When 'foreign-born IT experts' suddenly come to life

Skills supply Education and training

Next Friday, 3/5, the IT Skills Council will meet. The council consists of HR and other recruitment managers from the member companies (with the door open to other organizations that need IT skills), and on the agenda are the two themes that we have been working on in recent years: Efforts to attract more young people to IT training and efforts to facilitate more foreign-born into the industry.

In the first part, the issue of our latest venture towards secondary schools, Next Up, will be discussed. It is an initiative that requires the commitment of time and money from a number of companies, and we are approaching critical mass. On Friday, we will decide on the next steps.

In the second part, we will discuss our initiatives related to foreign-born IT professionals. The CEO of Kunskapsbolaget Integra AB, Aram Afsahi, will give an introductory presentation on what we in the industry should think about to promote integration in the IT industry. It is otherwise a concern that has often been discussed in the Council, that foreign-born consultants for various reasons have been "sitting on the bench". Officially, reference is made to the lack of Swedish language skills, but there is a strong suspicion that it is really about difficulties in dealing with people with a different cultural background in an otherwise "Swedish" workplace culture.

Aram Afsahi will be followed by Johanna Molander, course coordinator for SFX-IT, a professional Swedish course for foreign-born IT experts - just what the industry has been asking for.

During the "foreign-born session" of the Council meeting, a handful of the SFX-IT course participants will sit in as audience. After the meeting, a mingle will be organized where the course participants will have the opportunity to present themselves individually. The ambition is of course that it will be a golden opportunity for the Council members to get a picture of a bunch of hungry recruitment candidates, for upcoming internships and employment.