On October 22, 2021, iFood launched Potencia Tech, a training platform to support the training of professionals in the technology area with courses and scholarships in the area.
In addition, there are job vacancies — an initiative focused on underrepresented groups. They are transgender men, women (cis or trans), and black, indigenous, LGBTQIAP+ or people with disabilities.
Potencia Tech comprises partnerships with 16 schools that, together with iFood, offer training in programming geared towards the most demanded specialties in the market.
These areas are back-end (codes that allow the visual part of an application or system to function correctly). In addition, there is front-end (graphical interface development) and full-stack (professional who works on the back-end and front-end).
Finally, it also encompasses data science (data processing and analysis).
The initiative is linked to iFood's education commitment to form 25 thousand people from underrepresented populations in the technology field. In this way, contributing to reducing the risk of technological blackout in Brazil.
“Potencia Tech was born when we realized two major challenges: a lot of unemployment in the country and a lot of opportunities in the technology market”, explains Roberta Piozzi, Tech Education coordinator at iFood.
One year later, more than 32 thousand people signed up to Potencia Tech, of which 96% came from underrepresented groups and 80% with a low-income profile.
Thus, around 12 thousand scholarships were granted and, currently, the program has almost 1000 graduated students and many classes still in progress.
In addition, hackathons, talent banks and other actions designed to generate jobs already have more than 900 people employed — of these, 67 went to work at iFood, and 17 of them, previously, were delivery men or women.
“When we hired 40 people simultaneously, I really realized how much impact we are making, making a difference. Thus, we have reports that a job increased a family's family income by 300%”, says Roberta. “It was a year of a lot of discovery. We learned a lot about training, which has to do with our commitment, but now we face a big challenge, which is employing.”
For the second year of Potência Tech, iFood wants to leverage the employability network. “Today we already have a talent pool, still in pilot format, and at no cost to candidates and hiring companies. To hire talent, the employer simply needs to go to the Potência Tech website and sign up under the “hire talent” tab, reveals Roberta.
A little of history
Firstly, iFood had a big challenge: informing a different audience (people over 18 and low-income) that it was promoting this initiative in the area of education.
For that, innovated in communication, promoting rhyme battles on social media and calling on rapper Rashid to compose a song especially for Potência Tech (watch the video here).
“For many of us, what is missing is an opportunity to study, to work, to develop. Therefore, this is the importance of a project like Potência Tech”, he told iFood News at the time of release.
Throughout this first year, Potência Tech expanded partnerships to offer even more scholarships and free courses. With the Digital Innovation One (DIO) ecosystem, for example, it made 5,000 places available for the Java Beginners course; with Oracle, it opened more than 4,000 places in free technology and entrepreneurship courses under the ONE (Oracle Next Education) program — in addition to 500 full scholarships for programming courses on the Rocketseat platform.
And there was even a course just for women —120 vacancies for students (cis and trans) at the Reprograma school— and English classes, with the offer of 50 bags full tuition for EF Education First school courses.
Furthermore, the platform was improved so that more people could benefit from courses and job openings. To this end, Potência Tech started to gather more content so that people understood what technology professionals do and could find vacancies.
In 2022, Potência Tech became part of the Tech Movement, a coalition of more than 20 companies to invest R$ 100 million in education by 2025 and awaken the interest of young people to make a career in technology, training and employing new professionals.
Education for delivery people
In September, classes began for the first class of the Tech Power formed only by delivery men and women, with a back-end programming course designed for them and suited to their work schedules.
The class has 80 students, who are expected to graduate in February 2023 from Cubos Academy, the largest edtech in the Northeast.
But, before that, some professionals registered on the platform had already taken technology courses, like Daniel Silveira, who was a delivery man and became a software engineer at iFood after taking a full stack training course at Potência Tech.
Upon finishing his training, he signed up for iFood's talent acceleration program — the iLab—, was selected and, in the end, hired. “It’s a dream come true, right?”, he says, in this video from the series Opening the Bag. “There is a saying that the universe only opens its doors to those who know what they want.”
Recognitions
In this first year, Potência Tech received some external recognition. In March 2022, the project won the CNN Notables award in the Technology category.
Furthermore, another award-winning action was the communication project for the launch of the platform, which in October 2022 received the Aberje Award, from the Brazilian Association of Business Communication, which chooses the best communication actions for companies.
“We were able to generate connections with different audiences, for different objectives. Only in this way can we really achieve the impact goals we have”, said Amanda Borsonello, senior communications coordinator at iFood, to iFood News.
Tech power in numbers
Results from the platform's first year
+32 thousand
people signed up on the platform
12 thousand
Scholarships were offered for programming courses
900
People were employed — 67 of them at iFood
100% online
The courses are available to people all over Brazil
18 years
Is the minimum age to register on the platform
