Today, university students in the scope of their academic lessons, can acquire variety of information and skills and graduate as equipped with technical skills like computer literacy and language. However, at the stage of hiring, employers would also like to see a certain level of competence in behavioral skills such as leadership, teamwork and innovation along with technical knowledge and experience. Even though higher education institutions offer internship placements, employer introductions and career consultancy services for students to support their transition from education to work life, there still resides an urgent need to expand career education and define what is needed to get the right job and ways of getting there, especially for generation "Y" students who has different expectations and behavioral styles compared to previous generations. Developing soft employability skills, such as self-awareness, leadership and conflict management, alone simply is not enough to land on the right job. The generation Y’s fluency and comfort with technology together with the rise of social networks have reshaped how people engage with each other in the past decade. In response, job market recruiters quickly adapted to these changing conditions and started leveraging social media channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter, which are powerful tools to connect employers and job seekers. More and more of the initial background screening carried out by recruiters today, are now handled by social media, making it the greatest source used by job seekers to advertise their personal “brand” and to demonstrate that they have the required employability skills, proving they are the best fit. In light of this, students’ need to learn how to manage a strong personal brand and build an online profile along with developing their networking skills became inevitable. The main aim of this Project is to design a virtual guide to soft skill development and personal branding in social media for Generation Y job seekers. The premise of the Project states that the better equipped the candidate with the necessary soft skills, the better the fit between the candidate and the organization would be and the higher the individuals’ and thus, the respective organization’s performance would be. This in turn, should benefit the collective EU organizations’ talent benchmark and business performance as well as decrease the levels of ineffective unemployment in the EU. The main output of the project, “Generation Y’s Virtual Guide to Skill Development and Personal Branding in Social Media” is a modern and practical curriculum suitable for the needs of generation Y. While the guide will be created for students, it can be used by higher education organizations’ departments offering career development trainings as well. By referring to this guide, students will be able to a) understand changing world and business conditions, b) learn the soft skills preferred by employers and how to develop them, c) manage their own personal brand, and d) effectively market themselves to the employers via the use of social media. The project results and especially its concrete output, a virtual guide, will have important impact at the local, regional, national, and international levels. At the local and regional level, project activities that specifically target University students in different regions in Turkey, France, and Sweden will help to promote employability of young people seeking to enter the labor market. In the long run, university students who gain the necessary behavioral competencies and manage their own personal brands effectively will be examples for the younger generations. At the national level, the project will influence decision-makers to take a step towards promoting youth employability. Improved relationship between public institutions and civil society will be sustainable. Throughout the project, partners are expected to share new approaches with each other and other stakeholders. As a result of international relations and networking activities, collaboration in the field of career development will improve internationally. As this project will develop special methods and resources suitable for the generation Y, the results will be appealing and cultivating for the scope of variety of institutions working on youth unemployment. It will also contribute to the modernization of higher education by using high level information technologies and methods suitable for the learning models of generation Y in related future projects.
‘Generation Y’s Virtual Guide to Skill Development and Personal Branding in Social Media’ aimed to design a virtual guide to increase Generation Y’s employability by improving their skills and personal branding qualities. In order to accomplish this goal, four institutions from Europe with different expertise areas came together under the coordination of Sabanci University, namely Universum Communications from Sweden, which is experienced in research and has a large network of employers and universities all around Europe; Novancia Business School from France with intensive knowledge in social media use; Turk Kultur Vakfı from Turkey, which is experienced in Intercultural Learning; and Abdullah Gul University (AGU) from Turkey, which contributed to the Project with its experience in volunteer work and EU projects. The main activities in the Project are described below: Staff Training “Understanding Gen Y” : A special training with 20 participants from four different countries who work full time with the Generation Y members took place in Istanbul on 27 September-1 October 2016. The training provided the partners of the Project with general knowledge about Generation Y to equip them with skills necessary to meet the needs and expectations of Generation Y Research on The Skills Employers Are Looking For in Gen Y: To analyze what soft skills employers expect Gen Y to have, widescale research was conducted among 1299 recruiters from public and private sectors as well as various NGOs in Europe. After collecting the extensive data from recruiters, the top soft skills expected from Gen Y were listed respectively as Reliability, Responsibility, Communication, Positive Attitude, and Team Work. Research on New Recruitment and Job Search Trends: The aim of this research was to understand how target groups, namely students, employers, and career services, use social media for recruitment purposes. A survey on social media use was carried out for each target group. 1329 students, 108 employers, and 27 career services were surveyed in total. The main result of these surveys was that the 62% of the employers were using social media as a recruitment tool while only 30 % of the students were using social media for job search. Both employers and students ranked LinkedIn as the first social media tool for career-focused use. International Boot Camp for Students “Skill Development and Personal Branding Training”: After identifying the top soft skills needed by employers and social media trends, a special training program was designed to equip the students with these skills to attract recruiters and raise awareness on the importance of personal branding through social media. A boot camp, a two-week training planned within the scope of Learning / Teaching / Training activities, was held at Sabancı University, Turkey, and in Novancia Business School, France, with the participation of 30 selected students and an international group of trainers and facilitators. The first week of the boot camp aimed participants to explore themselves, discover their strengths and competencies, and realize the importance of soft skills in professional life. The second week of the boot camp was devoted to in-class presentations and peer-reviewed study groups about personal branding and effective use of social media. Youth Employability Skills Development Resources: The main goal of this intellectual output was to create a resource containing tools and information on how to develop and enhance each soft skill. A group of project partners, employers, students, and career specialists were gathered to create resources (videos, articles, books, films) that helped students improve their soft skills. The resources were shared on the project website and served as a content map for Virtual Guide. A report containing key messages and summaries of activities in the boot camp was also generated. Creation of Virtual Guide: Virtual Guide consisted of different materials to help students develop the top 5 soft skills, effectively use social media, and build strong online presence. The Guide content was transformed into a digital version in both English and Turkish (available from https://guideforgeny.sabanciuniv.edu and https://binyaprak.com/profil/8316-geny). Thanks to Virtual Guide and our reports, students are able to a) understand the changing world and business conditions b) learn the soft skills preferred by employers, c) manage their own personal brand, and d) effectively market themselves to the employers via social media. The project output, the virtual guide, is expected to equip students with the necessary behavioral competencies and, hence, increase the youth employability at the local and regional level in the long run. With Virtual Guide, networking activities and international collaboration in career development among higher education institutions will be further improved.