Project Description
Problem
The number of unemployed people in South Australia is quite high. South Australia has the highest rate of unemployment among all the states of Australia. One reason behind this is the problem coming from the jobs demands and supplies provided in South Australia. Sometimes, people’s skillsets do not meet the job criteria. Another reason is that a skill gap exists between professional skills and employable skills. As can be seen from most of the job advertisements; soft skills are needed but no particular methods to measure them exist. Whist universities, training centres and government agencies are providing services and degrees related to professional skills; recruiters are also looking for employable skills as well. The issue here is that while many people cannot get into the industry, recruiters find it hard to employ the right candidates. While the technologies keep changing, lacking these transferable skills will cause people soon unable to keep up with changes and switch paths.
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Who
Therefore, XTRA team comes up with an idea called Xtra Jobs which provides information about what skills are required through an interactive website and mobile application. The job seeking citizens are the target of the application. Recruiters and government agencies are users of Xtra Jobs as well.
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Solutions (Features)
1. The content of the website/app includes various types of games to assess the soft skills of the users, and record user profiles.
2. The website/app will collect and store information about users and share to some companies/employers, where related, if user opts in. Additionally, in this application, users can get the information about what skills are required for particular jobs, where they can focus on developing specific skills.
3. A report of the user’s skillset can be generated for users to attach onto their CVs.
4. A record of this information will be used by universities, recruiters and government agencies to provide services and training needed for particular groups of people based on their interests or residents of certain areas.
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How
The skills assessment method is that, for a particular skill, there will be a unit to assess the level of user’s skill, ranking from 1 – 100. Users can get additional credit or increase their level by completing training and participating in some events provided by authorised organisations. These organisations will be given the authorities only from the Government.
For example, a competitor attending GovHack will be given additional credit from the organisation on their team work, networking, communication, coding, leadership skills when they met the criteria provided by this organisation. The competitor needs to provide evidence to the organisation for the skillset if they want to get credit. GovHack will then be responsible as a referee when they are giving credits to the competitors.
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Benefits
The benefits of the application are:
• For job seekers: this is good for self-improvement, strengthening their CVs by accessing information for different opportunities services and training provided. This is a way to be job ready.
• For the employers and businesses: the application will provide them a list of skilled users and reduce the recruiting processes as there will be a way to measure the employable skills.
• For universities: skill training centres, community centres, they can provide the essential training, services for a particular group of people and areas.
• South Australia will have lower rate of unemployment. This helps reducing the applications and workloads at Centrelink.
