Employment Minister Stephen Farry is urging businesses to foster better links with schools through placements and quality internships.
He was speaking during this summer’s recent Kainos Code Camp at Belfast Metropolitan College’s e3 cam-pus. The Code Camp in mobile app creation is aimed at developing the next generation of digital talent by offering up to 80 places for 17 to 19-year old stu-dents. The camp offers 80 students the chance to work closely with mentors in a real-life software development environment and develop their own An-droid apps.
Minister Farry said: “The camp is an excellent example of government, business and the further education sec-tor working together to nurture our next generation of ICT innovators. The ICT sector is of critical importance to the growth of Northern Ireland. If we are to realise the sector’s full potential, we need to match the skills of the work-force to the skills our employers need to help our companies grow.
“The Northern Ireland Economic Strategy highlights the fact that for many of the sectors which are going to contribute to our future economic growth, there will be a heavy reliance on a workforce with skills in science, technology, engineering or maths.
“We must continue to enthuse and in-spire our young people to study STEM courses. To do this, we must ensure that these sectors offer attractive employment opportunities, and that young people are aware of the diverse breadth of careers options available:’
The minister concluded by saying he encouraged more businesses to further the relationships they have with local schools, colleges and universities by offering placements, visits, intern-ships, and quality job opportunities.
He said: “A collaborative approach is needed between education and training providers, government and STEM businesses. I have seen many times how this partnership can help to effectively ad-dress the skills challenges faced by various industries in the local economy?’
Meanwhile, a multi-million investment plan is to create 94 new jobs in Belfast. The positions at the US based, data solutions company, Proofpoint Inc. follows its acquisition of Mail Distiller Ltd last year and an investment of more than £6m.
The Belfast operation will become the research and development and operations centre for Proofpoint Essentials and will act as an operations and support hub for Proofpoint’s global customer base in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Speaking about the company’s decision to invest here Gary Steele, CEO of Proofpoint Inc, said: “We have been very impressed with the technology ecosystem in Northern Ireland, which shares many of the characteristics of Silicon Valley, including access to world-class cyber-security research at Queen’s University.”
Proofpoint NI Ltd currently employs 18 people at its new premises in Weaver’s Court in Belfast. Invest NI has offered more than £600,000 of support for the new jobs which are ex-pected to be in place by the end of 2016.