To achieve its goal of becoming the leading global platform for financial services and products, Santander needs to bring people with digital profiles on board. This can be tricky since such talent is low in supply but very high in demand at top companies in every industry. To attract it, Santander has a number of special programmes aimed at technical experts. 

Santander’s philosophy is to recruit young people, train them, get them involved in real projects and hire them. This is where Digital Training Camp comes in, which after its second year (ended on 30 October) has trained and brought in 36 recent science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates who took part in 12-month IT projects with Internal Audit, Risks, T&O, Openbank and other areas and divisions of the group.

Here’s what Sergio, Ana, Jennifer and Javier had to say about their experience:

Tech Up is one-year career development programme aimed at 50 young IT specialists. Selected participants will become full-time Grupo Santander employees to work in software development, data science, DevOps, cloud engineering and cybersecurity. 

This year we also introduced TecHunter, which rewards Santander employees for referring digital specialists. TecHunter launched last summer to get employees involved in IT recruitment from their personal and professional circles. 

Other novel initiatives to recruit young people with digital backgrounds include the first Bootcamp we ran with Ironhack, an international school specializing in web development, data analytics and cybersecurity; and the Santander Tech Coding Academy scholarship programme to teach web development to university graduates and professionals between 20 and 40 years of age, who are unemployed, furloughed or having a hard time getting ahead in their careers because of economic and social effects of the covid-19 pandemic, in addition to sole traders who have had to shut down their businesses. 

We also have Santander Start, a work experience programme that opens the job market up to all graduates – not just those with technical degrees. In September the programme admitted over 250 students whose first foray into the job market will be a one-year placement with Santander.

Do you want to hear participants’ stories? 

We want to share participants’ experiences from the last two Digital Training Camps. Meet Sergio, who was taken aback by the expertise of the bank’s teams as well as their commitment to innovation. Or Javier, who found learning about the bank’s technology and business and how to adapt to different teams eye-opening. Ana feels she learned a lot from the types of leadership, and Jennifer says STEM profiles are a key part of Santander’s digital transformation.

Overall, our company is lucky to have these attractive and highly specialized programmes to search for innovative profiles that help execute major strategic projects. At Santander, we are very proud of our talent attraction and retention programmes; we believe we are a reflection of our employees’ talent.