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September 9, 2016

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Pilot program launched to help students find the jobs they want

A pilot program with courses designed to improve young people’s employability was launched yesterday with 40 students at a local vocational school.

The program, run by the employment promotion center and the youth service and rights protection office, will provide dozens of classes over the next five years for students going through secondary and higher vocational education. The aim is to promote career awareness, explore students’ interests and teach them the skills of finding a job.

The program will be expanded to cover about 30 vocational schools in the city by the end of year, and then to universities next year, said Huang He, an official of the employment promotion office.

At a trial class held yesterday at the Shanghai Public Utility School, students appeared to have enjoyed interacting on the subject with their lecturers and classmates.

“It’s interesting, rather than boring lecturing as I had expected,” said Huang Zhiwei, a student from the secondary higher vocational rail vehicles class, the first to undergo the pilot program.

Huang said he was impressed by a paper tearing game that required students to fold and tear paper according to written instructions, first without any communication with fellow students and then with interaction allowed. “When we were not allowed to communicate with each other, many of us did it the wrong way and got different final shapes,” he said. “But when we were asked to communicate, most of us got the same shape.”

In their first year in the school, students will usually have one class a week to get a better idea about what they want as well as understanding vocational advantages and disadvantages, said Ye Sha, one of the chief career mentors from Xuhui District, who helped to design the courses.

“New students at secondary vocational school are only about 15 years old and they have little sense of career planning,” she told Shanghai Daily. “So at the very beginning, we will help them to get to know themselves better and assess themselves correctly.” The classes at this period would concentrate on group interaction, such as games requiring group cooperation, Ye said.

Then over the next three years, classes would be held about once a month to help students to explore their own interests and cultivate their soft skills, such as confidence, communication abilities, self-control, and learning to overcome frustration, as well as the skills of decision making. Ye said as young students were easily influenced by their parents in career choices, parents would be invited to the program at least once a year.

Final-year students will concentrate on practical skills, such as tips on resume writing, information seeking, interview technique, employment contracts and internship.

Wang Zhiwei, headmaster of the school, said that career education organized just by the education authorities had not been systematic enough and might not have been sufficiently up to date. “I’m confident that the program will help our students to seek better jobs and have better career planning throughout their life.”

Such courses were mainly taught by teachers and career mentors at the employment promotion center, but now people from other fields would be invited to make the program more comprehensive, said Huang. “We’ve just signed a cooperation contract with 51 state-owned enterprises in Shanghai to help them with recruitment. So we are now trying to invite them to provide training experts and facilities to support the program.”


 

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