This project aims to help young disadvantaged job seekers to get selected and perform better during job interviews and thereby increase their chances of entering the labour market. Employers will normally select for an interview, candidates who are better qualified over those who have little or no work experience or qualifications. Therefore, for these young people, who often have a background of fewer opportunities, it is difficult to get selected for a job interview. And if selected, giving an outstanding performance during that interview, becomes the only opportunity for these young job seekers to gain employment. This project proposal is the follow up project and complimentary to the 2014-2016 ET-NEETs (Effective Training for NEETS) Erasmus+ project which collected a large amount of data from NEETs, including the information that amongst other reasons, 73% described problems with job interviews as a major obstacle of getting into employment. These findings were confirmed in pre-project research with employers and HR managers who described that in many cases the performance of young unemployed youth during interviews was below the required expectations and that they lacked skills of presenting themselves and therefore were not chosen for employment. The project therefore addresses as its main target groups; a). Young disadvantaged job seekers (16 to 24 years old) with little or no work experience, qualifications or training (including NEETs), b). Employers, recruitment agencies and job centres, c). VET institutions. It aims to support young people to gain employment by developing tools which will help them to • determine their readiness to perform well during face to face job interviews, • gain the knowledge and training to improve their interview skills and performance, and • supply them and potential employers with a platform that allows for upload and viewing of "Living Video CVs". For this it will develop two main outputs constituting a set of training tools: 1). The Interview Champ APP: The APP will be designed to interactively coach job seekers to better present themselves, their skills and character to potential employers. It will offer a participative training course that will present a range of example interview questions and answers and interview techniques (in video) on how to better perform during the job interview. The APP will also have the unique facility for the user to create a short high quality ‘Living Video CV' of themselves that can be uploaded onto the projects Job Portal for potential employers to view the individual in a more representative and comprehensive way. 2). The Job Portal: The Job Portal will be part of the projects website and allow uploads of Living CV videos created by the job seekers for potential employers to view in order to aid the pre-interview selection process of potential candidates. During the term of the project, selected employers will be invited to view and respond in a critical way to the video CVs’ that have been produced. This response will provide important feedback and tips for the job seekers to improve their presentation skills before the next face to face job interview. The Portal will also be used as a place to find employment. The central impact of the project is to generate a positive effect for young job seekers to integrate more easily into the labour market and to provide VET organisations with innovative and effective methods to support their potential job seekers. With its tools the project provides a sector wide revolution in how high quality skills and competences are delivered to foster employability. For this the project uses innovative digital tools that match the user preference of the job seekers. Mobile apps reach a significant audience amongst younger job seekers, of which 90% own a mobile smart device. Interacting with technology in this way is common practice for them, and yet the career and employment sector has been slow to react to the potential this technology brings to jobseekers and employers alike. The APP and Job Portal are unique approaches and systems for tackling a wide ranging problem- the poor prospects for inexperienced job seekers trying to find employment without the specific knowledge of presenting their skills and competences at interview and/or throughout the recruitment process. The tools will be designed and formulated in a way that will be transferable and universal. The partners' consortium will during and after the project exploit the potential of the tools to be adopted by employment organisations, job centers, recruitment agencies and authorities.
This project aims to help young disadvantaged job seekers to get noticed, get selected and perform better during job interviews and thereby increase their chances of getting employed. Employers normally select for an interview, candidates who are better qualified over those who have little or no work experience or qualifications. Therefore, for these young people, who often have a background of fewer opportunities, it is difficult to get selected for a job interview. And if selected, giving an outstanding performance during that interview, becomes the only opportunity for these young job seekers to gain employment. For this, the project has developed two main outputs: 1). The Interview Champ APP: The APP has been designed to interactively coach job seekers to better present themselves, their skills and character to potential employers. It offers an inbuilt training course that will present a range of example interview questions and answers and interview techniques on how to better perform during the job interview. The APP also has the unique facility for the user to create a short high quality ‘Living Video CV' of themselves that can be uploaded onto the projects Job Portal for potential employers to view the individual in a more representative and comprehensive way. The APP can be downloaded from the APP store or Google Play Store. 2). The Job Portal: The Job Portal can be found on the project’s website at: www.interview-champ.eu/portal/ It offers the facility for 'Living CV' videos, created by the job seekers, to be uploaded for potential employers to view in order to aid the pre-interview selection process of potential candidates. During the term of the project, selected employers were invited to view and respond in a critical way to the uploaded video CVs’ in order to provide important feedback and tips for the job seekers to improve their presentation skills (performance) before the next face to face job interview. The project has worked with young people from all partner networks who played an important role in the projects work as 'Interview Stars' who can be seen on the projects website performing in a series of Do's and Don't's performances within videos on how to perform or 'not' during job interviews. The two outputs were launched at the project's Final Conference which was held in Oct 2020 in Palma de Mallorca to an audience of 87 participants (a mix of both onsite and online visitors) representing a range of organisations connected to youth employment including NGOs working in labour insertion programs, Job Centres, Recruitment Agencies, Local Government Employment Departments and Agencies. So far the project website (www.interview-champ.eu) has received over 15,500 unique visitors which is 10,000 over initial estimates. The impact of the project two products has come in the form of feedback from the organisations present at the launch who have disseminated the APP and Job Portal products to their young people networks. The response from young job seekers so far has indicated very positive results also indicated by the fast-growing number of 'users' of the APP. At the time of writing this Final Report the APP has been downloaded 654 times. (Downloads from the APP store 364 and 290 form the Google Play Store- In the application it was hoped to have 300 users). The Interview Champ APP and Job Portal are unique approaches and systems for tackling a wide-ranging problem- the poor prospects for inexperienced job seekers trying to find employment without the specific knowledge of presenting their skills and competences at an interview and/or throughout the recruitment process. Both tools have been designed to be expandable to other languages and countries. One of the effects of the Covid Pandemic is high unemployment but another effect is the need for business and education to shift its methods of delivering its services by adapting to new online technologies. The ‘Interview Champ’ tools will help job seekers to; a). Gain the skills to get noticed by employers and get invited for an interview, b). Learn how to perform well during the job interview, and c). Learn new skills to perform well in the digital world- online meetings, discussions during Skype, or conferencing situations are becoming more evident and now many employers are now seeking candidates who possess qualities to perform well and work online.