(Un-)Employed in Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

(Un-)Employed in Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

Lots of countries in Europe are suffering from a high rate of youth unemployment. This leads – combined with the freedom of settlement guaranteed by the EU – to lots of well-educated young people searching a job in another country than their home. After some time lots of these young people come back frustrated to their home country because they cannot find a job or they cannot tackle the different cultural attitudes towards work and getting dismissed.

Aim of the project

For a successful job application in a European country the students need to have knowledge about specific differences e.g. in the application process, the documents required (application, CV), the procedures of a job interview or assessment centres or the structure of the respective labour market. If successfully hired, the new employees will experience specifics of working culture of the new working country as well. Every future employee should be aware of having to tackle another language as well as significant differences in the organisation and results of working processes etc., differences which can be intransparent and therefore potentially problematic for the employee. The curriculum of business studies gives the students basic knowledge about topics like the EU countries and globalisation in general. This Erasmus+ project also took intercultural aspects into view. Intercultural knowledge is a key competence which is neccessary to acknowledge, think, feel and act with other cultures and so come to a basic understanding about “the others”.The students learned from peers from other European countries about cultural differences in their respective countries.The aim of the project was to raise the competences of the students for the Europe-wide labor market, which includes:• applying for a job in a foreign country • being successful in a job interview in a foreign country• being aware of differences in labor law between the countries• being able to tackle with different cultural attitudes towards work• gaining an entrepreneurial view on human ressources management

Project structure

The project was done according to the guidelines of ERASMUS+ KA2. Done on a two year basis the actual project work is done on three campus meetings in Italy, UK and Germany. Each participating vocational college sent a group of six students to the campus meetings. We simulated the competition on the market both of the employees and the companies (as simulated for selling-purchasing processes in the previous project Virtual trade, real savings). Each of the participating countries was simulating two virtual companies which want to hire people. Each participating student applied for a job in the companies of the other countries. There were three campus meetings abroad which include a virtual job fair, presentations about the participating countries, labor law, country specific attitudes towards work, work on applications of the students, job interviews, assessment centres, ect. (Complete plan is in the application field G.1)

Project results

Drafts for the individual application in another language, handbooks for job interviews, presentations and handbooks about the labor law of the different countries, presentations and handbooks about cultural attitudes towards work in the different countries, material for assessment center training.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 61800 Eur

Project Coordinator

Berufskolleg Werther Brücke & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Lincoln College
• ITET “G. Tomasi di Lampedusa”