We live, from a technological point of view, a period without parallel in Portugal. No country of our size has managed to breed so many Unicorns.
Better, it will be necessary to join Spain, Greece, and Italy to reach the same number as our country. For that alone, we should be proud! But there’s more, our country’s ability to attract multinational technology hubs that create from scratch or move their centers of competence to Portugal has been surprising at all levels. The diversity of sectors is also surprising, from sectors as diverse as finance, the automotive market, or digital retail.
Several positive factors have contributed to this development and this success. First of all, the training quality of Portuguese universities that have produced talent of the highest quality. Then, in addition to training, the natural Portuguese aptitude for languages, allowed Portugal to be today the seventh country in the world with the best proficiency in the domain of the English language.
And behold, in 2016 the Web Summit moved to Lisbon. Criticized by many, dubbed a “vanity fair” or a waste of time and money, the truth is that it helps to change faster in a sector undergoing rapid change in our country. For the first time, the major international decision-makers in the area of technology “knocked” with the Portuguese reality: high-level training, well-prepared talent, schools of high-quality training, a stable social and economic environment, a high level of security, within the eurozone, but… with wages much lower than the most technological countries. When opportunities do exist, big investors usually don’t miss them. And here was no exception: Portugal was able to move forward quickly with numerous technological projects and technological support of magnitudes and magnitudes unimaginable until then. And how good it is! Finally, Portugal’s dream to start selling high-value-added products and services was happening.
But in a globalized world, not everything is what it seems. Technology has dematerialized business. More than physical transfers, today we are concerned with digital transfers. The physical world has entered an almost parallel reality, where it is used only to support a digital transaction, and not the other way around. The biggest taxi companies don’t have them; the biggest tour company doesn’t have a single hotel; or the biggest company selling products is only now starting to have its first stores, and few. All these ecosystem changes require digital and technological support. A set of new professions, hitherto unimaginable, began to emerge – would anyone remember 20 years ago having a social media manager in their Marketing team? Or an SEO expert? Or a Data Analyst? And we could go on. The job has changed and is changing. Artificial intelligence and its massification in various areas and functions and the application of Machine Learning in others will bring yet another huge change in the job market and jobs soon.
At WYgroup, we are every day with an insatiable curiosity trying to discover the new. Searching and trying to recruit what doesn’t yet exist. Trying to design the functions of the future. We know that professions will change. In its scope and its capabilities. And then on your needs and knowledge. But can we afford to waste professionals with proven experience in various sectors, but who, for various reasons, have not had the chance to be exposed to the digitization processes? Can’t a professional with 10, 15, or 20 years of professional experience be reconverted? The answer is obvious and linear – it is possible and urgent that this reconversion takes place. If, on the one hand, digitization promotes the destruction of some low-value-added functions, it is also true that it creates many others of much higher value for which we are beginning to be deficient. And we will stay even more in the future, so the reconversion work is not only necessary from the point of view of human development, but it will be essential from the point of view of organizational development.
The moment we are going through impels us and directs us towards that solution. Adding more students to the Universities of Engineering and Technology has a “time-to-market” of at least 3 to 5 years. The retraining process of a mature and competent professional can take 6 to 12 months. The economic cost of the shortage of intelligence will only be overcome in the short term by reconverting, re-educating, and above all, providing opportunities.
Fortunately, there are in Portugal a considerable number of entities – public and private – with the competencies to promote this transition. To help make the moment we are experiencing more easily overcome without the economic costs of scarcity and its consequent price increase. The underlying challenge is how to do it in good time and the right direction. The challenge that lies ahead could mean a huge leap forward qualitatively for our country. Culturally, we are a traditionally defensive people, who take few risks, even though our most glorious past was lived precisely thanks to the boldness and audacity that led us along paths that no one else had traveled until then.
This is the time to do it again. But this time in the area of education and employment. Changing the paradigm of making it cheap to one with greater added value. Shifting from manufacturing to thinking. Changing sectors and above all increasing value. If part of the company’s investments and if part of the value that is in the Recovery and Resilience Plan is applied to the reconversion of the more than 100,000 Portuguese who have the experience and competence to leave for a new professional challenge of greater value, we will start a new cycle development where our skills are among the best in the world.
So we want to do it.
Opinion article originally published in RH Magazine
