30 students get to experience job immersion at BBVA
30 students from across Spain participated in an educational program at BBVA in collaboration with the Princess of Girona Foundation. The sessions took place in Madrid - at BBVA’s Open Space and at the bank’s corporate headquarters, BBVA City. The students, between the ages of 21 and 30, were selected for their hard work and exemplary nature, and many of them are the first in their familiar to go to college. Bank experts in different professional skills were in charge of teaching the training sessions.
The program started with a warm welcome from the Global Director of Institutional Relations at BBVA, María Abascal, who shared with the participants the importance of values in a cultural transformation project. The bank’s Talent Acquisition area in Spain taught the first several sessions, which focused on the keys to improving employability. For one of the practical exercises, the students honed their job interview skills.
Design Thinking workshops and sessions on opportunities and challenges in today’s global society completed a program where BBVA experts covered interesting debates over the technological transformation, the future of employment, behavioral economics, cybersecurity and climate change.
Ainhoa Campo, the Global Head of Open Innovation at BBVA, shared how the bank carried out the open innovation process, a process that develops and empowers the financial technology ecosystem.
The activities on the second day allow the group of young people to explore BBVA City on a guided tour. “BBVA is a workplace with open, collaborative spaces that foster the exchange of ideas, and the bank’s values and the new ways of working,” Gilbert Mateu from the Institutional Relations area explained during the visit.
The group of students get to know Ciudad BBVA on a guided tour by Gilbert Mateu, from BBVA Public Affairs team.
Time was also spent on quantum computing, a discipline that is becoming increasingly relevant with significant career opportunities. “Real life problems tend to be exponentially complex, and classic computing is based on bits that will never be able to solve them,” the head of the Research and Development unit at BBVA, Escolástico Sánchez, explained to the students.
In addition, the young people had the opportunity to learn about big data in a session taught by the head of the bank’s data strategy team, Juan Murillo, who discussed the role data plays in today’s digital organization, and specifically at BBVA. “Big data is essential to achieve BBVA’s purpose of bringing the age of opportunity to everyone, as data are the cornerstone of creating opportunities,” he said during his talk.
There was also time for open discussions with the students. After the unsettling question, “Are we ready to dance with robots?”, Checa Pardo, Chief of Staff for BBVA Executive Board Member José Manuel González-Páramo, reflected on what the students expect from the professional world in the future, what it will look like, and the need for the public sector to protect people and not jobs.
Lidia del Pozo, Director of Community Investment Programmes at BBVA, during the first day of the training programme.
Cybersecurity challenges and the associated risks that information leaks and social engineering attacks represent for organizations were also discussed. Jennifer Sesmero, who is in charge of cyber training plans for the bank, led the session. The students found the it to be “very useful”, and they stressed the importance of being familiar with the main risks that human behavior could cause in organizations.
The last workshop from the two days of training at BBVA was a presentation entitled “The SDGs: what can you do?”, in which Lidia del Pozo, the Director of Community Investment Programs, underscored the repercussions of climate change on the economy and the challenge of moving toward the sustainable development of society.
For two days, BBVA’s spaces were transformed into a development center to provide new professional and personal skills to around 30 young people. An initiative that will also expand their job opportunities and contribute talent to society.
The training project, called “BBVA development center” was launched under the leadership of the bank’s Institutional Relations team in the framework of the Princess of Girona Foundation’s “Talent Rescuers” program.