While the youth unemployment rate in Spain is over 30%, there is a great amount of job vacancies that companies fail to cover. Companies are looking for workers with knowledge and skills in technology to perform jobs as a Java developer, data analyst or cyber security expert. Fundación Telefónica has presented this Monday the platform Connects Employment, which uses artificial intelligence to push these digital jobs in Spain. This tool, in addition to displaying in real time the 23 most demanded profiles and vacancies by province, it has a guiding virtual that advises users on the necessary training to access these jobs.

“There is a unemployment rates of youth totally unacceptable. Why young people have so much difficulty to find a job with the amount of posts that there is no cover?”, it has been asked in the presentation of the platform, the director general of Fundación Telefónica, José María Sanz Magallón. Currently in Spain there are more than 5,000 vacant positions only for Java developers, as indicated in the platform. This is precisely the profile most in demand by the companies followed by developer, Backend, Frontend, FullStack, and databases. 47% of large companies will increase hiring of these profiles in the next two years, according to data from a survey conducted by InfoJobs.

The platform, which is available from this Monday, in beta mode, analyzes the data of the employment portal Infojobs to provide an x-ray of the employability digital in Spain in real time. At this time, Madrid is the province in which there are more vacancies of these digital jobs with a total of 20.045 posts —mostly for Java developers—. We continue to Barcelona with 8.391 vacancies digital —mainly developer Back End—, Valencia with 1.286 and Seville with 1.222.

Mario Santiago, head of strategic accounts of InfoJobs, has explained that “these jobs are very specific, complex and ever-changing and we are going to be life-long learners”. While in 2008 there were barely 200 job openings for data analysts, in 2017 there were nearly 1,500 vacant, according to data collected by the annual report of Infojobs 2017. The same thing has happened with the experts in big data: “10 years Ago, there was no big data, but it may be that within another decade either exist, or are looking for experts in [the programming language] python, or coaches of chatbots”.

The educational system

“What is the difference between these two photos?”, question the director general of the Fundación Telefónica, pointing to two images in which several young people study and write in their notebooks. One is a 1982 and the other in 2018. Therefore, the difference is 36 years, according to José, “the education system has barely changed.” “My father said to me: ‘you Study, take good notes, make contacts and find work’. But this is not the case anymore. If eight out of every ten young people are going to work on something that is not there and there are jobs that are going to disappear, what would you tell my son to study?”.

Each time there are more companies in the technology sector which demand professionals in jobs that are emerging. But for some of these positions there is no career or even a specific training. “The educational system takes a long time to update the content,” he assured the director of the Employability of Fundación Telefónica, Luis Miguel Olivas. For this reason, the platform Connects Job identifying what are the skills required for each digital profile and recommends users free courses and pay for that form and get the employment that interests them.

Despite the fact that businesses are accustomed to apply technical knowledge, are increasingly showing interest in skills cross-cutting such as negotiation or communication, according to Santiago. The platform has a guiding virtual professional in the first contact asks the user where he is, what he has studied and what are their skills and interests. From there, offers of between 30,000 courses the best options in function of the reputation of the platform or the evaluation of the users. This mentor learns from the interaction with the users and is still in development phase, so its effectiveness increases with the share of each person.

Currently the majority of the deals analyzed from Infojobs, but the company is trying to close agreements with other job portals and companies such as LinkedIn and expand the business to Latin America. 80% of students in Spain you will find some employment that does not yet exist, according to the Fundación Telefónica. This type of tools can help predict what are the new niches in the labour market. “The training has to be permanent, because the technical knowledge is becoming obsolete every time in less time,” said Sanz Magallón.