In the top 10 of the most attractive countries for digital talent. This group of professionals with a tendency to move to developed countries to advance their careers.

This panorama is due to the fact that Spain has deployed strategies to attract new talent and thus cover its great demand for technology professionals. Well, according to the VASS TIC Monitor reports , for every recent graduate in computer science there are six job offers.

What is a digital talent profile?

A digital talent is a professional or expert in cutting-edge digital technologies. That is, he is a person with extensive knowledge in areas such as:

  • Computing
  • Big data
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Cloud computing
  • Blockchain
  • Mechatronic
  • 3d print
  • Virtual reality and augmented reality

However, these types of specialists must have qualities that go far beyond their professional training. According to Francisco López, professor of Digital Talent at ICEMD , some of the qualities should be:

Transdisciplinarity: commitment to work for the objectives of the organization beyond its direct responsibilities.

  • Multitaskers: ability to work on multiple tasks at the same time effectively and efficiently.
  • Flexibility : willingness to adapt to changing roles within work teams.
  • Lifelong learner : interest in training and educating constantly as new technological trends emerge.
  • Digital mindset : vision of a mostly digital work culture, although the balance with analog must be maintained.

Does your company need digital talent profiles?

Technology advances in every way, covering even those non-technological companies.

Today, all organizations that do not have ERP or data analysis systems, such as big data or business intelligence, must acquire digital talent professionals. Not to mention, also, those whose IT departments have the greatest need for digital and computing innovation and empowerment.

However, not all organizations have the ability to acquire these types of professionals. Pierre Antebi, director of The Network , affirms that the way in which countries and companies adapt to the digital knowledge deficit will be decisive for their future.

How to manage digital talent profiles in your company?

Irene Cano, director of Facebook Spain, offers a series of recommendations to manage digital talent in companies based on her experience on Facebook. You enter they are:

  • Reorient business management towards a model without so many hierarchies or bureaucratic procedures.
  • Make processes more flexible to allow fluid communication between work teams.
  • Encourage understanding between teams in multidisciplinary projects, especially when they are in different geographical areas.
  • Prioritize ideas, talent and creativity over management and execution.
  • Grant employees independence so that they can manage their responsibilities themselves.
  • Motivate the ability to adapt to very demanding work environments.
  • Implement training programs so that human talent is kept professionally updated.

In general, one of the most important aspects is to promote the development of soft skills in the staff. According to B-Talent , not paying maximum attention to the interpersonal skills of human talent has negative consequences in all areas of the organization.

A great ally for managing digital talent is the Collaboration Manager (CM) . A professional with the specialty of managing multidisciplinary work teams related to cutting-edge technologies.

The Collaboration Manager is not just a Human Resources figure, but a technology specialist who understands the objectives of the projects and the capabilities of his colleagues.

Global overview of digital talent profiles

Due to the rapid advancement of technology, companies and organizations around the world are urgently demanding digital talent professionals. However, the offer of this type of profiles is very low. There are few people with this level of training, which accentuates the problem of excessive labor demand every day.

The European Commission states that “out of every 1000 young people up to 25 years old, only 19 were enrolled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics studies.” Therefore, by 2020 there will be more than 500 thousand technology-related job vacancies. Although, according to Barcelona Digital Talent , the amount will exceed 900 thousand.

This situation is aggravated due to salary competitiveness. The world’s large corporations are offering increasingly better salaries to ICT professionals . This causes on their part a high level of rotation between different companies, when accepting new jobs but also when leaving others. This is indicated by a report from Spiceworks .

Most demanded digital talent profiles at an industrial level

The most demanded digital talent profiles at an industrial level can be classified into six categories according to technical specialty:

  • PLC / SCADA: systems integration, automation, supervision and control.
  • Manufacturing Execution System (MES): operations management, ERP integrations, document management or manufacturing order management.
  • Machine to Machine (M2M) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): automation and sensor management of smart factories.
  • Enterprise Service Bus (ESB): big data, open source and middleware to integrate all systems.
  • Operational Intelligence: real-time data analysis.
  • Cloud: connection and management of systems in the cloud.

Formation of digital talent profiles

Tim Cook (Apple CEO), during a conference at the White House , said: ” Our company, as you know, was founded by someone who dropped out of college.”

This statement is one of the arguments why companies like Apple, Google and Netflix are hiring non-certified personnel . Managers of large corporations are coming to terms with the reality that digital talents do not always have a college degree.

For this reason, not only are there formal training programs with university degrees, but free online training without degrees is also proliferating.

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Non-degree training programs for digital talent

There are online training programs without formal qualifications that still meet the objective of training digital talent. Some of the best programs worldwide are:

  • Introduction to Computer Science from Harvard University.
  • Programming Methodology from Stanford University.
  • Introduction to Computer Science and Programming from MIT.
  • Minecraft, Programming and Teaching from University of California.
  • Khan Academy Computer Programming .
  • Artificial Intelligence Program at the International University of La Rioja.
  • Learn with Google AI from Google.
  • Stanford University Machine Learning .
  • Fundamentals of Deep Learning for Computer Vision from NVIDIA.