The job Market isn’t getting what's needed. For how long?

It is harder to recruit new engineers than to find new projects (and new technological projects). Specially now when a lot of multinationals are coming to Portugal. 

 A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend about how difficult it is to recruit people on the Information Technologies (IT) sector, the area where I have been working since 2007. On that day everyone was celebrating because we had won a big project in a new client. My friend couldn’t understand why I wasn’t as excited as everyone else. It’s simple: we had the project, but we still had to recruit at least 20 engineers. I told him about the big changes in the IT sector in the last decade. A few years ago, the big challenge was to get the clients, today the biggest problem is to find professionals who are available to work. 

With the evolution of IT and of society in general, technology has become easily accessible to almost everyone. But who are the ones responsible for delivering it to the consumers? The professionals of this area, obviously, and they must be qualified. 

The job market is getting bigger, more demanding and more competitive. Are universities preparing students for the evolution of the market of technologies though?

The need for technology in companies in all areas has become crucial. Portugal, specially Lisbon and Oporto, has become a very appealing place for European multinationals, and other companies to open their technological centers. However, there aren’t enough qualified professionals in this area to meet the demand.

According to the Talent Shortage Survey 2016/2017, conducted globally by ManPower group with more than forty two thousand entrepreneurs, the second sector where there’s the biggest lack of human resources is the IT sector.

That’s why it is so important that schools and universities provide the needed tools to increase the number of students studying IT. This must start soon, given that the market’s evolution never stops and that it’s crucial to have more and more qualified professionals in this sector. This will only happen if children start having contact with this reality soon and are encouraged to do it. That’s not at all impossible, given that they have access since they are little to the most recent technologies, such as tablets and smartphones. If we give them the tools to programme at that age it will be much easier in the future for them to adapt to the needs of the market and to be an asset to IT companies.

The Government in Portugal should be looking at this problem in a serious and organized way. The problem lays at universities, for not adapting their programmes to market needs, but also at elementary, middle and high schools, where students are not teached IT the way they should.

We tell our children to have dreams and believe that they can do whatever they want to. By teaching them how to use technological tools we go further: we give them the power to create. In other words, we give them the power to make their dreams come true and to have an impact in the world. They see everything around them with a technological view and interact with technology as if it was the most natural thing in the world. That’s why their potential will be unexploited if we don’t invest on their technological education. This investment isn’t just good for IT sector. It’s good for our country’s future, that increasingly attracts foreign investment.

Fortunately, there are some actions being taken in Portugal to solve this. One of them is Gen10s, a project that teaches students how to program with Scratch. The discipline of TIC (Information and Communication Technologies) will be mandatory in middle school. But will this enough? Wouldn’t it be easier to take structural measures at all school levels?

Having the entire Portuguese population with the right digital skills should be everyone's concern to everyone, not just  the IT sector. 

By: Rui Neves
Smartie CEO

In Observador