Learn as a team to work in a team

There is currently a strong demand for Information and Communication Technologies professionals in Portugal. This demand requires that higher education institutions prepare their graduates adequately, not only in technical skills, but also in terms of the so-called soft skills. In this paper, we describe a strategy that is being implemented, in recent years, in two higher education Information and Communication Technologies courses. In it, several practices were adopted that we believe will lead to a successful preparation of students, not only on a technical level, but also in terms of the acquisition of knowledge and best practices regarding best teamwork methodologies. Employers' feedback has been essential for the implementation of this strategy, since it has allowed us to evaluate how it facilitates the integration of recent graduates, after being recruited, and the issues that influence that integration. We can conclude that, for a successful integration, there is an important contribution, not only from the technical knowledge and abilities they acquired, but also from a diverse set of behavioral aspects related to interpersonal relations, motivation, attitude towards challenges, among others. The approach we propose is aimed at guiding the training of finalist students in order to facilitate their integration into a future work environment. Our purpose with this paper is to share this experience, which we evaluate as positive, with those who work in the area and thus contribute to the desired Academy-Business proximity.