Abstract:

Training competent professionals, able to fulfil labour market demands, is the main objective of every higher education institution. Moreover, recruitment and attracting university talent is a strategic priority for companies. Both purposes are two sides of the same coin, which explains the appropriateness of jointly promoting new learning scenarios that facilitate their achievement. Assuming the above and accepting the underlying thesis that, in general, students are capable of much more than they reveal in classrooms, a competition was chosen to be organized in direct collaboration with companies, which was called the iDEA Challenge. The ultimate goal of the project was to facilitate students' access to the job market. To achieve this, the project would primarily focus on two aspects. Firstly, enhancing their qualifications through the learning of key employability skills (such as leadership, teamwork, and communication) by simulating a real-life practical case. Secondly, highlighting their abilities to employers by directly involving companies in the design and development of the educational activity. In this paper, we present an experience carried out during the iDEA Challenge hackathon at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Polytechnic University of Madrid), in which companies become students’ co-educators while selecting potential candidates for recruitment purposes. Human Resources managers from different companies observe how students, working in teams, solve a technological challenge with the help and supervision of a professional mentor. The results of questionnaires filled in by both students and companies’ representatives are truly positive, as are the recruitment data.

Keywords:

Engineering challenge, labour market entry, skills, University-business collaboration.