My name is Papakostas Chrysovalantis, I’m an ecomomist and responsible for the promotion of employment for the Body “Community Support Center of the Minicipality of Karditsa”
What is the profile of unemployed youth?
The center is mostly supporting vulnerable groups, the young 18-29 that come to the Center, are usually youth that haven’t finished a university level institution, commonly and mostly those that have finished the 12year education or have been attended a vocation school.
The main characteristic is that they lack professional qualifications, but the ones that have vocational training are specialized. Besides those 2 categories, there are the youth with high professional qualifications, the come from universities and are the youth have left the city for studies and returned to find their first job.
What are the main barriers of young people to get a job?
The main obstacle is the lack of openings for employment and furthermore the new jobs that can provide a quality environment. Thus, the youth that have standards and their goal is to find a high standard working environment, as well as payment, cannot find it, so they look for work out of the region. The other obstacle is the youth that have low qualifications, cannot find a job, because of that.
As we mentioned, the supply is the problem as well as the fact that the existing openings are poorly communicated to the public in order to meet the demand.
How can young people get access to jobs?
Usually, young people use job advertisements, friends and family in the area, unfortunately they use less the social media and the internet. The “way out” is that the youth with lower qualifications should be supported more and educated how to use the internet, in order to find the offered working places.
In newspapers, internet, social media, our Organisation OAED, their social circle and friends and family.
How can different actors cooperate to make it possible?
As I mentioned before, the supply of work and the places should be more visible to the public through the organizations/structures. So, there should be a networking between the organisations and all that work towards the promotion of employment. Many times, we do not know the vacancies that the other organizations are releasing, either from the public or the private sector, so there should be a better distributionog the information together with the networking of the organisations.
