With 13,000 jobs in Scotland’s tech sector going unfilled each year, there continues to be a prevalent skills shortage in this industry. At ScotlandIS, we continue to strive for new ways to bridge that gap.
In addition to our hugely successful undergraduate placement programme, e-Placement Scotland, over the last year we have offered new training opportunities through funding secured from the Digital Start Fund, via Skills Development Scotland.
Most recently we have offered two Digital Skills courses: a mix of Level 9 modules in Cyber Security and Level 11 modules in Applied Data Science, delivered remotely by The University of Highlands and Islands, for individuals with a previous background in STEM.
This allowed individuals the opportunity to join one of the fastest growing industries in Scotland by undertaking one of these Data or Cyber online courses, as a way of changing career path or perhaps refreshing skills after a career break.
Our course in Applied Data Science offered eligible candidates the choice of up to 40 credits at SCQF Level 11 over two modules:
- Introduction to R and Data Visualisation – how to use the open-source statistical software R to visualise data, including cleaning, preparing and summarising the data sets
- Data Analytics on the Web -an understanding of machine learning, one of the most exciting fields in computer science, in context to business intelligence and analytics
The Cyber Security course offered up to 40 credits at SCQF Level 9, covering:
- Cyber Security – modern cyber security issues and mitigation strategies
- Network Information and Security – understanding how to critically evaluate and analyse the network and information security weaknesses of an organisation.
Completion of these modules Cyber and Data modules also provided individuals with a recognised CPD award.
Our first group of graduates have now completed these courses, and are keen to seek employment to continue to build their career path into the tech sector.
They have been taken through an intensive training programme and are skilled in remote working and training, having successfully completed the course during lockdown.
You can find out more about our graduates, their diverse backgrounds and the skills they’ve obtained in this process by taking a look at their case studies below:
Cherif Bichara Abderaman – Data
If you are considering hiring or are currently recruiting for an entry level IT role that you think our candidates could fill, please get in touch with nicola.taylor@scotlandis.com