@JOB

Since 2015, one of the worst problems faced by Brazilian society is the high rate of unemployment. Today, as numbers from the first semester of 2019, it reaches to 12,7% of the population. So, the @JOB application was proposed and created, focusing the difficulties for people to look for jobs, inefficient governmental systems and lack of information. It’s an application which looks to connect those who need to look for a job to entrepreneurs in a dynamic and more effective way. By the @JOB usage, we intend to change the reality of the unemployed, optimizing the way a job search is done in our country. Beyond that, @JOB is not restricted to the Brazilian context, as the application core was designed allowing it to be adopted in any part of the world, as unemployment is a global problem, reaching more than 172 million people in the world, according to ILO. 

In the period of 2010 to 2015, Brazilian economy showed a decrease for unemployment rates, because of factors such as increase in internal market consumption and investments on infrastructure projects. However, since 2015, commodities crisis (agribusiness and natural resources with low aggregate value, although with expressive global consumption), associated to political instability, resulted in a decrease of foreign investments. This situation contributed to an increase of unemployment, reaching nowadays the level of 12,7% of Brazilian economically active population. This number approaches specifically the conjunctural unemployment related to cyclic crisis and the structural unemployment, related to automation, replacing human workers by machines, resulting in decurrent loss of economic power for population. Based on formal statistics, it is possible to define that the most affected were the young potential workers, aging from 18 to 24-years-old, among social minorities.

According to numbers from national governmental sources, in Brazil, April 2019, remarkably IBGE´s (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) PNAD (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios), this workforce was not completely allocated, reaching a rate of 25%.

Gráfico PNAD

Brazilian unemployment crisis hit mainly the middle-class families, where the monthly average incomes range from R$300,00 to R$1000,00 (expressed in Brazilian Reals, national currency) where just 4% of people owns a third-level, high school diploma. These citizens are affected by the structural unemployment, where technology can replace the human workforce. The young people who can now compete in the market, face difficulties also due to skills demanded for their first contract. 

@Job aims to promote a contact between those seeking for a job and entrepreneurs who need skilled workers. As a mean of connection, @Job enables the creation of a project definition, where project owners can select those interested to work in that specific project, according to demanded and wished skills and characteristics. 

In an initial phase, we are simulating all the intended operation through open questionnaires, where some evidences can be collected to improve our designed way to operate. Moreover, a first level of engagement perception can be developed for those who are answering these questions, improving overall conditions on proposing a better solution with @Job.

The @JOB application was conceived to connect unemployed qualified people to corporations which are contracting, through two virtual platforms: one free applicative and a monthly paid website, which will be used by single professionals and companies, respectively. This way, individual users register in the platform using the application, what can be easier if this user has a LinkedIn account, enabling his or her data migration to @JOB, composing a virtual curriculum vitae which, further, can be directly sent to interested companies, for future contacts and possible job interviews, also appointed through the platform.

Registered professionals also will be able to insert details about their professional skills, abilities and characteristic, along with preferences and intended job profile, aligning with information provided by companies, in a way to promote a connection with companies and projects closer to professionals. This proposal could save time and money for professionals and potential contractors, diminishing displacements, unnecessary trips and associated usage of transportation and other resources, optimizing the contracting process.

Additional benefits of @JOB for a professional, such as a specific area to search for internships, gratuity for professional admission tests, such as psychotechnics, which could be displaced in the user´s profile with periodic update (for example with time stamp of validity, as one year) will be implemented. Also, a feed presenting professionalizing areas with corporative images and other data referring companies and sectors, along with feedback from actual and former company´s employees is possible, bringing more information regarding the level of working quality for those environments.

However, the way companies will use the site will be somewhat disparate, since they will use it to confirm the scheduled interviews, analyze the resumes sent and proposals for the internship area, in addition to searching for qualified professionals, data on them (which have already been verified by @JOB) and even recruit them, if they exceed expectations. Thus, it is noticeable that the application will work as a two-way street so that users are benefited, have the same rights and the same technology that has already excluded and still excludes, will now be used to include.

The @JOB adds more capabilities than other similar programs in the market, as it applies tools never adopted before, such as looking the criminal files of the candidate, improving the guarantee offer to contractors in hiring people without any previous crime punishment.

