The employment of young people is as crucial to their survival as to their family welfare and social stability. This is a challenge for Yangpu district where many residents are immigrant, of whom mostly are young people. Over the past few years, the district has been exploring and innovating on employment services it can provide to help solve the practical problems of the job-seeking young generation.
In July 2014, the district launched the pilot project, “Young People Pre-job Training Center”, first of its kind in Shanghai, in cooperation with Shanghai Bavaria Career Consulting Company which introduces the German concept of “employment facilitation factory”. The center operates in the way of a human resource business to improve the readiness of the students and probability of securing a job.
Under the supervision of the general manager, the center provides training in organization, information, and market departments where the students are assigned according to their competence and interest. These unemployed are between 18 and 35 years old and have their registration status in Yangpu. Their education combines daily work in the department with a variety of training sessions. In this all-around training, they are expected to develop skills and attitudes and acquire knowledge for workplace. It is the center's mission to transform a person who needs a job into someone who is wanted for a job.
This model worked so well that it has been extended to eight districts in Shanghai through the promotion of the Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security (BHRSS) in 2015. It was also implemented in Shache Vocational School in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as a key employment assistance project offered by Shanghai in August 2016.
The original training center has also developed. It was moved to a facility of more than 1200 sq meters in Kongjiang Road in June 2016. Such expansion from a facility of less than 20 sq meters boosted its growth. It now offers many service programs including Practice Enterprise, dual mentorship and one-to-one mentoring which draw on as much resources as possible that a professional organization can have access to. The Yangpu district government also signed a cooperation and exchange framework agreement with the economic and educational group in Bavaria, Germany to narrow the gap between its service level and the international level. The center expanded from the human resources company that consists of job-seeking young people to a Practice Enterprise that operates in multiple fields and industries.
The Practice Enterprise operates on Europen, an online network for business activities of 7500 virtual companies in 42 countries.
The company has finance, marketing and other five departments and operates in the same organizational structure, work process, and working environment as a real company. The only difference is that its currency and the products or services are virtual. The students take turns to learn the work in each department and finally know the entire process, as well as the relationships between different procedures and rules and mechanisms of the market.
After a maximum of three months, the students have to leave the space for new students. It is usually when they simply complete the training, or their virtual company goes bankrupt, or they eventually find a job.
Attention is also paid to the psychological aspects of the young people as they develop their skills. In 2015, the center launched a “Dual Mentoring” program that accompanies job training with counseling to address some of the young people's problems, for example, reluctance to go outside and interact with people. The center outsources the work to professional organizations that provide personalized service to help the unemployed young people find their motivation. There are five Sailing Counseling Centers in Yangpu district where the young people can use the service near their home.
They can apply for the service which includes three 50-minute counseling sessions, a design that aims to achieve the best result. The service can adjust to better meet the clients' needs.
To better support the young people on their job-seeking journey, the BHRSS of Yangpu District mobilizes social resources to put together a professional, multi-discipline volunteer mentor team through promotion, recruitment, selection and training. The team members, which include HR managers, therapists, social workers, and government organ staff, start a mentorship to help the young people with their experience and resources. The initial employment rate of the total 307 students in the center is 80% so far. The mentorship program that consists of seventy volunteer mentors recruited in May 2016 and 90 unemployed young people has now helped 33 people find job or start their own business.
⁃plehasnowhelped33peoplefindjoborstarttheirownbusiness.
