WirelessCar in meeting about competence with Sweden's Minister of Education

WirelessCar is always looking to be proactive in securing our long-term continuous growth. Recently we were invited by TechSverige, along with other tech companies in Sweden, to discuss competence from a national perspective. Anna Gunlycke, Talent Procurement & Growth Manager at WirelessCar, has some reflections on the meeting and the talks with Sweden's minister of education Mats Persson, who is also responsible for R&D in Sweden.

Here are some quick figures to set the stage for the talks that took place:

• Compared to other national base industries tech is the only one employing (significantly) more people the last 30 years.
• The number of employed in tech is a rapidly growing, in 2020 we were over 250.000 people. This is an increase by almost 15% since the year before.
• Tech is extremely important for Sweden's future on the international market.
• There will be a shortage of approximately 70.000 tech experts in Sweden next year.

TechSverige described the big shortage in competence in the tech sector and stressed the importance of getting more young people interested in an education in tech. Tech is a big and important sector for Sweden as a country to keep advancing, one out of every five workers in Sweden today works as a developer. Mats Persson said in his presentation that not enough people, particularly not women with good grades in math, choose higher education in tech, of those that do, too many drop out.?

Anna Gunlycke had a personal talk with the minister and mentioned WirelessCar's history and vision to keep growing in the international market.

-I told him that we are a good example of a tech company coming from a joint venture where we are used to cooperating and being agile to reach our objectives. Today we are a leading global player because of our extensive competence in both automotive and connectivity, but I also expressed how important it is for us to be able to keep growing. Gothenburg is one of five internationally recognized hubs for automotive and connectivity and it is important for Sweden to make sure the right tools are in place for companies like WirelessCar to leverage that fact.

Together with TechSverige we communicated the following ideas to the minister:

• secure quality in the entire education system, avoid dropouts and facilitate returning students.
• that digitalization should influence the whole education system on all levels.
• a national knowledge boost for all teachers and headmasters and tight collaboration with guidance counselors to increase interest among young students (both boys and girls) early on.
• facilitation for professionals to change careers and get good competence development

What are your thoughts on how we can realize all the potential Swedish tech companies have?