These are free, online programs for people who are unemployed or self-employed. The courses are intensive, last from 2 to 4 months and help people to switch over from any trade or profession to IT programming and design.
The National Training and Employment Service (Sence) and Talento Digital para Chile launched 1,400 scholarships to meet the market demand for IT professionals and provide career retraining opportunities for people who have become unemployed or are working independently.
Talento Digital para Chile has studied the demand for IT skills in 2021, and the requirement for IT professionals in business has doubled compared to last year. This is particularly relevant for digitalization of the SME sector, which already recruits 65% of the most popular profiles, such as software developers, user experience designers and other infrastructure and platform specialists.
The pandemic increased the shortage of IT professionals available in the market to around 65,000 by 2020. Therefore, training people to support digital transformation has now become urgent. This shortage gives many people the opportunity to retrain in areas that increase their employability.
Therefore, the Talento Digital para Chile program and Sence have launched their fourth joint invitation to apply, with full scholarships for programming and UX/UI design for people with no prior qualifications. The program includes specialty courses for professionals who need to improve their knowledge, such as cloud architecture and data science.
The Deputy Director of Sence, Ricardo Ruiz de Viñaspre, said, “Talento Digital is a unique program that provides courses created and prepared together with companies, which focus on the IT job profiles required by companies. This is a public-private partnership that will undoubtedly result in better jobs for those who take these courses.”
These are bootcamp programs, where students immediately start learning by doing, and courses focus on introducing technical knowledge and developing 21st century skills.
“Our initiative aims to respond to digital acceleration with people who have been trained in the areas most required by the market, connecting supply with demand. We have an alternative approach to traditional IT education and use short, intensive training programs where students develop the skills they require to successfully enter the labor market,” explained the Executive Director of Talento Digital para Chile, Jeannette Escudero.
The program already has more than 1,500 graduates and 3,000 students. 75% of these students represent the most vulnerable 60% of the population. 41% of students are women, although only 15% of women participate in traditional IT education.
Usually 50% of successful bootcamp graduates have found work within 6 months of completing the program.
Free courses with connectivity subsidy
The 1,400 scholarships are distributed throughout Chile, with specific quotas and courses for each region. These courses are provided online. They are completely free, with a subsidy of 3,000 Chilean pesos (about US$ 4) per day to secure an adequate Internet connection.
Courses last from 2 to 4 months and train people to become software developers in various programming languages or user experience designers. No previous IT knowledge is required. The requirements for applications can be found here.
About Talento Digital para Chile
This is a country-wide initiative that has integrated companies, training institutions and government to give people new skills in harmony with digital transformation and create opportunities for them to apply for good quality jobs. It is committed to contributing to the future job market in Chile.
The project is being implemented by Fundación Chile and Fundación Kodea, and includes the Finance Ministry; the Labor and Social Security Ministry; the Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Ministry; the National Training and Employment Service, SENCE; the Chilean Economic Development Agency, CORFO; InvestChile; the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB; the Confederation of Production and Commerce, CPC; the Manufacturers’ Association, SOFOFA; the Association of Information Technology Companies, ACTI; and OTIC SOFOFA.
Its goal is to train 16,000 people over 4 years (from 2019 to 2022), give them the IT skills most sought after by the market and promote their employability, through the Corfo and Sence instruments available for this purpose.
Since 2019, the Talento Digital program has already awarded more than 4,500 scholarships for training courses that give people the IT skills most in demand, and IT entrepreneurship courses aimed at encouraging IT businesses and self-employment.
Talento Digital para Chile will provide about 4,000 scholarships in 2021, and applications are invited from people throughout the country who wish to enter the world of IT (programming + UX/UI design), line specialties (Cloud Architecture, Data Science, Data Analytics, Devops, Test Automation, Digital Marketing and E-Commerce), as well as scholarships to prepare IT entrepreneurs.
The following article contains further information about Talento Digital and investment opportunities in Chile.
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