Personal Brand Development For All Erasmus Project

Project Title

Personal Brand Development For All

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

BACKGROUND
According to Cedefop, European job market has a skills mismatch problem. Employers confront difficulties in recruiting people with the skills they need, and job seekers struggle to find a job relative to their knowledge and skills. On one of its surveys, is highlighted that this is a result of job seekers poor career choices. The poor career choices may be an output of someone’s difficulty to define the job market suitable for them or even more to believe that they don’t have the right skills for apply in another job. In addition to this, unemployment levels in EU remain high, and that deteriorates even more the situation. As the result of the unemployment rates and the skills mismatch, the labour market has become very competitive and in combination with the with rise of social media and thus the increasing of everyone’s visibility, job seekers face difficulty not only to find a job relative to their skills and knowledge, but also to differentiate themselves from competitors in job market.

OBJECTIVE
The main objective of the project is to provide adults who are searching for a job, or they are in need of a new one, them with the necessary skills for building and maintaining their personal brand, a method which can be used for fostering their employability. This will be accomplished by the creation an online interactive tool, which will offer learners a personalized training pathway regarding the development of personal brand.

PARTICIPANTS
The partnership comprises of one NGO active in the field of labour market issues, two companies active in ICT-enabled E&T and knowledge dissemination, one consulting organisation specialising in adult education and two training centres.

ACTIVITIES
– Identify the key soft skills per sector by directly interacting with at least 200 recruiters, HR departments, career counsellors, job agencies and capture their views
– Classify soft skills classified in terms of their impact on employability of entry level applicants
– Design highly efficient questionnaires capable of identifying personal key traits
– Determine and categorise the learners based on their personal key traits
– Elaborate personalised strategies capable of leading the target groups to the desired situation
– Break down the elaborated strategies to distinct goals to be attained
– Develop bit sized units to support the attainment of each goal by the learners seeking to materialise their strategy.
– Design a skills achievement and recognition framework based on the principles of the Open Badges movement (openbadges.org).
– Conceptualise the different types of interactions between the Genie and learners during the profiling phase in which the Genie will apply the evaluation instruments to the learners to determine their key traits with respect to the questionnaire that has been developed.
– Map the personal traits to personalized enhancement strategies for the Genie to classify the user to one of the categories of learners based on its profiling outcome
– Develop the Genie iteratively, in 3 iterations: First iteration will serve as an internal test release of the Genie in English. Based on the outcome, the 2nd iteration will be a the pilot release in all languages. Following the execution of the pilot exercises, the third release will be the final project release covering key findings from the pilots
– Organise pilot activities in the form of hands on exercises during which participants will have the opportunity to develop their own strategies guided by the Personal Branding Genie
– Set up the PBRAND4ALL Academy virtual space to support the growth of the PBRAND4ALL network of adopters and practitioners
– Promote the Academy and the projects outcomes through dedicated multiplier events

METHODOLOGY
An iterative methodology: three versions of the Personal Branding Genie tool are produced, one in each iteration. After each iteration the results are tested/validated and based on the conclusions the next iteration is planned. The iterative methodology applied is also facilitating the sustainability of the outputs through the incorporation of sustainability requirements at the design phase of the project outputs.

RESULTS
-Personal Branding Competences Framework
-Personal Branding Genie
-PBRAND4ALL Academy

TARGET GROUP
Direct beneficiaries: unemployed adults or adults in need of a new career, vulnerable individuals (i.e. unemployed, disadvantaged), adult coaches/trainers
Indirect beneficiaries: Recruiters, employers, HR departments, job counsellors, job agencies

IMPACT/LONG TERM BENEFITS
-Job seekers become visible and competitive in job market
– Low-skilled adults strengthen their position in labour market
-Trainers gain new tools and learning methodologies for integrating in their own practices
-Partners organisations to benefit from products created by the project and from new contacts and networks that started thanks to participation in the project
-Decrease of skills mismatch in labour market

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 223275 Eur

Project Coordinator

CIVIC COMPUTING LIMITED & Country: UK

Project Partners

• POLITEKNIKA IKASTEGIA TXORIERRI S.COOP
• E-business Academy
• ASSERTED KNOWLEDGE OMORRYTHMOS ETAIREIA
• Konszenzus Alapítvány Budapesti Szervezete
• UPI – ljudska univerza Zalec