Another expressive competitive differential presented by @JOB project is the offer of a free psychotechnics exam, which can be updated and revalidated after one year, which can be submitted to the professional as he registers in the platform, adding the result to his or her virtual CV, maintained by the application. This will enable an interesting resource for contractors, who will save money for this test application just for admission process who, will this way, improve more his or her CV, increasing working opportunities.

@JOB will implement, this way, a different view for each user, although keeping the same database structure to store user´s profile data, adapting the content to each company´s needs with the addition of users’ comments regarding each contracting company. The enterprises who are evaluated with low scores can be analyzed and, if it is the case, banned from the application base.

Another feature of @JOB is the specific area for internship programs, to answer the needs of youngsters for working opportunities, aiming to solve the problem of internship unavailability. 

Phenomena such as globalization, artificial intelligence and technologic advances are the main characteristics of the actual third industrial revolution. This process resulted in increase of automation in the workplaces, raise of unemployment rates and, mainly, the conjunctural unemployment, which relates exactly what services were completely replaced by machinery. @JOB Project proposes an application which will interconnect employment opportunities to those who are looking for jobs. Application back-end, its technological platform, will be composed by programs developed from algorithms which will analyze user´s and companies´ data, enabling better conditions to guide the job search with real opportunities.

One supporting feature of @JOB application will allow to concentrate, through a positioning system, offers and users in a closer geographical area, resulting in negotiations which will reduce impacts on workers transportation. This will be implemented using algorithms which will compare address data supplied to transportation systems of each region, adapting it to each profile. Beyond that, this data will be stored in a “cloud” storing service, guaranteeing to each user the ability to edit his or her information to keep their profiles updated.

The work is not restricted to only one way of subsistence and viability of consumption, this because it provides to each individual unique experiences and of  extreme importance for the society, that is, it makes possible the socialization. The debates and discussions promoted in the workplaces are forms of social integration, since they are places of exercise of citizenship. Thus, the more 172 million unemployed, according to ILO – International Labor Organization, in 2018, are deprived of such purpose and therefore alien and excluded from society.

Based on this problem, the @JOB project presented in this medium aims, through technology, to facilitate and stimulate the search for jobs in different regions of the world in order to reduce the time for waiting and the consequences provided by the withdrawal from the labor market. With this, those who are  distant from the scenarios of social discussion and construction of critical thinking due to the difficulty in the search for employment will have an opportunity to re-enter these environments. Therefore, this project will promote the inclusion and expansion of social participation, and also provides opportunities for the exercise of citizenship, which is one of the topics addressed by solve 2019: community-driven innovation.

Hodiernously our project isn’t serving any individual, due to the fact that it’s in initial phase, but in one year, keeping in mind the data made available by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) that Brazil in the second half of 2019 have approximately 210.1 million inhabitants, of which 28 million are unemployed and only 1.4 million have complete higher education, it’s expected that the @JOB app is operating on a national scale, working to reduce this gigantic number of inactive citizens.

In addition, the interns also constitute a public that the @JOB app wants to reach and, therefore, it is known that in the first quarter of 2019 there were 576,983 apprentices and only 25% of them were hired. Thus, it’s with this in mind, that next year the app aims to significantly increase this level of hiring, so that it’s consistent with the number of interns in Brazil.

However, for the next five years, the goals are more ambitious, since it is expected that the @JOB app has been consolidated in the national territory and is ready for the international scope, helping countries with unemployment at an emergency level, such as Venezuela which, in 2016, already had 1,035,238 unemployed and this number continues to increase every day. Consequently, even countries that haven’t a serious rate of unemployment, such as the United States (currently approximately 6000 inactive) will receive help of the app to solve this unstable problem, so in the future it doesn't become a threat. 

The @JOB application was conceived aiming to change the life of 13 million of Brazilian skilled workers nowadays unemployed that, in this technology age, find themselves being replaced by machines, without a financial condition correspondent to their scholar level. It implies also in their lack of contribution to familiar context, also for national economy since 2014, living a financial-political financial crisis.

Thus, it’s reliable that there are other countries in a critical period of their economies, such as South Africa, Congo, Venezuela, etc. Therefore, the main goal for the following year is to be able to enable the @JOB and see it improving the lives of the inactives on a national scale and spreading hope that has been long forgotten and that is cardinal in the struggle for a better quality of life. Therefore, another goal for next year are the constant updates that we’ll make, aiming to promote a gradual improvement in the life of the user, whether physical or legal. 

