JOBREADY

France is one of the 8 OECD countries where social inequalities have the greatest impact on academic performance. While young people are particularly affected by unemployment, with a rate of 17.4% (compared to 14% for the European average), low levels of social mobility and persistent social determinism are reflected in worsening inequalities at school and during professional integration.

As a result, many talented people from disadvantaged backgrounds are held back in their choices of studies, career guidance and access to employment: on average, for equal qualifications, name and origin can compel to send out 4X as many resumes just to secure an interview. 

Furthermore, as stated by the UNESCO in its publication “World Youth Skills Day 2023 - Empowering youth for a sustainable future”: “Technological advancements and shifting labour market dynamics increasingly call for agile and adaptable skillsets”. 

Yet today, the notion of soft skills is still rarely, if ever, addressed in high schools and higher education institutions. Often referred to as “21st century skills”, soft skills form a fundamental basis for an individual's personal and professional development. At a time when the lifespan of a technical skill is rapidly diminishing and requires lifelong learning, these adaptive skills are a response to new professional opportunities. In France, soft skills are a key issue in recruitment processes and employability as:

• Soft skills alone explain 20% of pay differentials at equivalent levels (CEREQ, 2019) and are the second most important selection criterion for hiring after experience (Pôle Emploi, 2018).

• 60% of recruiters consider that soft skills are more important than technical skills, and 57% look first at soft skills stated in the resume (Pôle Emploi, 2018). 

For young people from underprivileged backgrounds, soft skill recognition is a comparative advantage on the job market, highlighting the richness of their experiences. The JOBREADY program has been designed as a solution to help young people enter the workforce, while also providing tools to promote inclusive recruitment within companies.

In 2019, Article 1 launched JOBREADY, a program designed as a pathway towards professional integration for highschool and higher education students (16-25 years old). The program helps young people identify, enhance and develop the key skills that will make the difference tomorrow and strengthen their employability.

A focus is particularly given on non-academic or volunteering experiences as a way to develop soft skills. Our goal is to democratize the access to soft skills recognition for all the youth of France, regardless of their social, economic or cultural backgrounds.

JOBREADY includes a mix of digital and face-to-face activities. The success of the program relies on:

1. A digital program: 

Jobready.fr is an online platform open to all high school and higher education students that can be used independently and offers: 

• Self-assessment and certification: A chatbot and an algorithm qualify any kind of life experience through guiding questions. Every answer is matched with skills that can be assessed by a 360° evaluation (by the user, one of his/her peers and a referent of his/her choosing) and certified by an Open Badge that highlight the uniqueness of candidates' profiles.

• Pedagogical contents: Discovery of sectors / professions; optimization of applications and job search; knowledge of recruiters' expectations, promising sectors and professions; improvement of the interview pitch, initiation of the professional network.

2. A human approach:

Our workshops are run in classrooms by Article 1 employees, in pairs with volunteers from Article 1’s partner companies. They have multiple objectives: help young people with career guidance and integration; improve jobsearch techniques to open up the range of potential career options; learn how to make well-informed choices: 

• “Adapt to professional codes” on preparing for internships.

• “Discover and identify your soft skills” to make the most of internship experience as part of career path.

• "Applying for a professional career" to help students implement their plans for employment, project themselves and integrate into the professional world. In higher education, the workshop also helps students to practice applying for jobs, writing CVs and cover letters, preparing for job interviews.

To take things a step further and build bridges between young people and the world of work, JOBREADY organizes events for young people. They can project into the professional future and start building up a professional network:

• Company visits: discovery days in partner companies' offices for small groups of students, in-site meetings with employees of the company visited.

• Career workshops: meetings with professionals from various sectors in our partner companies, that share their experiences with students. Young people can also meet and discuss with recruiters.

3. A research program:

Two researchers integrated into the salaried Article 1 team are dedicated to JOBREADY and involved in the project design/impact assessment. They have developed a soft skills reference table to associate the students’ experiences with 45 skills, using the European Elene4work project as a basis.

The JOBREADY program is designed for young people (aged 16 to 25) at school or in training who need support in discovering and entering the world of work, with a focus on young people who are furthest from the notion of soft skills:

1. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds:

Article 1 offers reinforced support to young people targeted as priorities: students on scholarships and/or enrolled in a school with a low social index. Indeed, they are directly affected by social inequalities in education:

• 20% of students from disadvantaged backgrounds with good academic results do not plan to pursue higher education, compared to just 7% of students from advantaged backgrounds (PISA, 2018). 
• On average, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are 4 times more likely to leave school without a diploma (Bernard, 2012). Yet, the diploma remains crucial: non-graduates' unemployment rate is 2.7 times higher than that of individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher (INSEE, 2020).

