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Employee disconnection in a digital age

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A recent study by Wozedu, a social network which aims to connect young people and employers, demonstrates what outwardly appear to be concerning statistics.

According to the study, less than a fifth (19 percent) of young people are able to find the career information they need online, and 80 percent of employers are yet to successfully find candidates by working with places of education. This information is more than a little worrying as a third-year student soon to be embarking on my first steps into the ‘real world’.  Delve deeper, however, and these statistics are not quite as terrifying.

Finding career information

So less than a fifth of young people can find information online, well, that is quite shocking in the digital age we live in. Consider though, that even without opening an Internet Explorer page, a student at school or at university could access a careers support team as part of their educational establishment, a young person seeking work could get advice from the Job Centre and there are numerous job advertisements in newspapers both locally and nationally. We are becoming increasingly reliant on the internet to give us the information we need, but in fact the process of gaining employment is often called ‘job hunting’ for a reason. The best jobs do not go to those who expect to be offered them.

Employers, education and standing on our own two feet

On that note, let’s turn to educational establishments. According to Wozedu’s statistics, employers are not making good use of schools and universities to fill vacancies. As a university student, I am regularly invited to careers fairs with hundreds of employers in attendance, but obviously not every employer in existence. Not only would that be an organisational nightmare of logistics, but it also undermines the kind of diversity we want in our society. Some employers don’t want to employ university students, some only want students with A Levels. Perhaps 80 percent of employers are not using educational establishments to find employees because your education is only half of the story.

So what does this mean?

It means that finding a career, even a simply part-time job, is never easy. We need to make ourselves aware of careers information that cannot be found easily online, because there are so many other ways of gaining information. Finally, we need to realise that once we take our first steps into finding careers, we cannot rely on other people to choose our paths for us!

Do you think there is an employee disconnection in a digital age? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo: photosteve101 / Flickr

Harley RyleyEmployee disconnection in a digital age

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