Therefore, during the proposed five years, we hope that @JOB has been effective for the excluded society that it aims to serve, providing new investments to reach a world level, since the problem about unemployment isn’t restricted only to Brazil and it’d be rewarding to promote changes in the lives of individuals from other places and cultures that, in an unwary look seem to be divergent, but if we analyze carefully we see the existence of a similar problem that many lives have damaged.

At first, the main barriers that hinder the development of goals about @JOB revolve around, mainly, the monetary scarcity presented by two high school students who do not have the primary part to develop an application capable of improving what the app  propose. Given this, another obstacle we would face would be discrimination on the part of the population due to the efficiency of applications that, in the 21st century, still receive bombings from conservatives who believe that the only way to get a job is to go wandering around the city from door to door, but we already know that this is the least practical way to get what you want today. 

Thus, another obstacle during the next year would be to arouse the interest of a wide audience and to be able to show you that we offer new functions than only those already made available by other similar applications. In this way, @JOB will require daily monitoring and, during the five years that have passed, we will find it difficult to adjust to changes in society and to reconcile the management of the app with studies. Thus, we must also be attentive about the cultures of other countries to which we intend to extend the reach of our app during the next few years, since our only intention is to help the economy and the quality of life of citizens and not lack respect or somehow break some law that degrades the morals of others. 

Initially, @JOB project will be implemented in Brazil, as those barriers correspond to the actual scenario faced by Brazilian society, along with difficulties on the usage of employment applications.

Facing this challenge, we will invest in partnerships with digital influencers and local universities, private and public, as @JOB proposal also encompasses internship programs, who will also communicate about our application, exposing its characteristics and benefits, demystifying social pre-existent precepts. As we are still in the conceptual phase, we do not have budget resources to supply the platform development, maintenance and application sharing. This way, in parallel with the Solve Challenges 2019 proposition, we will also attempt a crowdfunding initiative to get financial amounts which allow this project feasibility.

A step towards the next five years, as we intend to expand this project for other countries, correspond to cultural aspects. Thinking about it, we will work with our consular departments, to adequate our actions with support of capacitated authorities. Thinking for long-term, we will have to adjust our academic responsibilities, as we will be in one University in the next year, to the project management. This way, we have the option to hire a technical team to help us to manage @JOB project, enabling our users to be served continuously.

For the last two years, only two creators of this project have been working and dedicating themselves daily to the idealization of the app in a part-time period, in order for to reach as many people as possible. Thus, there are no other members in the team, because the app is still in the initial conceptual phase.

We, the creators of @JOB, although we do not have a very high academic qualification at college level, believe that we are able to develop our project, since we are inserted in the age group that is most lost in the gap between job vacancies and contracting companies and the fact that we are young only helps us in receiving information and changes that need to be made on a social scale. Thus, in our school we are constantly faced with the most frequent doubts and apprehensions of other young people who do not know what the future holds and how they can change the "natural" flow of the world. Thus, as we know about the insecurities of many of our likely users, it is easier to create a visionary application that is able to solve all their apprehensions. Another competitive differential that makes us qualified to develop @JOB is that, throughout our high school period, we had entrepreneurship and career coaching classes that, in turn, were able to increase our judgment to understand the needs of disparate societies. Thus, @JOB, primarily, went through a startapps program developed by one of the largest social organizations in the world, Junior Achievement and, at the end of this project, won the award in second place

The @JOB project works from a subscription model in which companies and institutions interested in taking advantage of the data provided by the normal  users will pay a monthly fee for this purpose . However, those who intend to find an occupation may expose themselves in order to inform their professional experience and academic training free of fee . The target audience of such a venture are the group of unemployed people around the world that currently exceeds 100 million people according to the ILO in a survey of 2018, since the goal is to start work in Brazil and then expand to other regions of the globe. 

Considering that the unemployed category encompasses different specifications and that the interns are the ones most affected by the unemployment crisis in such a way that in Brazil only 10% are hired, because they have no preference at the time of hiring, this subgroup will also be approached by @JOB through a subdivision within the system for this type of employment. Within the platform, users will have access to an enormous informations about the labor market .In this way, they will be able to continue their search for a job and learn how to increase their chances of finding a job. This tool enables the social reinsertion of those previously unemployed and the dynamization of the labor market. 

