There is a serious mismatch in the Northern ICT labour market. SMEs have an extreme difficulty in filling their ICT vacancies. This undermines the position of the Northern Netherlands as an ICT region, with the risk that new companies will sink elsewhere and existing companies grow elsewhere. As a result, the competitiveness of the North Netherlands is weakened, with the region’s capacity to innovate and earning less than its potential. ICT is an important key technology for other sectors (e.g. energy and healthy ageing). Strategically, the ICT sector is therefore important for economic development in the North Netherlands. The Northern Netherlands IT companies TRES, Ultraware, CareerUp and higher education and knowledge institutions Hanzehogeschool Groningen and NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences work together in the project ‘Make IT Work in the North’ to create a better match between supply and demand from new structures and methods. Based on demand from SMEs, ‘Make IT Work in the North’ will develop reskilling pathways that are innovative, forward-looking and always demand-driven. In addition, the following employers’ and professional organisations v are involved in the project: the Northern Online Entrepreneurs (NOO) and its sister organisation Young Entrepreneurs &Amp; Startups (YES), Cooperation Noord, Connect FRL and Innovation Cluster Drachten. SMEs in the North of the Netherlands are as applicants, as the prospective customers of the candidates from the beginning and make an important active contribution to the joint training process — as a guiding and co-creating customer, as a co-financer, and as co-trainer. The core of the collaboration is the IT Academy North-Netherlands. Since 2014, it has been committed to a high-quality, healthy and balanced IT labour market in the North. As a result of this role, she has intensive contact with parties in the IT field as well as with the entire Northern Netherlands vocational and higher education. The Hanseatic University of Groningen will continue to use expertise from the lecturers New Business &Amp; ICT and Human Capital. NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences will use expertise from the Lectorate of Meaning Entrepreneurship, the research group Vitale Economics and the Academies ICT &Amp; Creative Technology and International Business Administration. The higher education institutions also offer training locations throughout the North of the Netherlands. The project ‘Make IT Work in the North’ launches an approach to precisely that tightening at the level from MBO+ (Associate degree: level 5) to higher education (Bachelor: level 6), at the heart of the IT labour market. The project is implemented at first instance on the basis of the ‘Make IT Work’ concept as developed in Amsterdam. ‘Make IT Work’ makes it possible for highly educated people without an ICT background to be retrained to an ICT position at HBO level and to work directly with an employer. Success elements are the combination of work and learning, concrete support for both companies, strengthening the regional link between SMEs and educational institutions, and good selection at the gates. 98 % of the participants in Amsterdam were offered a contract extension by the employers at the end of the first employment contract. The main objective of the project ‘Make IT Work in the North’ is: strengthening a structure to systematically match demand and supply for ICT professionals in the northern Netherlands in order to achieve a sustainable improvement of the regional labour market and thus strengthen the competitiveness of the Northern Netherlands as an ICT region. The consortium partners want to achieve this goal by specifically achieving the following three sub-objectives: 1.Increase the range of useful talent for ICT companies by generating additional (side) inflows; 2.Develop tailor-made processes to direct entrants to specific IT functions in Northern Dutch SMEs; 3.Employer services to facilitate SMEs to identify their human resources needs, organise their work differently if necessary, and train their entrants themselves. Within the 6 pilots in this project, the first 60 students will be trained to be able to work as an ICT player for SMEs. Pilots will be evaluated and continued outside the project as a regular offer from the IT Academy, and are expected to jointly generate some 600 additional IT employees over the next five years. The consortium partners will ensure the continuity of the project after mid-2021 by embedding into existing structures of the IT Academy Noord-Nederland.