One Page Summary

We want to connect young people in search of career guidance with professionals from various backgrounds by (1) providing a participative social network adapted to the current modes of communication of young people and by (2) enabling Innesta to leverage the social network to organise impacting meetings between youngsters and professionals.

We develop a social network allowing any young person to interact with professionals who are willing to share their experience and expertise and to help them in their questioning. This social network is oriented around a gallery of professionals who present in writing or video their profession through a typical day, their career and their training. The user (youngster) can access the profiles using a search engine based on classic entries (job name, sector, skill, etc.) or on elements more in connection with the life experience beyond the job description such as the centres of interest. The goal is to stimulate the navigation of young people through different professional profiles even when they are lacking in inspiration and do not know what to look for precisely.

The social network facilitates the organization of in-person or virtual meetings to inspire students and youngsters and stimulate their motivation, and has also the means to expand each student's network beyond the family and school spheres and to help break the socio-economic partitioning. In this way professionals are also getting to know the talent in the region. The social network also enables companies to post challenges for local youngsters to and involve them in the problem solving to strengthen interactions and stimulate innovation. We experienced that this is an effective approach to adapt businesses culture and ways of working to youngsters’ expectations.

Eventually we want to change the way we look at career information by “crowdsourcing” the diversity of careers that exist at local level and to make a stronger link between personal interests and career in order to change the way young people think about their future. We have the ambition to create local communities of organisations working in the field of career orientation to pool resources, scale quickly and increase our common outreach.

Our solution relies on voluntary contribution of professional that are willing to share their experience and expertise with young people. One direct implication is the need to build on existing inter generational communities such as school alumni groups, parent associations, business clubs or other local communities and develop our unique value proposition to them to quickly get traction on the platform. On top of the individual users, Backstage.Network needs to involve companies and public organisations that want to promote under-considered or less regarded careers and vocational paths.

The JOF Foundation will also be involved on the platform to guide and stimulate local companies to interact with youngsters. JOF has created a networking approach amongst (unemployed) youngsters, students, refugees, professionals from governmental and business organizations. They are experienced in working with and for youngsters and connecting them to professionals in the work field by organizing workshops and masterclasses from those professionals, and will support Innesta in the operational effort of building their local network.

The JOF Foundation is already using Backstage and is working with an innovative method for connecting youngsters to professionals since 2 years now. They tested and evaluated the method. Over 150 youngsters are engaged in projects of the JOF Foundation. These group of youngsters consist out of refugees, students of different levels and disciplines, scholars, working and unemployed youngsters. They actively work together within projects and visit professionals during these projects. The professionals give Masterclasses and Workshops about their work and expertise to groups of youngsters. They also invite the youngsters to give feedback upon their business or work. The professionals for instance are business owners, governmental staff, project managers and so on.

Because this way of working works for both the youngsters and the professionals it is scalable and adoptable to other cities and regions. Mostly the professionals like to contribute to the development of youngsters and the youngsters want to learn from the professionals if you create the right atmosphere. This method and way of working could be copied anywhere. The Backstage offers an online platform to continue this way of working in the online setting. In this way, the networking can continue both online and offline. By implementing this online and offline method your organization can enhance innovation within several companies and is contributing to the network of young talent in the region. Which will automatically lead to a reduction of the brain drain.