Reach More Blue-Collars

By mid-2016, the unemployment rate in Egypt reached 12.5%, mostly among youth and women as reported by the World Bank¹. At the same time, the National Employment Pact (NEP) faces difficulty in outreaching to job seekers, getting them to attend its job fairs, and applying for the available jobs. Innovators in the fields of Employment, Human Resource Management, Marketing, Promotion & Advertising, are called to find creative solutions to fill in this gab and develop the current methods used by the NEP to advertise its quality job opportunities.

A reward of about 20,000 L.E. will be provided to implement the best solution, read below for more details!

 

Challenge Background:

The National Employment Pact (NEP) acts as a liaison between business owners and young job seekers, where unlike many other employment offices, it mainly works on providing technical and professional jobs (90%) for TVET graduates and serves youths between 18 and 35 years old.

 

The first stage in the matchmaking process is divided into the following:

 

Direct promotion includes street campaigns where flyers are given away and the contacts of the job seekers are taken to remind them of the job fair date and time later on. These promotional activities usually take place in areas near the job fair venue or other areas targeted by the participant companies. The NEP depends on this promotional method by 90%. As for Facebook advertising, the jobs ads are promoted on different pages, where the NEP depends on this method by 10%. A dedicated team in the NEP, the Outreach Team, handles the process till the job seekers are placed in appropriate jobs.

Problem Description:

The Outreach Team faces some challenges², which in turn negatively affect the rest of the departments within the NEP and its annual placement targets. For instance:

• The lack of varied advertising methods & venues, which leads to a small number of interested job seekers.

• The lack of attractive ways of displaying jobs, especially when there is a limited variety of jobs on offer with low salary packages.

 

The Challenge:

Innovative ways of outreach to the job seekers are required, mainly for the technical and professional jobs (90%), in addition to, positions requiring higher education (10%). A successful outreach would convince the job seekers to attend the job fairs held at the NEP as well as applying for the available jobs. Besides, the challenge aims at developing the current promotional methods to introduce the NEP adequately while highlighting its services, employment criteria, and steps for placing job seekers in positions right for them.  

It is important to note that the required solution has no specific formula, it may be a new way of outreach to job seekers, design and implementation of an innovative advertising campaign ... etc. Also, the solution can depend on the use of administrative and managerial recommendations, trainings, and/or technological tools.

 

The proposed solution has to satisfy the following specifications and criteria:

1. Adequate cost relative to the implementation requirements

2. Includes a new and innovative method for street outreach campaigns

3. Ease of implementation and simplicity to fit the cultural and educational background of vocational job seekers

4. Immediate results and lasting impact

5. Manages the expectations of the job seekers in light of the available job opportunities 

 

The winning innovator will be introduced to the work procedures inside the NEP and its different employment services in details. In addition, the innovator may need to accompany the Outreach Team in one of the streets campaigns to fully understand the challenge. 

 

Please note that the NEP has tried the following solutions, however, they didn’t achieve the required success:

1. Facebook ads including more details about the benefits offered by the companies.

2. Outsourcing the marketing of one of the job fairs to a specialized company

3.  Getting in touch with associations, secondary vocational schools, and technical institutes to promote the available job opportunities.

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Reward and Other Conditions:

A reward of about 20,000 L.E. will be provided to implement the best solution in collaboration between the NEP and the Innovator, in addition to a one-month internship at the NEP, according to the following conditions:

1. The presented solution is in the form of a proposal including the implementation and follow-up details as well as the expected results.

2. In the case of technological solutions, it is preferred to present a proof of concept or a prototype.

3. The proposed solution should be Open Source such that it can be replicated in different institutions, where applicable, without restrictions.

4. The solution should include a clear action plan for implementation, clarifying the time estimated for each action and the required budget, where the reward money will be given in instalments based on milestones defined by the innovator in the plan.

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[1] World Bank. 2016. Egypt Overview. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/egypt/overview

[2] This challenge was identified through an “Ideation Workshop”, facilitated by Yomken.com team, in collaboration with the National Employment Pact (NEP) and the “Social Innovation for the Labour Market in Egypt Platform”, to elicit the pressing challenges facing the NEP in terms of employment and placement (More info here). 

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