2. Vocational students:

In France, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are overrepresented in vocational streams (55%). What’s more, ⅓ of vocational education students leave school without a diploma, and only 16% obtain a higher education diploma (CEREQ, 2022), making them more vulnerable to the risk of unemployment or precarious employment. Consequently, vocational education needs innovation and new pedagogical approaches that take into account the issue of social determinism and offer enhanced support to students.

3. The program is also useful to: 

• Young students looking to add value to their diploma;

• Young people looking for a job or civic engagement;

• Young people looking to value their past professional or civic experience.

With JOBREADY, Article 1 also builds partnerships for a more inclusive society: to ensure systemic change and lasting impact, our solutions are integrated into local structures influencing youth's paths, in particular schools and companies, to complete existing contents. 

We train employees of our partner companies in soft-skills-driven inclusive recruitment and management. Our actions with partner companies contribute to address the needs of the young people we support: the tools we provide to promote inclusion and diversity are intended to be integrated internally, by all employees and HR processes.

Article 1 is a French nonprofit organization dedicated to combating inequality of opportunity in education. For over 18 years, we have been working to support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds from high school to employment access. This extensive experience has shaped Article 1's expertise in the professional integration of its target audience. The JOBREADY program was designed to contribute to systemic change by developing solutions designed for and with the young people we supports:

1. A program co-constructed with young people following evidence-based practice:

• The result of years of research: 

JOBREADY is developed and implemented by a team of technical experts, educational engineers and a research team who also design all educational content. They all have in-depth knowledge of issues relating to the recognition of soft skills, particularly for our target population. The work carried out by the research team enables continuous improvement of the program, based on feedback from the field and impact measurement results.

• The result of co-construction with young people, based on their needs:

Face-to-face and digital activities have been tested with young people from the start of the JOBREADY program. Questionnaires are submitted at the end of each workshop to gather feedback and support the continuous improvement of the program. 

The program evaluation seeks to demonstrate the impact of the program on the young people we support, by surveying them according to a scientific protocol. This enables Article 1 to identify the program's strengths and areas for improvement, based on reliable, tangible results. 

• Integrating young people into Article 1's governing structures:

To ensure the effective involvement of young people in Article 1's governance and decision-making structures, the Board of Directors includes, among its 14 members, two young alumni of the association (members of Article 1's Engagement programs). These two young people help to validate Article 1's strategy and contribute to its development, validate the accounts and ensure the quality of the actions carried out. They are also responsible for decisions relating to the annual accounts and assessing the association's ability to continue its work.

The General Meeting is also made up of beneficiaries and alumni of the Association, each with one vote.

2. Local roots for national deployment:

•  An ecosystem of national and local partners:

We involve all stakeholders who directly or indirectly contribute to youths’ guidance and professional integration. This is why Article 1 has adopted a 360° approach and collaborates with a large ecosystem of local and national actors: Public institutions, including 8 French ministries, and with local education institutions / Private partners / High schools and higher education institutions / National and local non-profits.

• Events organized all over France, close to where young people live

3. Inspiration from peers and professionals committed to equal opportunities:

Interventions in schools are co-hosted by young people or volunteers from the professional world who share their inspiring educational and professional backgrounds. These people can act as role models, giving young people confidence in their skills and helping to deconstruct stereotypes linked to studies and careers. 

In 2018, the association Article 1 tested the JOBREADY program with 450 young people registered on the platform. Following the positive results of this experimentation, the program joins the 44 winners of a call for expressions of interest "Tremplin Asso" from the Agence Nationale de la Cohésion Territoriale (ANCT) launched in 2019. This support has enabled JOBREADY to change scale by duplicating its workshops in three regions: in Occitanie, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Ile-de-France. 

Since JOBREADY's launch in 2019, the program has seen rapid progress across France. After 5 years of Research & Development on supporting young people into employment and developing soft skills, as well as scaling up the program, JOBREADY is now in a stabilization phase. 

