Chatbot Based Career Guidance – 2nd Newsletter

June 2023

The CareerBOT partnership intends to implement a chatbot based career guidance methodology and tool, which with the reinforcement of a facilitated blended guidance sessions will provide current Labour Market Information and general tips to Jobseeker. The CareerBOT tool will equip guidance professionals with an AI-based chatbot that will dynamically generate external data using various Application Programming Interfaces (API) to provide customised Labour Market Information (LMI) and general tips on applying for work based on their clients’ needs. In this way the project aims to empower marginalised jobseekers on their pathway to employment.

We are excited by the development of the CareerBOT tool to date and the finalisation of the ‘’generic’’ English version following the successful preliminary pre-piloting phase. The partnership is now working to translate the Chatbot tool into Spanish, Greek, and German versions for piloting. We invite you to test the EN Version of the Bot. The CareerBOT project strives to provide up to date local and national Labour Market Information and therefore aims to localise the different versions of the Bot to best meet the needs of each client. The CareerBOT partnership attended its Second face-to-face Transnational Project Meeting in St. Pölten, Austria excellently hosted by our project lead Hafelekar. During the meeting partners Active Citizens Partnership (ACP, GR) and Pontydysgu, Bridge to Learning (ES) presented the ‘generic’ EN version and highlighted the improvements made to the Bot that resulted from the feedback given by testers during the Pre-Piloting phase of testing. The partnership further progressed on the development of a blended CareerBot training curriculum for Career Guidance Practitioner and will launch the beginning of its piloting of the training in Greece, October 2023.

To learn more about the project partners follow the link to the partner section of the website. To read more about The CareerBot project  read our recently published article on EPALE (Electronic Platform for Adult Learning), to read more follow the link; CareerBot – Chatbot based Career Guidance | EPALE (europa.eu).

Second F2F Transnational Project Meeting in St. Pölten, Austria

The CareerBOT project aims to achieve four main project outcomes, firstly to research on the content of the Bot and methodology to inform the development of the tool including LMI resources and usable APIs to embed within the tool. This project outcome is ongoing and will continue to inform the future of the project. Secondly, the development of the CareerBOT tool, which is now in its piloting phase as mentioned above. Thirdly, the development of a blended CareerBOT training for Career Guidance Practitioners which is now well underway with the aim to deliver the training in October and finally the drafting of a Transfer Handbook for Implementation that focuses on organisational Development (OD). Both final outcomes of the CareerBot project aim to improve the digital readiness of the Career Guidance.

For more information about the CareerBot Erasmus+ project go to our website here.

The European Commission support for the production of this communication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Flows

Further Learning, Outreach and Working Skills

The FLOWS project aims to create a career guidance framework based on forward thinking and a way of working for guidance practitioners that facilitates quality future focused career plans for job seekers who are already marginalised in the labour market, ensuring their inclusion in a technological and digitalized world of work.

Our main aim is to provide effective career guidance to young people and to assist them in discovering and developing their soft skills in order to ensure their inclusion in the labour market. As a result, we develop project tools and methods centred on the identification of transversal skills that can be used to future-proof the careers of disadvantaged young job seekers and enable sustainable employment, and we implement them with the project’s target group of disadvantaged young job searchers. To achieve this goal, we must build the skills of experts and youth workers in the field through the development of vocational education and training qualifications, which we will do in our project.

Our main results are:

  • Framework Development: We define key competencies required for a future labour market and elaborate on the employability needs of disadvantaged young job seekers.
  • Tool Specification and Content: This output will detail the core elements and project methodology to be adapted in light of technological workplace demands, training requirements, and key competencies of young job seekers.
  • Developing Training module for practitioners and Online Platform: This will enable the project partners to implement training modules with the aim of increasing communication and interpersonal skills and digitalisation skills of young job seekers. 
  • Piloting of the FLOWS approach and Psychometric Evaluation: This step will result in a method for guidance practitioners to facilitate future-focused career plans for young job seekers who are significantly under – represented in the labour market.

