In order to help people improve their level of employability, Google launched its Activate platform in March 2014, offering face-to-face and online courses. Since then, more than 230,000 people have received training in this field in Spain, and more than 34,000 have found jobs or work experience by either working for a company or establishing their own businesses.
Regarding the online courses, users can find topics ranging from E-commerce to the Development of Apps, including Web Development on two levels, Cloud Computing, or Personal Productivity. The courses take approximately 40 hours. Both these and the face-to-face courses provide a certificate issued by educational centres, such as IAB Spain, IEI Alicante, the Complutense University of Madrid and the Santa María la Real Foundation, among others.
Some new features will be available in 2018. In addition to the eight courses currently available on the platform, there will be two more online courses, Big Data, and Cybersecurity, making a total of ten online courses and two face-to-face courses for the next twelve months.
During the presentation of this new stage of Google Actívate held earlier this month, employability was highlighted as the key aspect: “Jobs in the digital sector are increasing by more than 100,000 each year, but the number of qualified professionals in these technologies is not increasing at the same pace as the demand”.
According to data collected on the platform’s blog, the European Commission has warned that in 2020 there will be more than 900,000 jobs which will not be covered because of a lack of professionals with ICT training and it is estimated that there are more than 300,000 jobs that cannot be covered in Spain for this reason”.