When looking for work opportunities, young Spaniards are often told they do not have the right knowledge, skills and behaviours necessary for the job. At the same time, companies need candidates with digital skills more than ever before. To reduce the gap between young people’s training requirements and businesses’ recruitment needs, the ‘Digital transformation and the youth employment challenge’ project, funded by ESF, seeks to improve employability through upskilling opportunities.  

It does so through 40 hours of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) followed by 20 hours of tutoring. Accessible on the Google Actívate platform, the MOOCs include topics such as digital consulting, search engine optimisation consulting, big data, artificial intelligence/machine learning, robotics and cybersecurity. Once their MOOC is completed, participants can choose an expert to tutor them for their final project. The programme is active in 36 Spanish provinces, including in rural areas where digitalisation represents a great plus for their economic development.  

Manuel Zamorano Martínez, who now works as a Mobile Developer for Cloud On Mobile, shares his positive experience: ‘The programme helped me develop not only my technical, but also my personal skills to successfully face my entry into the labour market in the field of cybersecurity and mobile application development.’ 

More than 5 000 young people followed the courses of the ESF-funded programme, which is run by the EOI Foundation in collaboration with Google. More than 400 of them participated in the entire programme, which includes MOOC, tutoring, and final project. Empowered by the new knowledge and digital skills, nine out of each 10 female and eight out of each 10 male graduates found a job shortly after participating. 

The training is particularly helpful to those who left school at an early age to start working, and those who have lost their job and cannot find a new opportunity. Each individual is catered for as they have different levels of education.  

Celia Arroyo Prat, a Digital Marketing Assistant at Cronoshare, is one of the participants who developed a new professional career: ‘The programme helped me to develop professionally and creatively in a sector which I had not initially considered.’