Project duration

October 2022 till September 2024

Website: coming soon

Project Partners

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Turkish National Agency. Neither the European Union nor Turkish National Agency can be held responsible for them.

Newsletter Flows Project

Flows project aims to support disadvantaged people, early school leavers, young job seekers, poor educational background, the long-term unemployed, people with disabilities and social, cultural, economic or educational obstacles, individuals, guidance, practitioners, employers, and Youth employment providers.

Flows is a 24-month-long European project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme and coordinated by Çarşamba İşkur Hizmet Merkezi Müdürlüğü. The project activities will be implemented throughout 4 different countries: Austria, Ireland, Romania, and Turkey. The first meeting of the project was held on the 30th and 31st of January 2023 in Samsun, Turkey.

During the meeting, partners got to know each other and the project and set the ground for a fruitful collaboration in the months to come. Lead project partners shared highlights for their work packages. Special time was dedicated to the first work package of the project, developing a framework for analysis and evaluation, which will include desk research and focus groups with young jobseekers and experts working with young jobseekers. The next transnational partner meeting will be in Ireland in September 2023.

Work packages that will be developed are:

Work package 2 – Framework Development will be led by Mozaik (as it has experience in working on developing framework for analysis and evaluation. The aim of the guidance service is to encourage and assist individuals to make positive changes in their lives and enable them to access education, training, and employment.

Work package 3 – Tool Specification and Content will be implemented by The Ballymun Job Centre as it holds methodology that can be used to discover and develop educational, vocational, and employment potential, to equip individuals to have a clearer understanding of themselves and to direct them towards training and employment opportunities that best fulfil their needs and aspirations.

Work package 4 – Developing Training module for practitioners and Online Platform will be led by Universitatea Politehnica din București as being an experienced IT partner.

Work package 5 – Piloting of The Future-proof Your Career and Psychometric Evaluation will be led by Hafelekar as it is mainly engaged in these fields: Research, Studies, Surveys, Evaluation, Validation of informal and non-formal learning, Development of (ICT) training.

The partnership of the Flows project is composed by:

Project Coordinator: Çarşamba ISKUR HIZMET MERKEZI MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ (Türkiye) 

Project Partners:

STAY TUNED TO HEAR MORE FOR OUR PROJECT!

Flows Newsletter1_EN

DigEnYou

Digital entrepreneurship  for Youth

The DigEnYou project aims to upskill youth in the field of digital entrepreneurship by providing a training programme to develop and improve young people’s digital and entrepreneurial skills. The project addresses the following major needs in the field of youth on a global scale: 1) Digital skill upskilling, including digital literacy and readiness; 2) Enhancement of transversal skills for digital business development; and 3) Development of entrepreneurial skills.

Project Target Groups

  • Young people with limited digital skills and competencies, as well as those looking for opportunities for entrepreneurial learning and education.
  • The actors in digital youth work.

To meet these needs and provide a comprehensive training programme to young people interested in starting a digitally oriented business, the following outputs will be created:

  • Methodological Framework and Digital Market Skills Ecosystem: In the foundation phase of the project, a desk research and study circle will be conducted to define a Methodological Framework and Digital Market Skills.
  • DigEnYou curriculum and model: All partner countries will collaborate to develop curriculum outlines and DigEnYou course content.
  • DigEnYou methodology and piloting: is based on testing a training model in terms of objectives, recruitment and learning process, content, schedule, and timing.
  • DigEnYou Learning Platform: This project milestone aims to create an online platform that will include the above-mentioned results and assist young people and youth workers in improving their skills.

Project duration

September 2022 till August 2024

Web

coming soon

Project Partners

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Turkish National Agency. Neither the European Union nor Turkish National Agency can be held responsible for them.

