Skill Matching Assistance and Reporting Tool

Context/background of SMART In Europe we can find many areas, where it is difficult for people to get into the labour market. Moreover, it is also hard for companies in these regions to get adequate staff members. Often these problem occur in rural areas. Here the number of people is low and also the number of enterprises and companies to be addressed during the job seeking process is not that high. So, there are many structural problems. In addition to that, the companies are interested to get better information on soft skills of the applicants. Most of them always say they are team players and able to work in a group environment. But, for an enterprise it is often hard to decide if these statements of the applicant are really the truth and if the act in an adequate way in a team. So, many companies are looking for a testing tool to get better information as a basis of the job decisions. Objectives of the SMART project The empowerment of youth is an important aspect in the European educational strategy. The project SMART is a way to focus this and create skill awareness.The SMART consortium created a tool that matches skills of youths with skill requirements for jobs. Unlike other matching tools it takes into account informal skills and doesn't focus on qualifications. It doesn't ask youths to rate their own skills (which is difficult with limited experience and leads to bad results) but takes them through skill tests instead. Groups that benefit from the tool are youths, especially those who don't do well in the educational systems and who have a chance of proving their skills in the skill tests, as well as employers who are able now to find employees who have just the right skills for the job. Career counselors also benefit from using the system because it can provide them with a detailed skills profile of job seekers that is highly useful when analyzing their personal development and their options. Number and profile of participating organisations In SMART collaborate five experienced partners from four countries. Universities, youth organisations and a technical partner bring in the expertise. The chair of Business, Human Resource Education and Evaluation Research of the University of Paderborn is highly experienced in the field of career orientation, the development of competency models and evaluation in general. Professor Jindal-Snape from the University of Dundee is an expert when it comes to disadvantaged learners and the design of transitional systems. She is internationally recognized. Both Universities were responsible for safeguarding high scientific standards. Ingenious Knowledge is an expert when it comes to innovative IT solutions. They are experienced in designing tools like SMART and in developing Serious Games, too. YEU Cyprus and Pro Educatione have contact to our target group. They are working with young people or youth organisations and they have big networks. Description of undertaken main activities SMART focuses on the career orientation processes of young people that are disadvantaged or have to face any obstacles, and aims to bring them into employment. Therefore, the consortium partners conducted researches and cooperated with practitioners to create a generic job skill model and a matching concept that matches the skill and interest profiles of young people with occupational profiles or even reported job offers. SMART focuses on generic skills that are required for various jobs and on young people's interests as well without relying on their qualifications. The partners developed a web-based tool based on the research as well as models and concepts. Within this tool, young people run skill tests to create a profile that will then be matched with occupational profiles. Both the personal profiles and the occupational profiles are based on the same aspects. The tool is user friendly and is created for young people, youth workers or career counselors. Thus, SMART is scientifically sound and practical orientated. Results and impact attained The partners reviewed the theoretical concepts based on their expertise, and ensure the practical orientation within the project. By conducting qualitative research with employers and bringing the findings together with a literature review, a generic job skill model was created. This generic job skill model was the basis for the matching concept which aims to provide tasks for the skill assessment of the learners. Both of them were then be embedded into a web-tool that matches the youth profiles with occupational profiles. In order to use the tool adequately and to improve its quality, a guiding mechanism was created and test-implementations and evaluations were carried out. The tool helps both, companies and learners to get (a) adequate future staff members and (b) information about the labor market and about the own soft skills. This helps to improve matching processes on the labor market in the future.