Short description of the project
The aim of our project is to make young people aware of the job opportunities abroad as well as in their own country, and to teach them skills vital to finding employment. The coordinating institute, Vantaa Vocational Institute, social and health care department and the five partners from Hungary, Spain, Italy and Romania represent various kinds of vocational institutes covering practical nursing(Finland) arts and sciences, information technology, management, business, business administration(Hungary), stonemasonry(Spain), social work(Italy) and textile and leather manufacture(Romania). The target groups are students and teachers in each institute.
All communication between partners has mainly been via e-mail and fax. We have created two web sites for the project. We organized a job-interview during a project meeting in Romania and the interviews were being taped on a video.
The main objective is that the student gains knowledge of nature and availability of work. The students will learn how to locate employment opportunities via the media as well as define her own position in labour market. The students will learn how to draft a well organized resume and cover letter taking into consideration her strengths and abilities. The students will receive training on job-finding techniques, that is, how to behave in an job-interview and how to present themselves.
During our first project year we created a web site on the Internet with links to each school. Our first activity was a comparison between the educational systems of each country and a questionnaire to the students of each school related to work and career experience and expectations. We also prepared a questionnaire about former students' careers. Each partner collected web sites where jobs can be found.
During our second project year, students in each country prepared CV's and cover letters and trained job-finding techniques, that is, telephone conversation and job interview in either language or professional classes. We found out what are the most important factors when choosing a profession by conducting a questionnaire. Students in each institute wrote reports of their work experience or practical training, either in their home country or abroad. We organized some practical projects for the students during their stay at some partner country. The students visited different work places in their own field and wrote reports about the place. They interviewed the employer and employees and found useful information about their future career. We organized a job-hunting game during our second project meeting in Romania. The teachers had prepared questions for the job interview as well as job advertisements related to the students's fields. Each participating student took turns being a job candidate. The students had time to prepare themselves together with their partner who was not from their own country and were interviewed in pairs by one or two teachers. All the teachers and students had prepared the game really well, so it was a great learning experience for everybody. The interviews were being taped on video and later it can be used in classes to analyse the interviews.
As this is going to be the third year of the project and partnership, we have to find ways to finalise the form of our findings so that we can end up with something useful and memorable for ourselves. The idea is to issue a publication on our findings which can be used for both the teachers and present and graduating students in search of work. We will collect data about each country's workforce statistics such as unemployment rates as well as on working conditions in the different countries. Finally, we will collect information about acts and regulations when working abroad. We have already prepared a very useful activity for our students "Getting familiar with labour market on the Internet". The Internet offers job-seekers several services and the student will learn a lot about them with this activity. During our third year the students will also prepare a newspaper with interviews of present and former students as well as employers or persons working in different job centres. . |  |