Why every company should offer a Digital Opportunity Traineeship
38% of companies in Europe report that the lack of employees’
digital skills impacts their performance. This hampers productivity and slows
down growth, affecting in particular small and medium-sized enterprises.
The European Commission offers a solution: the Digital
Opportunity Traineeships. This initiative aims to
help companies find highly motivated and digitally skilled candidates.
Digital skills are becoming increasingly required across all sectors, not just
within ICT. Cybersecurity, data analytics, blockchain or machine learning are impacting
fields such as banking, manufacturing, farming or health. Digitally skilled
people are also vital to maintain Europe’s global competitiveness in a
fast-changing world. 40% of enterprises looking to fill ICT specialist jobs say
they have difficulties finding the right people.
How it works
Companies publish offers for traineeships
on positions involving tasks for example in data analytics, cybersecurity,
software development, IT management or search engine optimisation. Companies
can publish their offers on the ErasmusIntern.com platform, where students can
directly apply. In order to be able to receive the allowance from the
European Union, students need to be pre-selected by their Universities.
The trainees receive an allowance of around €500 per month, which the company
can top up, for a period of 2 to 12 months. To take part in the initiative,
students apply directly through their universities following the Erasmus+
procedures. Everything is explained in this simple
guide.
For students, these temporary work placements provide a unique chance to use
what they have learned at school in practice. By taking a Digital Opportunity
Traineeship, they also improve their chances on the job market.
Digital Opportunity Traineeship offers the perfect opportunity to learn on the
job for the student and for companies to screen the talents for tomorrow’s
workforce.
The objective is to support up to 6,000 students between 2018 and 2020. The
programme builds on the Commission’s efforts to reduce high levels of youth
unemployment with the New Skills Agenda for Europe and
the Digital Skills
& Jobs Coalition.
Feedback and testimonials
Hundreds of students and companies have
already enrolled in the Digital Opportunity Traineeship programme. For example,
Lorenzo from an Italian start-up Vinhood emphasises how easy it was to find
people with the right profile:
“In order to offer better
service to our clients we needed to have a data scientist in our team. It was
hard to find the right person in Milan. Thanks to the Digital Opportunity
Traineeship programme we enlarged the research at EU level and shortlisted
several suitable candidates and finally selected a really good one.”
Lorenzo’s company is now looking for a second young professional to join their
team through the initiative again.
Tiago from VisionSpace Technologies, appreciated the financial support provided
by the EU. His company was able to bring the trainee to Germany and educate him
for their needs:
“As an SME which produces
software used for space technologies we really needed highly-skilled people,
but these are difficult to find on the job market. The easiest way is to
educate them in-house. We use this programme (DOT) to bring people from universities
who have been taught the right methodologies and blend it with the expertise we
need. This creates opportunities for both sides.”
Want to host a trainee in your company? Sign up to the ErasmusIntern
platform and publish your Digital Opportunity
Traineeship. Find more information and answers to frequent questions on this page.