Gaming company Betsson is setting up a group academy which will offer internships, leading to the possibility of full- time employment.

CEO Ulrik Bengtsson has long lamented that the i-gaming sector was finding it hard to recruit people with suitable talent and he has now come up with a way to improve the hands-on skills of potential candidates, as well as to offer some of them employment.

“It is all about shaping them early. We see the internship as a long, long interview process,” he said.

Betsson will take on five undergraduates each year from the third year of the University of Malta’s Bachelor’s programme. These will be offered an internship between July and September during which they will be involved in various projects, and paid €10 an hour. They will also be mentored and assisted with their dissertations, he said.

Three fourth-year students will also be offered permanent employment with the company every August. The intention is to run this programme every year, so that there will always be a number of interns over summer, and new recruits every year.

“The university was very helpful and we were able to put this together very quickly. The undergraduate programme is very strong on statistics, computing and data sciences, which are all very important to gaming companies. There are some very talented students and we are keen to give them work experience,” he said.

“We also want to find developers/programmers. We would like to have more dialogue with the university about the curriculum of the ICT Faculty, as although the BSc is very good, there is scope for more specialists, dozens of whom are required every year. And we are not only thinking about their prospects for Malta. They would have global value as there is a real shortage across Europe.

“We brought over some of our developers from the Philippines when we closed down our unit there but it is not easy to get employees from outside the EU. The Malta Gaming Authority and Identity Malta have been trying to smooth this process.

“We have found it very hard to recruit in this field and can easily absorb those who are qualified. The interesting thing is that many of the students do not realise that these skills are required for i-gaming. It is not intuitive that we also require statisticians and data scientists.”

Applications opened on January 26 and will be open until February 20. A month later, an in-house team will assess the applicants and they will be told the outcome by the end of March.

Further information may be obtained by e-mailing academy@betssongroup.com.

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