Targeting youth unemployment through IT training
Youth unemployment, lack of 4IR skills and South Africa’s transformation agenda are all critical issues tackled effectively by Impactful Specialist Solutions’ Career Campus.
In a digitally transforming world where technology is evolving increasingly rapidly, it is more crucial than ever to keep your employees’ skills up to date and relevant. At the same time, South Africa, in particular, is faced with a youth unemployment challenge that can only be solved through critical skills training and work experience.
The entire concept of learning and training has undergone a fundamental shift in recent times and in this rapidly evolving environment – populated with new technologies, tools, processes and approaches – Impactful Specialist Solutions is perfectly positioned to assist both people and organisations to both understand this shift and to assist in the journey towards a better way of learning.
For young adults, notes Alwyn van der Linde, Business Development Specialist at Impactful Specialist Solutions, there are numerous formal learning options – in the form of colleges, universities and other learning institutions – which enable people to learn skills that can assist in securing employment. Modern organisations seek employees with critical skills and who are considered to be work-ready, a criteria many graduates are unable to meet.
Impactful Specialist Solutions’ Career Campus is positioned to play a leading role in changing this status quo. Career Campus focuses on four key areas: youth development, helping businesses to meet SA’s transformation agenda, impacting the unemployment crisis and ensuring that both the youth entering employment and existing staff have the skills that are relevant for the current digital market.
“Since the key role is helping youngsters get a foot in the door employment-wise, we specialise in providing learnerships and work readiness skills, to afford them the best possible opportunity to ultimately become gainfully employed."
“We also offer soft skills training, as these skills are just as critical in the workplace as an ICT qualification. We refer to these as ‘power skills’ and view them to be as crucial as technical skills, because these are the skills one requires to interact effectively with other people in the organisation. Such talents encompass both human skills – like personal presentation, communication training and more – as well as skills to help them become more digital-savvy, such as the correct way to write an email, or how to conduct yourself during a Teams meeting.”
The right skills for the right client
One challenge faced by the youth is that employment is harder to find if you do not have an in-demand skill-set. Van der Linde suggests. Therefore, Impactful Specialist Solutions focuses on offering them the opportunity to learn a required skill or gain a qualification that can be combined with an international certification.
“So, for example, if someone chooses to become a Cybersecurity Specialist, we can help them learn the skill, secure a level of work experience through an internship, and even improve this with an international certification, which opens up the possibility of employment in other parts of the globe as well.”
Apart from its focus on the unemployed youth, Career Campus also assists in upskilling and finding employment for people with disabilities. This allows companies to not only hire people with the necessary skills, but also to address their inclusion and transformation agendas.
“Depending on client requirements, we can offer some, or all, of the following: recruitment and selection, training and assessments, learner support and mentoring, onboarding and orientation, workplace portfolio management and even administration and payroll management.”
“We consider the individual client’s requirements, and can then customise a specific programme for them which will deliver the skills they need. Options range from a classroom learning environment, virtual, to a combination of the two. For those wanting self-study, we have a bouquet of online content, whilst in-app coaching is available to existing employees receiving training to teach them how to utilise specific technologies that the company has implemented. We can deliver the complete solution as a managed service,” he points out.
The ultimate goal is to allow individual learners to progress at their own pace, and ultimately to provide them with an experience that promotes learning.
Making SA a better place
Van der Linde notes that Impactful Specialist Solutions offers several value propositions, including the options to sell or make available technologies to assist individuals in automating the learning and development process, or in using technology to undertake the learning journey. These are also appropriate for already employed people who need to upgrade their certifications.
"Moving forward, Career Campus will continue to play a critical role in helping the country to address both the unemployment challenge and the need to constantly upgrade technology skills.”
While the bottom line is important, he continues, the key aim is to have the kind of social impact that will make South Africa a better place, and make it more competitive globally, from a national skills repository perspective.
“We see ourselves as the bridge between the youth that desperately require skills and jobs, and the customers who require new 4IR skills and also want to be good corporate citizens who properly address compliance and inclusion. Our offering is completely scalable - we have the resources and capability to deliver a large volume of skills and qualifications as we move forward.”
“We believe that by providing access to such skills, we can play a significant role in the future of the continent. After all, the majority of Africa’s population is young, in stark contrast to most of the developed world. Therefore, you could say Africa hosts the future workforce of the world – particularly as remote work is now a feasible proposition. Impactful Specialist Solutions is positioned to ensure that our youth have the relevant technology skills and qualifications to be able to fulfil this role for the rest of the world,” concludes Van der Linde.
Alwyn van der Linde
Business Development Executive
