to reduce the high unemployment rates registered in Catalonia.
Specifically, it aims to cover that 8.6% of those enrolled in the SOC as unemployed and who have university studies. The 70% of prospective candidates must be unemployed and reserves the remaining 30% for working professionals.
Likewise, the SOC aims to promote the training of women in the sector, to reduce the high masculinization existing in the union. That is why a minimum of 40% of the 540 places will be reserved for women.
The contents will come pre-designed jointly by the technicians of the Labor, Digital Policies and Business departments, who have previously surveyed the Catalan tech sector to adjust their courses. And their success relies, in large part, on that high connectivity with the labor market. “It is a training radically oriented to the needs of companies,” said Jordi Arrufí , director of the Digital Talent program at Mobile World Capital Barcelona .