Chatbot based Career Guidance – 1st Newsletter

January 2023 | 1st Newsletter

The CareerBot partnership seeks to improve Digital Readiness of the Career Guidance sector by implementing CareerBot methodology and tool, facilitating blended guidance
sessions and to use customized Labour Market Information (LMI) to empower marginalized job seekers. We want to put Career Guidance Practitioners at the centre and assist them – and their organisations – on the path of digitalisation so that they can advise their clients in the best possible way.

With the help of our methodology, job seekers will be able to gather relevant
information before and after personal interviews, so that valuable personal services can
be used efficiently. With the “CareerBot project” we propose a pilot that focuses on the
role of career guidance, which became more demanding, and must be adapted more
rapidly and flexible to the changing needs of the new world of work.

The CareerBot project includes 4 main outcomes:

  1. CareerBot Content and Methodology
  2. CareerBot Tool
  3. Blended CareerBot training for Career Guidance Practitioners
  4. Transfer Handbook for Implementation with focus on Organisational
    Development (OD)

Here you can have a look at the preliminary version of our CareerBot/ pre-pilot phase:

Please provide your feedback after you have spend some time interacting with
CareerBot: Careerbot feedback form (google.com)

First f2f Transnational Project Meeting in Dublin, November 2022

Following key virtual meetings, last November 2022 we were able to meet in person in
Dublin, to review the progress of the different Project Results and Activities, develop
stronger bonds within our partnership and update the implementation plans going
forward.

We are delighted with the consultations and baseline analysis carried out up to date,
collaboration between the project coordinators and links with associated organisations
contributing to the CareerBot. We hope to obtain feedback from a diverse range of
Career Guidance Practitioners and colleagues who will be trained to use the CareerBot
with their clients during 2023.

Find out more about our project partners and updates in our website

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

EJO4Youth

Effective Job Orientation for Youth

The EJO4Youth projects aims to improve job orientation for young people in Europe by providing youth workers and professionals with training and methodologies based on the Symbolwork approach. Thus, the project fosters the competences of youth workers to apply effective, motivating and impactful job orientation with interactive and engaging methods and practices. 

The project’s primary objective is to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds improve their vocational and professional skills by using a career counselling methodology based on Symbol Work. Various interventions will be implemented in order to assist young people in “designing” a roadmap for their career and educational paths. Moreover, young people will receive assistance that is relevant not only to the labour market, but also to increasing social inclusion and active citizenship, as well as reducing discrimination and obstacles in their lives.

Our main results are:

  • Blended Learning Approach and Accreditation: These guidelines will provide more information on the requirements and competences necessary for the implementation of the Symbol Work approach as well as on differences between participating countries.
  • Face-to-face Training Curriculum and Toolset: This curriculum includes more information on how to implement the Symbol Work approach and job orientation. The training is focused on improving the skills and competences of youth workers in Europe.
  • Distance Learning Course: Transferring the curriculum into an online format, allowing for professionals without direct access to the face-to-face training to improve their skills and competences online in an easy and user-friendly way.

Project duration

May 2022 till April 2024

Web

Website: www.ejo4youth.eu

Project Partners

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Turkish National Agency. Neither the European Union nor Turkish National Agency can be held responsible for them.

Probing our fortune

Career Preparedness and Life Navigation with Folktales

In this project we will use the Folk Tale work method to develop sets of self-help and coaching / training tools for young people and their advisers and coaches to think through their choices and motivation to  design their next life and career steps.

Folk tales are a way of narrative therapy. The stories – and the analysis of them – can support learning from the situations portrayed, the behaviour of the characters and the ways of solving problems. Folk tales teach us of trial and error and of not giving up, even when it’s hard. These stories can influence the way we live, and the way we think. Using folk tales from different countries also provides a good opportunity for increasing cultural awareness.

… So we can all become queens and kings of our own lives, and live happily ever after….

The main objectives are to

  • improve the preparedness of young people for career and life choices by developing their self-reflection, their resilience as well as to encourage them to make active decisions and to take their life and career planning into their own hands;
  • to increase the acceptance of cultural diversities and to develop positive attitudes towards sustainability.

