Research shows that students choosing a career, and specifically a career in ICT, are influenced by parents, teachers, career counsellors and role models. In the field of ICT, role models are mainly found in ICT organisations or departments.

Through the ICT Career Exposure Week, the eSkills Malta Foundation and the Education Ministry are offering an opportunity for ICT companies, or organisations using ICT, to serve as role models to encourage promising ICT students to pursue a career in ICT, and perhaps even consider joining the companies or organisations as an employee in future.

Carm Cachia, executive coordinator of the eSkills Malta Foundation, said “we cannot emphasise enough on how important these initiatives are to secondary students. If properly encouraged they may continue with an ICT career. In the near future, they may even end up working with your company. In a way, this scheme is a way of exhibiting your company to these students, what it is like to work with your company, and what a professional outfit it is. Taking students would be sending these messages across.”

The initiative targets students aged between 14 and 15, offering them a taste of what it would be like to be part of the ICT sector

The ICT Career Exposure Experience Week helps to give students real-world knowledge of how the ICT sector works. Run by the foundation, the initiative targets students aged between 14 and 15, offering them a taste of what it would be like to be part of the ICT sector. The Foundation believes that the week offers the ICT industry, and organisations using ICT a unique opportunity to fulfil their corporate social responsibility by offering to help entice young people to become the next generation of ICT practitioners.

From students’ point-of-view, the initiative helps them observe the daily routines of ICT professionals and increase their understanding of ICT and ICT-related careers, begin to identify career interests in one or more ICT-related fields, introduces them to the attitude and approach needed at the place of ICT work environment, gain awareness of the academic, technical, interpersonal and other employability skills that are usually very much required and develop an understanding of the critical connections between school and work, particularly the relevance of their computer science studies.

The eSkills Malta Foundation is the National Coalition for the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition EU project. As in all EU-28 countries, the Foundation creates different routes and possibilities to entice students to consider ICT as a potential career, and for industry to join in to bridge the digital skills gap and number of potential ICT practitioners. Organisations are encouraged to participate in the initiative. For further information visit the website below or e-mail the Foundation on info@eskills.org.mt.

http://eskills.org.mt/en/careerexposureexperience2017/pages/career-exposure-experience-2017.aspx