Bearing in mind that we are only high school students and that we are seeking to get into college as a way to broaden our range of opportunities and contacts, at the moment the most advantageous option we have to get a sponsorship to develop our app is through Crowdfunding, a method widely used by emerging startups around the globe, such as Youtube and Wikipedia.

Given this, such method makes use of the same internet that has already prevented and widened the social gap between people and their dreams, as a way to help innovative projects leave their initial phase and finally reach their full potential, helping large masses and connecting them more each day that passes.  

Thus, this strategy basically consists of collective financing intrinsically dependent on the collaboration of a group of people who will invest capital, through an online platform, aspiring to start a company that will serve society and not just a predetermined group.

Due to social inequalities found in Brazil nowadays, it is possible to observe the growth of unemployed queues for job interviews, along with sub-employment growth, producing a scenario of social instability. 

Witnessing this situation, we decided to develop the @JOB proposal, which aims to develop and dynamize job search in Brasil and, in the future, in other countries. 

Financial and technical constraints, although, impede us to follow with this project. This way, we here present our proposal to Solve Challenges 2019, as an attempt to obtain financial resources, along with the technologic repertoire offered by MIT in the case of we are awarded with this concession. This will allow us to dedicate to the project, developing the steps for the application build, as to have access to technologies out of our domain. We can, by the @JOB construction, change the reality of Brazilian workers, unemployed in this moment, as they are facing also difficulties to look and apply for a job. 

Moreover, as students, of pre-undergraduate level, as we propose one solution to compete in the Solve Challenges 2019 program, we also perceive the values focused by MIT and compose additional experiences, usually out of our social context, perceiving and understanding social and environmental projects in a better way, as they face restrictions which limit human societies development.

To serve its objectives, @JOB will need to develop a profile of each one of its users, both for professionals and for companies. A partnership with Google will allow us a great improvement, as its search system is analogous to the intended mechanism to be adopted by the @JOB project. It is based on the internet tracking system, which recovers information about the user, the “spider”, where all data which is encountered will serve to improve perceptions and learnings about each user, implicating in better conditions to find him or her. As the program encompasses students who intend to reach internships, we also intend to became University partners, starting from Brazilian ones – UFMG, USP, UNICAMP, among many others. We have also interest to work with other universities as partners around the world, as CALTECH, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, MIT, as our proposal aims to attend different countries.

Unemployment is phenomenon which affects various countries and regions of the world, in variable proportions. In Brazil, where we intend to implement our project initially, this situation worsened the quality of life of an expressive part of the population, mainly of social minorities, who usually work in jobs that are being replaced by machines. Considering this fact, @JOB aims, by connecting job seekers and companies, to improve this scenario. We aim to dynamize the job search, implicating also in inactivity time, contributing for improvements in quality of life and social mobility.

This last fact can be affirmed when we define a platform which aims to promote more chances for stigmatized populations to emerge and, through good professional offers and work, occupy segments which were segregated before. Moreover, thinking about social minorities who do not have good internet access and financial difficulties, as @JOB will have resources and features which can be accessed for free, improve the platform offer, for example, for those who will access from lan-houses. In addition, such mechanisms will be implemented in other countries that go through this scenario increasing the number of people served and improving the reality in these locations.

With this, the award would help us to make all these anceials a reality and thus contribute to our society.

According to IBGE´s (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística), between 2005 and 2015, Brazil, where the project will be implemented initially, faced the growth of 1,1 million familiar groups lead by women. This same Institution shows, with 2018 numbers, that 56,9% of these families lived under the poverty limit and an expressive part of this number resulted from the economy crisis and unemployment lived by the country. The lack of perspectives produced by these restrictions pose an additional problem for women to be hired for jobs. 

With these facts in mind, @JOB, will make it easier for women to connect to a job offer, allowing the interested professional to know a bit more about the companies´ characteristics, as their own workers can register their personal evaluation, this way reducing a biased relationship. Thinking about these women who cannot access internet due to those restrictions, this platform could be accessed by other ways, as from lan-houses, integrating these social groups to numberless opportunities, as the registers are free for any citizen. Positioning and localization resources will also allow better conditions for women in all the world to reach a job offer.