Abstract:

There is currently a high need for professionals with digital skills in the areas of Information and Communication Technologies. As such it is expected that in the future this trend will increase. Higher education institutions are unable to train adequate numbers of qualified people to respond to employers' requests. In other areas it is expected that increasing computerization and automation will have a significant impact on reducing certain types of jobs, which highlights the need and importance for many workers to develop new digital skills in order to be better prepared to face future challenges. It also seems clear that many of the needs may be met by people who, while not having a higher education in ICT fields, such as that taught in higher education institutions, these can be suppressed by people with specific training which is more focused on a particular technology or focused on certain development niches. In this context, low-code development platforms can play an important role in training or retraining people from areas with lower market demand for ICT areas. Their characteristics and potential make them suitable for technicians with higher qualifications in other areas, and other professionals, to acquire new skills through the reskill or supplementation / recycling of pre-acquired basic knowledge that may become productive labor in the IT world.

In this paper, we describe a strategy, and several case studies, where a low-code development platform is used to reskill STEM professionals and / or professionals who, having basic IT knowledge, are in activities that are precarious, to perform ICT professional activity. This strategy not only contributes to the needs of IT professionals, but also enables many professionals to make timely retraining into areas of greater competitiveness, greater job stability and better working conditions. Throughout the paper, we present case studies that are part of this strategy and that have had positive results. These case studies include Enterprise-Higher Education collaborative training, reskilling for unemployed people with higher education in other areas, and training for those who are active, working in areas where labor needs are likely to decrease in the mid-term. The paper also identifies the benefits and contributions resulting from the use of the OutSystems low-code platform to implement this strategy.

Keywords:

Low-code, OutSystems, reskill, employability.