You may have an educational qualification, but unless you are skilled at something, getting a job will not be easy. With the increasing number of educated unemployed youth, it has become all the more necessary to acquire special skills. In an effort to sharpen the skills of different candidates, Rachit Jain launched Youth4work.
Speaking about the job scenario in India, he says, “It doesn’t look good; the first quarter of 2019 witnessed an unemployment rate exceeding six per cent... It all comes down to one thing, that is, the prevailing subpar education system in India.”
Passing out of schools and colleges unequipped with the required skills, this population struggles the most in the diminishing job market. This leads to worsening unemployment rate. The very first step to build a good career is knowledge. One must understand how s/he is different from others. “Start developing skills that are required to get to the top, choose the stream of education which interests you, and not because everybody else is pursuing it,” says Jain, the founder and CEO of Youth4work.
“Being flexible and adaptable is often an overlooked skill by both the interviewer and the interviewee. Technologies keep changing and not keeping pace with the transition will make you obsolete. The right combination of people skills matched with precision in practical application is the need of the hour,” he adds.
Telling us how Youth4work differs from other online job portals, Jain says, “Ours is a skill-enhancing tool first and then a job site. We prepare youngsters by helping them identify and make the right career decisions by equipping them with the required skills. They have mock tests, practice tests and skill-based tests. The website’s AI model allows to evaluate user performances in the most optimal manner and this, in turn, helps the participants.”
Suggesting youngsters how to improve their skills, he says, “First, identify what skills you lack or want to acquire. Evaluate how it will benefit you and once you are certain, then there are many free skill-enhancing platforms where you can take adaptive mock tests to improve.”
Youth4work provides professional guidance and counselling. Users can put forward their queries by using chats and work emails (an inbuilt feature of the website) and the experts will get back to them promptly. “There are jobs out there but they are mostly skill-based and a skilled workforce is limited in all sectors like production, agriculture, construction etc. To stand out, one must possess and master skills that are required,” says Jain who left his job at Mahindra to build this platform.
“Initially, I had trouble finding people who shared the same vision as mine and who genuinely believed in the cause. It took time finding investors who cared about the youth. Once funding was taken care of, the next big challenge was hiring people who would help me achieve my goals,” says Jain.
In hindsight, lack of funds helped them immensely in figuring out what potential users actually want. They built the product to serve their needs rather than to serve the investor/ business plan. They experimented and failed many times. In the end, however, they developed a product that would help the youth in India and abroad decide their career choices, right from college to six years of work experience.
“We are the only platform that starts the support right from finding a college/ institute to getting the dream job. Youth4work.com is a ‘people’s platform’ which empowers the youth to assess themselves, improve their talents and showcase themselves for their talents and professional achievements. We are building ‘Human Tech’ which gathers intelligence and deep insights on each and every member. We help individuals assess their innate abilities, improve their skills and then connect them to the right employers. We are concentrating on skillset whereas our competitors are working on numbers. This approach has also impacted the engagement of Tier I and Tier II candidates who are not able to cope up with the current skills required in the market,” concludes Jain.