Main results are:

  • Framework and Screening Tool on Carrier Preparedness for counsellors
  • Six Folk Tale Boxes, containing tools for self-help and counsellor work, such as the analysis of the tales, cards on the scenes of the tales and assessment questions for self-help and coaching, instructions for coaching on the specific tales, and also group work schedule and tools to work with the tale in youth groups.
  • Training curriculum for youth workers and counsellors including modules for young people.

Project duration

March 2022 – September 2024

Web

https://www.youthfolktale.eu

Project partner

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

CareerBOT

Chatbot based Career Guidance

CareerBot partnership seeks to improve Digital Readiness of the Career Guidance sector by implementing CareerBot methodology and tool, facilitating blended guidance sessions and to use customized Labour Market Information (LMI) to empower marginalized job seekers. We want to put Career Guidance Practitioners at the centre and assist them – and their organisations – on the path of digitalisation so that they can advise their clients in the best possible way.

By the help of our methodology, job seekers will be able to gather relevant information before and after personal interviews, so that valuable personal services can be used efficiently. With the “CareerBot project” we propose a pilot that focuses on the role of career guidance, which became more demanding, and must be adapted more rapidly and flexibly to the changing needs of the new world of work.

The CareerBot project includes 4 main project outcomes:

  • CareerBot Content and Methodology
  • CareerBot Tool
  • Blended CareerBot training for Career Guidance Practitioner
  • Transfer Handbook for Implementation with focus on Organisational Development (OD)

In addition, a training event for Career Guidance Officers will be held in Greece and ten Multiplier Events will be organised towards the end of the project to share the learning and engage with all the relevant stakeholders to make them aware of the new CareerBot tool and its benefits.

Project duration

November 2021 to August 2024

Web

Website: careerbot.eu
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/eucareerbot

Project Partners

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

FYC

Future-proof Your Career

Career Guidance for a Modern Labour Market

Future-proof your Career aims to design, develop and implement a Future of Work Framework, focused on the identification -through a guidance process- of transversal skills which can be used to future-proof the careers of disadvantaged job seekers and enable sustainable future employment.

This forward thinking career guidance framework will provide a way of working for guidance practitioners which facilitates quality future focused career plans for job seekers already marginalized in the labour market, so as to ensure their inclusion in a technological and digitalized world of work. It will support marginalized job seekers to understand and gain awareness of key competencies which are essential employability competences for a future labour market. These key competences underpin the ability to adapt and change to the demands of a technological workplace and are important in up-skilling in initial and continuous vocational, educational and training.

The project has three main objectives

  • to enable Individuals to become aware of their own skills for the future labour market particularly in relation to communication and interpersonal skills
  • to create awareness of future workplaces, their requirements, and associated VET progression routes
  • to create a culture of training and up-skilling of guidance practitioners in a fast changing labour market

The main outcomes of the project

The FYC online platform: develop an online e-learning like platform which will, through a series of interactive questions and animations, help the individual identify their human, social and psychological capital, and their connection to the current and longer-term labour market. It will identify areas where the individual could benefit from vocational or industry specific upskilling. It will provide the individual and their guidance practitioner with a report outlining existing capabilities and make suggestions as to how these could be built upon and utilized and thus enable the individual to prepare for a labour market which is driven by automation and digitization.

FYC Training Modules for Practitioners: Development of a training module for practitioners on the future of work, the types of jobs available, their make up in terms of hard and soft skills, and the career path options available to job seekers

Project duration

October 2019 to September 2021

Project Partners

Ballymun Job Centre (Irland) – Koordination
Hafelekar Unternehmensberatung (Österreich)
METROPOLISNET (Deutschland)
CIOFS – Formazione Professionale (Italien)
Universitatea Politehnica din Bucuresti (Bulgarien)
Headway Ireland CLG (Irland)
Fundacion Tomillo (Spanien)

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.