The Company’s new online platform, Future Jobs Finder, will offer career guidance, training and also help to search meaningful jobs in the global digital economy.
For years now, the youth across the country has been finding it difficult to decide on a career option. What is practised is a herd mentality—following a safe route by sticking to the popular choice—without evaluating one’s capabilities or skillset.
A little guidance at this stage could prove to be quite beneficial for the students and job-seekers at the beginning of their career. Globally, 67 per cent of young people interviewed by YouGov on behalf of Vodafone said they had received insufficient or no career advice at any point in their education or since leaving school or university.
Based on these inputs, telecom company, Vodafone, has developed a new online platform Future Jobs Finder. This platform will offer career guidance and access to relevant trainings. It will also facilitate the search of meaningful jobs in the digital economy globally.
Over time, every workplace will go digital, creating new roles and accelerating the demand for a wide range of specialist technology skills relevant for a digital economy. With this programme, we want to prepare five million young people across India to be future fit for workplaces of the new world.
It will help jobseekers identify their individual aptitudes and interests, and then map these to the most appropriate job category in the digital economy. This will be done through a series of quick psychometric tests. Post the assessment, the individual will be directed to specific job opportunities in their chosen location.
The website will also offer relevant online digital skills training on this platform, and several courses free of cost. On completing the tests, users will receive a summary of their skills and interests that can be used on their resume or in a job application.
This is part of its international future jobs programme, ‘What will you be?’ which aims to provide career guidance and access to training content in the digital economy to five million youth in India and 10 million young people across 18 countries by 2022.
Sunil Sood, managing director & chief executive officer, Vodafone India, says, “Over time, every workplace will go digital, creating new roles and accelerating the demand for a wide range of specialist technology skills relevant for a digital economy. With this programme, we want to prepare five million young people across India to be future fit for workplaces of the new world.”
This initiative is also supported by an app, which offers young people a simple but comprehensive gateway to new skills and opportunities for employment in the digital economy. The telecom company claims that over the last one year, it has worked with specialist psychologists, careers advisers and training providers to develop this app.
Vodafone had also commissioned YouGov to ask 6,000 youth in the 18–24 age range, in 15 countries, for their views on future career aspirations and concerns. The objective was to understand what young people think about their futures, their career ambitions and related issues. The aim was also to gauge whether they have had adequate careers advice, possess sufficient understanding of the digital economy, and realise its impact on their life ahead.
In India, 51 per cent of the respondents believed that the biggest concern was finding a lucrative and permanent job.