Youth Employability

YouRock ¡ An employability network for under 24s in Europe

¡  Fill gap left by LinkedIn - only 17% of under 24s have a profile

¡  Helps young people to recognize latent business skills

¡ Also helps youth to see technology as career option

¡  Successfully crowd-funded for £12,500 to create prototype

¡  Hackathons develops prototype in November, full service in 2014

Young people and LinkedIn ¡  “LinkedIn is not forgiving.

This issue goes so deep I wouldn’t even know where to start.” Lydia M.

¡  “Starting out on LinkedIn with a blank slate can be quite daunting.” David Johnson

¡  “If LinkedIn was a 20 year old college student who wasn’t the best in anything, it wouldn’t want to join itself.” Kevin Jordan

Further Information Young People Hate LinkedIn LinkedIn doesn’t matter to the people who need it most Why aren’t more college students on LinkedIn

Evidence of gap ¡  LinkedIn, the largest

employment-focused online network is predominantly excluding young people.

¡  Only around 17% of under 25s in the US have a LinkedIn account. (Google, 2012).

¡  The average age of a LinkedIn user is 44

¡  Young people under 24 form only around 5% of its members (under 18s only 2%)(Pingdom, 2012, graphic right).

Aims of YouRock ¡  It aims to encourage young people to create an online public

aspiration profile for themselves, a personal statement of their career hopes.

¡  It will encourage them to use their online content creation activities as evidence of their skills and aptitude. It will give their online ‘social’ activities an employability purpose.

¡ A final aim of YouRock is to encourage young people to see the technology industry as a potential career path.

YouRock and Education ¡  YouRock will recognize that young

people create a wealth of online content and that they don’t have an employment history.

¡  It will allow them to champion the things they love to do. It will ask them to aspire, to contribute content and to build a profile that will be rich and can be endorsed by teachers and tutors.

¡  YouRock will require a new understanding from the education sector that it has a role in endorsing young people after their education.

The YouRock audience ¡ Aged 15-24, male & female, European (likely to focus on 17-21)

¡  Employed, unemployed, or in full time education

¡  Have little or no workplace experience or career profile

¡  Have little or no interest in ICT as a career

¡  Use desktop and/or mobile technology regularly

¡  Likely to have range of social media profiles, but not LinkedIn

¡  Seeking to structure their extra-curricular activities

Audience motivation The mission of YouRock is to ensure that young people have direction and opportunity in their lives, that they are not disadvantaged by their age or experience, that they have the tools to empower themselves, and that they see technology as an opportunity.

¡  Improved employability chances

¡  Improved self-recognition of existing skills

¡  Increased confidence

¡ Economic and career development

Targeting ¡ YouRock is ambitious and aims to reach 500,000 young

people by the end of its first year, more than 1 million by the end of its second year.

¡ It will target and operate in 11 countries with high levels of youth unemployment across and beyond Europe in its first year.

¡ Countries targeted in the first year are: Spain, Italy, France, UK, Poland, Germany, Greece, Romania, Portugal, Ireland and Russia.

Audience engagement ¡ Campaigns: e.g. Get

Online Week, eSkills campaign, EU Youth week

¡ Word of mouth/recommendation: at registration, and at profile ‘completion’

¡ Partners and stakeholders: Education, jobs and careers, youth and student, and technology

¡ Social media and PR

Engaging with Stakeholders ¡  Individuals – to engage with its community and potential developers

¡  Policy/Government – to drive departmental engagement, political awareness raising, and link to campaigns

¡  Education – to engage with teacher/ tutors to encourage the culture of endorsement

¡  Industry and Media – to raise awareness of it in corporate recruitment processes, exploit the capacity of industry to reach young people, and the media for the general population

¡  NGOs – to raise awareness of YouRock as a service that could be utilised in their work

¡  National Organisations – a partner in each of the target countries to act as local liaison

YouRock - a user profile ¡ Personal aspiration – endorsable by tutors/teachers

¡ Latent business skills – endorsable by tutors/teachers (see next slide)

¡  ICT skills – encouraging blogs, social media collections, online activity (see next slide)

¡ Achievements – endorsable by tutors/teachers/project team members

¡ Ongoing projects – with links to evidence/videos/ projects

¡ YouRock rating – by teachers/ tutors/ team/ employers

YouRock USP - recognizing Latent Business Skills Example skills matches in the table below

Finances ¡  YouRock will have a low cost initial development phase

resourced through volunteer hackathons and crowd-funding.

¡  Has been established in the UK as a LTD company, operating across Europe.

¡  It will seek corporate investment, sponsorship and venture capital.

¡  YouRock aims to be financially sustainable within three years.

Operational plan to launch ¡ Autumn: System specification, forward financial

investment, Hackathons.

¡ Winter: Prototype launch, delivery organisation engagement, translations, beta system development

¡  Spring 2014: campaign engagement, service launch.

Further Information Ian Clifford

¡  Email: ian@ianclifford.co.uk

¡  Twitter: http://twitter.com/ian_cli

¡  Phone: +44 (0)7411 118667

¡  http://be.linkedin.com/in/ihclifford