At Telegraph Hub we are actively interested in the development of business and industry in the Olomouc region. In our coworking space we meet people from different professions, so we decided to interview them about the situation in their industry in the region.
Since September 2020, our coworking centre has been home to the Olomouc branch of Czechitas, a non-profit organisation that helps women and children to explore the world of information technology. In our Kupé, we talked to Jana Filipová, the regional coordinator for the Olomouc and Zlín regions, about the local demand for IT professionals, why women like working with data and where fresh graduates can find a job.
What is your role as the Czechitas regional manager for the Olomouc and Zlín regions?
The work of the regional coordinator consists mainly in organizing and conducting professional courses that are oriented towards IT. Our courses are thematically divided into four areas: programming, testing, data processing and web development. My task is to ensure a quality lecturing team that is on the same wavelength as us and wants to pass on its know-how in a way that the course participants understand. Our lecturers are professionals from practice and IT students. Since both the mentioned branches are at the start, my colleagues and I are trying to raise awareness in the region about our activities among the participants as well as among IT companies. I spend a lot of time creating new partner contacts and raising awareness of our work.
What barrier do you think women most often see when looking for a job in IT?
It's hard to say, the barrier is often shyness or lower self-confidence of women. At the same time, there is also the historical aspect of technology being seen as a male domain. We are trying to break down these stereotypes and show that the IT world is open to everyone and that women have a high level of participation. In my opinion, ignorance of the IT jobs that are being created in the context of increasing digitisation and new technologies also plays a big role. We are also trying to raise awareness in this area - on YouTube we present individual professional positions in the form of interviews with our IT partners. In a moment, women can get an idea of what a front-end developer does, what a tester does, that an architect is not always an architect and more.
What do women most want to do in IT?
It is evident from the interest of female participants that the topic of data processing and data analytics is growing in popularity. I don't want to generalize, but I'm sure you've also noticed that in everyday life, data is collected from all sorts of sources: by requiring registrations for various purposes, through the purchasing cards of large retail chains, optimized web searches, using a Google account. The next logical need is to process and evaluate all this information. A lot of companies at the moment need to process and evaluate large amounts of data.
It is possible to get a very strong and good foundation for the work of a data analyst in our courses, from the one-day Introduction to Data Analytics to the retraining course Digital Academy: Data.
Where can your graduates apply their work experience? Do you cooperate with any Olomouc companies?
Within the Digital Academy programme we have career counselling: we connect our graduates with partner companies. Often during this course, partner companies already identify suitable female students, who are then offered a junior position.
In the Olomouc region we establish cooperation with various companies. Among others, our partners include HELLA AUTOTECHNIK NOVA S.R.O., EGT Express, Edhouse, ICOK, TESCO SW, Nestle. We place great emphasis on the corporate culture of our partners, we care that it is in line with our values. Partner cooperation takes various forms, companies provide us with premises, their employees participate in lecturing, we organize popularization activities together and last but not least they support us financially. Partnerships are very important for the development of both regions and we value them very much.
We establish partnerships not only with IT companies, but also with companies from business or culture, such as Telegraph, where our Olomouc office is located.
How big is the demand for skilled IT professionals in Olomouc and its surroundings?
The demand for IT positions is generally high. In the Olomouc region, the company TESCO SW offers a lot of junior positions, in Přerov the family company KARAT Software, which very often opens junior IT positions. The demand for IT professionals is still higher than the supply and the market is not saturated yet. IT is a very promising field in which new job opportunities will be created all the time. Therefore, our next target group is high school students.
You act as an alternative institution that mainly deals with adult education in the IT sphere. But gradually your activities have grown to a wider target group, which now includes children. Do you work with any secondary schools and universities?
We actively cooperate with the Faculty of Science of UP (Department of Computer Science and Department of Geoinformatics) and also with Moravian University.
Czechitas received a grant from the Velux Foundation this year. It is the largest grant in the history of our organization and its funds are largely dedicated to the development of education of high school students and to the entry of Czechitas into new regions. Thanks to this grant, we are now launching an online pilot project for high schools Careers and Technology for Everyone, which is designed for students in grades 2, 3, 4. The webinar will introduce students to today's changing job market following the advent of digitalisation. It will show them in which all professions are represented by information technology, how to prepare a CV or prepare for an interview.
For the summer months we are planning a CzechITas camp in Zlín, which is designed for boys and girls from 8 to 12 years old. In Olomouc, a week-long intensive course Summer School for high school girls is planned. But we'll see how the pandemic develops.
What events can those interested in IT look forward to in the near future?
It's the aforementioned pilot project for secondary schools Careers and Technology for Everyone. We plan to have one webinar every weekend, together with the Zlín office that makes 4-5 events per month. We still have a few openings for the semester-long Javascript 2 advanced course, which starts on March 18, 2021. Now all our workshops are online, anyone can participate from anywhere. In any case, we hope to return to face-to-face teaching in the future, with selected workshops and courses being held at the Telegraph. And we look forward to that.
By Sofiia Taranenko, Telegraph HUB
