A total of 75 million young people are unemployed worldwide; people with life projects who are waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves in the workplace. They are, ultimately, looking for a job. This drama has led to the McKinsey Social Initiative, an international consulting firm that has launched ‘Generation’, an ambitious training programme to help a million young people to get a job within six years. It is a global initiative that has been launched in five pilot countries; one per continent: Kenya, India, Mexico, United States and Spain. “The project aims to improve the alignment between young people’s skills and the skill employers are demanding through top quality training”, the consultancy firm has explained.

Spain, which has one of the highest unemployment rates, where more than half of young people are unemployed, has been chosen as one of the countries where the programme will be launched. In a previous phase, a study was conducted to detect the jobs with the greatest potential for the future. This study found that one of the great potential job markets in Spain is digital economy and, more specifically, digital marketing and website development. According to the European Commission, the number of jobs in the digital sector is increasing by over 100,000 a year. Once the topics had been chosen, the students were selected. “The thesis of the initiative is that young people can acquire the skills demanded by companies regardless of their prior experience. Therefore, we considered those with great levels of motivation who were prepared to take charge of their professional careers”, they stated.

A total of 85 people aged 19 to 29 took part in this pilot project, which ended on December 10 in Madrid and Barcelona. Fifty companies cooperated with the consultancy firm in delivering the study programme and a number of professionals imparted the subjects, as they have the day-to-day experience of real business situations. Over three months, the students received 75% practical training, 15% behavioural skills and the remaining 10% focused on acquiring techniques to find employment and notions on entrepreneurship. A differentiating factor of the ‘Generation’ programme is the way each student is monitored throughout the entire job seeking process. McKinsey stresses that “over half of the students have appointments for interviews and some of them received job offers even before they had finished the programme”.