How to help job seekers who are looking for their first job in a new industry. Community of practice meetup by ESR – Networks Behind New Growth project
This digestion is meant for people interested in becoming professional in the field, network together and bring out new knowledge. Therefore fully understanding this digestion needs some pre-understanding of the topic of interest and the ecosystem in Tampere region. This document is meant to help anyone interested in joining our community of practice to join to the conversation and action!
On April 27th we met around the topic of how to help job seekers who are looking for their first job in a new industry. These are mainly students, migrants and career changers. The meeting was participated by startup entrepreneurs, program managers in associations, public officials and meeting facilitators. For example the project manager from the city of Tampere joined for the interest to pilot new services to reach the common goal, which the public sector could co-produce with the private and third sector in the future if they prove successful.
The meeting was joined by representatives from each of these organizations and in the beginning we shortly introduced each other to the group. After that we heard a case example of Amplaffy startup company’s approach to solve the program. Lastly we discussed freely on how to involve and educate job seekers and how to engage companies in recruiting.
Introduction
Participants told what their organization does and why they are interested in this community of practice. (Group that shares insights on the field they work on)
CoreSeer
Senja Luoma Co-Founder of the startup.
- They develop a platform that integrates digital skill development courses, provide these to job seekers and negotiate with companies which skills CoreSeer’s talent pool should develop to get in a specific field such as ICT (information and communications technologies)
Red Brick Accelerator
Mirza Sagdati – Founder
- They host seed stage startup accelerators four times a year and pre-accelerator.
- They are interested in developing a mentorship program for startups in the idea stage.
Bloom Tampere
Karen Ahtinen – Program manager
- Their mission is to be the bridge for integrated life for internationals in Tampere and they own a community space in Kehräsaari.
- They are interested in helping internationally minded people to develop their skills so that they find jobs
Skill School
Meenu Chauhan – Founder
- They have executed workshops for soon graduating students in developing various works life skills
- Developing program where employees and employers meet and learn how to integrate talents to different industries, which have unique dynamics
EntreCom
Arina Lykova – CEO
- Creating a platform type website for cities and regions to integrate talents, companies, events and programs that aim to employment or self-employment.
Tribe Tampere
Karina Viche – Community Lead
- Unites the startup ecosystem in Tampere
- Interested in finding opportunities for their Fellowship pool that has close to hundred entrepreneurially minded opportunity seekers
Ensimetri
Jari Myllymäki – Project Coordinator
- The organization mentors over 1500 individuals interested in entrepreneurship every year
- Interested to find new approaches on creating new community based services to the people considering entrepreneurship
Growth Services – City of Tampere
Jaakko Pohjolainen – Project Manager
- Interested to hear new ideas in innovative employment services that we can start piloting. The piloting does not need to be successful, but they need to provide new knowledge on new approaches
International Tampere – City of Tampere
Kagan Özkan – Talent Advisor
- Interested to hear new ideas
- Founder and CEO – Elisabet Miheludaki
Amplaffy is a three years old company which launched a platform last year. The platform integrates job advertisements from different sources. Before that the startup team did manually connect job seekers to the right jobs. This process has now been automated. Lately their job advertisement inflow has increased and they have been able to start using data from the advertisements such as which job positions are looked after and which skills these positions require. The job seekers can input their skill and interest to the platform and see if there are matches with the open positions. Major insight has been that companies are looking for senior people, but do not offer junior positions where people can gain experience toward seniorship. Companies are afraid to make hiring decisions in Finland because it is costly.
They would like to discuss with companies to learn their perspective on recruiting and consult universities to find solutions for the talents work-life readiness. Both groups seem to lack time and skills to solve the issue, hence Elisabet sees Amplaffy in the research side of our community of practice.
For talent development they have piloted programs such as shadow leadership programs for women where they follow the CEO of the company for a few weeks to learn how executives and entrepreneurs work. This has raised interest in companies that are enrolling to the program. She hopes that they could use the method in some companies that go to Red Brick Accelerator since taking interns has been viewed as really challenging in startup companies.
Q&A
Q: Does talent get alternative recommendations on jobs based on their skills in your platform?
A: The platform recognizes only direct matches at the moment
Q: Does the platform tell which skills job seekers need to update?
A: Yes, it gives possible job suggestions and which skills job seekers need to update also generally which skills are needed in specific industries.
Q: Do you have data of internal recruiting, headhunting or other sources than job advertisements?
A: No we do not
Q: Do you work globally, nationally or in one city?
A: The jobs advertisements and job seekers come mostly from Finland. From job seekers 77% are from Finland and 90% from the EU.
General discussion on how to involve talents and companies to create jobs. Digested by Santeri Tuovila:
It was agreed that most impact can be made by connecting job seekers and company representatives directly to discuss together. The communication is not well established at the moment. As an example company representatives feel uncomfortable using English professionally, and job seekers focus on building CV’s but not on figuring out what the companies actually need. If the experiences and knowledge is shared it happens in bubbles of people in the same situations, not between employers and job seekers.
To address this problem we need to understand that every industry has different ways to enter. More importantly, gaining a job from big organizations or small and medium sized companies has different dynamics on recruiting. In smaller companies it is the entrepreneurs who make the decision and they mostly do not have time to register on platforms and join open events. Self-employment is a choice as well and it requires its own set of skills. On top of skills the job seekers need right networks, some that support innovative solution driven thinking and some that require institutional certificates.
Service pilots could include workshops on how to act in a professional situation such as networking events. Job seekers and entrepreneurs will participate in real situations that are followed and analysed in a group together. The industry practice, soft skill and cultural aspects are discussed and communication improvement ideas are raised. The job seekers can also host an event about the industry’s topic and the professionals can review the value of the event to the volunteering job seekers.
Follow up.
Everybody agreed on a new meeting which will be facilitated by a volunteer co-facilitator with Nina Erkkilä.
More information contact:
Nina Erkkilä
nina.erkkila@tribetampere.com