Spain. Early 1990s Personal computers become the main work tool, but workers are not used to using them. The lack of skills is such that television advertising is popularized in which A job seeker starts to sweat when a recruiter asks him if he knows office technology.. Three decades later, it is almost impossible for someone not to know how to handle a computer, work in Word or enter data in Excel. Now it is difficult to find experts with specialized technological knowledge.
Blame it on digitization. While the computer forced us to learn office automation, the Internet forced all companies to go digital. Woe betide those without a website, robust cyber security strategy and communication channels. online. “Whether they’re making mattresses or selling insurance, all companies have gone digital, both at the customer consumption level and internally. In fact, their growth decisions are already based on many technological aspects such as e-commerceusing data and improving the user experience,” explains Ángel Pardillos, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Hiberus University.
This massive transformation is what caused it Tech job vacancies in Spain top 120,000 last May, reports the DigitalES association. “The digitization of companies is exponential, and therefore the demand for talent,” sums up the expert. Software development, cybersecurity, and data center management lead the vacancies, making it clear that the makeup of the labor market is changing rapidly, flooded with jobs that didn’t exist a few decades ago.
The novelty of these professions is one of the main reasons for such high demand, but it is not the only one. In the same way that computers evolved from those huge, slow machines to become powerful smart phones that we carry in our pockets, the nature of these new jobs is changing rapidly. There are now countless programming methods and automated systems, and digital security advocates must use their ingenuity on a daily basis to fend off every new type of attack that hackers come up with. Or, as Pardillos summarizes, “The technology training program designed 9 years ago is like Atapuerca”.
The question is, what can be done to ensure that there are always professionals able to meet the changing demands of companies and the digital industry and who do not become a Cro-Magnon worker? For Hiberus, the answer lies in construction a professional career based on continuous, specific and highly oriented education and constantly adapt to real business situations and technological developments.
Her manager clarifies: “Work in technology is closely related to specific tools. If you look at the offers on the job portal, None require a general computer engineer, but a specific profile, a Java programmer, an Adobe Commerce architect…Companies do not ask for qualifications, but for positions, but the jump between one thing is not instantaneous.” This situation, added to the company’s own problems in finding professionals to hire for its projects, gave rise to Hiberus University.
Pardillos describes it as “a training support program to match the skills of workers with the technologies that are being used and the technologies that are coming. And just like every university and business school offers different degrees, Hiberus offers 9 routes in specific tools and technologies such as Linux, Azure, Pythonto build specific professionals such as developers full stackDevOps experts and microservices architects, among others.
“In just over 300 hours, students will receive content associated with manufacturers but They also learn work methodologies, then get certified and participate in real client projects.” explains Pardillos. Each of those four legs; technical training, work methodology, certification and performance in a real environment, is designed to respond to a specific need.
Although the technical part is essential, “you learn to work by doing, that’s why and juniors They also need project management and practice with real cases“, Add. For his particular case, Pardillos says Hiberus designed a Digital Heroes and Heroines program that “specializes them and changes the way they understand and work in technology.”
And then there’s the issue of certifications, a particularly sensitive area in the technology sector whose very rapid development is causing many professionals to educate themselves. In the field of cyber security, the main educational path is s 32.3% of the total is car training through courses on platforms, videos and blogss, according to Observaciber. Given this situation, last year the founder of EducAcción, Sonia Díez, spoke to us about the need to create a system for “verifying competences acquired through informal experiences”.
For Linnets, technology certificates do not solve the problem titulitis but “improve employability”and states, “I’d rather hire a computer engineer with Google Cloud certification because it gives me certain skills compared to someone who isn’t.” Because of this, the company even offers a training program for its own workers to ensure that their technical development will be correct and always in line with new technologies and the speed with which they reach the market.
UNIVERSITY PALEOLITH
YouTube tutorials, training platforms, private certifications, training camps…the range of options for learning technological skills is so diverse and popular that one ends up wondering what will happen to traditional regulated training in universities and vocational schools. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labor and Social Economy Yolanda Díaz did not hesitate to point out “The historical problem of a university that turned its back on the business world” in the Future of Work and Future Work forum, which he organizes Retina last year.
The lack of updating of Spain’s university system has already been accused of hindering innovation and entrepreneurship in the country due to its inability to train researchers and scientists to translate acquired knowledge into patents and business models. But in the case of technological skills, Pardillos is less harsh: “The formal education system takes a more general approach, it teaches you to think more and adapt to change rather than immersing yourself in specific tools that can also be modified 7 or 8 times in a career professional”.
Of course, he also warns that many college professors lack the type of technical skills taught at Hiberus University in the first place. That’s why he draws attention to it Among its 1,500 annual students are not only recent graduates, but also teachers and active professionals who want to retrain and grow professionally. And to demonstrate that its educational approach works, it says that the company itself recruits around 80% of the students who complete its courses each year. Specifically, in 2022, the student recruitment rate increased to 850.
The number is so high that it is surprising amid phenomena such as the great resignation of the United States and the massive layoffs recently announced by the largest technology companies in the world. However, Pardillos explains, “The brokenness we see in great technique is not transferred to technology consulting firms because great technique They serve themselves and when their business fails, they have to lay off. But most tech jobs are not there, but in companies in manufacturing sectorsin which the demand for digitization is permanent and therefore the lack of experts is still the same.”
Although more than “the same,” in reality the demand for some types of technology professionals continues to grow, regardless of the fact that new workers are entering the labor market at the same time. For example, in the field of cyber security, while the number of cyber professionals in 2022 increased by 23.3% compared to the previous year, Demand increased by 60% over the same periodwhich left 60,000 vacancies at the end of last year, which is said to be soon.
These growing job opportunities should be enough to justify creating more and more educational opportunities capable of responding quickly to the demands of the labor market. Businesses and the economy need it as much as the Spaniards themselves, especially now that the world is involved in a polycrisis and is heading towards the end of plenty. If we do not prepare to respond to the demands of companies and the increasingly complex challenges of the world, ignorance of office technology will be the least of our problems.