• The program is now present in 11 regions

• The number of young people who have benefited from the program has drastically increased:

> Met in workshops each year (+503,8% in 5 years): 

2019-2020: 2 600 / 2020-2021: 4 800 / 2021-2022: 12 100 / 2022-2023: 15 700

> New registrations on the digital platform (+767,5% in 5 years): 

2019-2020: 4 000 / 2020-2021: 5 000 / 2021-2022: 23 070 / 2022-2023: 34 700

> 2022-2023 figures: 

• 127 900 badges are in circulation, attesting to the program's popularity with the young people we support.

• 94% of young people find JOBREADY workshops beneficial for their professional integration.

• 97% of managers feel more aware and equipped to make their recruitment more inclusive thanks to soft skills.

JOBREADY’s application to MIT Solve is part of the strategy of developing relationships with partners abroad who share our interest in professional integration and soft skills. Our aim is also to raise funds from international funders. Joining Solve community would be a unique opportunity to: 

• Meet peers, experts and funders, in order to get feedbacks on their own experiences and to hear advices for Jobready’s development. 

• Engage with funders  

• Get a highly valuable recognition from an internationally recognized institution

Jobready is an innovative program as :

• It is a mix of digital and face-to-face approaches, that aims at reaching a high number of people with a digital platform open to everyone, and at the same time reaching young people that are furthest from the notion of soft skills by working with local partners.

• It participates in a process of social innovation: Jobready.fr is the first platform in France using Open Badges to certify soft skills. It recognizes all experiences (formal, non-formal and informal) as generating skills to promote inclusive societies.

• Jobready.fr uses a chatbot that can identify the soft skills one has developed in any given life experience.

• Jobready involves private companies, thus bringing together the needs of job seekers’ and companies. 

Jobready is designed to address specifically youths and has been gamified in order to target this particular population:

• When users go to Jobready.fr, they are oriented towards our chatbot i.e George: a malicious parrot that interacts with the user using riddles, jokes and a challenging tone. This aims at creating a safe space to discuss experiences, avoiding self-censorship and overcoming the impersonal numerical barriers.

• The users get points for each skill identified, badges certify successes with a graduation system, they are challenged to get involved on the platform and in missions.

• Each skill is associated with a definition and references. To keep the recreational approach, Jobready uses pop culture references (extracts of music videos, movies, TV shows). For instance we use Game of Thrones to illustrate strategy and diplomacy, Beyonce for visual communication, ...

• The program content uses a wide range of activities: role-play, interview simulation, quizzes during workshops / interactive audios, dynamic infographics, MOOCs, card games, testimonials, quizzes, role-plays on digital platform.

Theory Of Change 1 - Young people

Target population: Youths 16-25 years old.

• Students, in particular coming from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds

• Young people looking for a new job or career change

• Young people looking for a commitment (civic service, volunteering)

Activities: 

• Digital program: general diagnosis, filling in life experiences, linking experiences with skills, assessing skills, certifying skills, developing skills

• Face-to-face program: 3 workshops target to fit the needs of youth from underprivileged backgrounds

Impacts: 

• Understanding soft skills: definition, mechanism (developing soft skills through experiences), importance and value on the job market

• Knowing yourself through reflexivity: your skills, the potential of your experiences, your motivations and wishes, your needs

• Developing one’s interest: to develop new soft skills, to commit to civic engagements

• Developing soft skills: self-assessment, oral communication, team work/receiving feedbacks and understanding someone else’s perception

• Daring: to tell one’s life experiences (in an application letter or resume, during an interview, daily), to go further (develop new skills, commit in civic missions, apply for selective missions - trainings, jobs, civic commitments), to reach out to others

• Mastering professional codes and tools (how to improve CV, to write cover letter, to prepare for a job interview, etc.)

Social mission: reduce inequalities for young people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, by making them aware of their soft skills, helping them learn to value their formal and informal learning and experiences, and helping them to develop and improve their soft skills. 

Theory Of Change 2 - Organizations

Target populations: 

• Higher education institutions: universities, business/engineering schools, vocational schools

• Associations / Non-profits

• Work integration structures: community centers, employment centers

Activities: 

• Workshops facilitation 

• Transfer the pedagogical tools to local partners so they can lead soft skills workshops for their target population autonomously (1 month):

1. Attend a workshop as a participant

2. Receive training materials

3. Co-lead 1-3 workshops with JOBREADY, receiving feedbacks 

4. Run a workshop in another organization for your own beneficiaries, while being observed by JOBREADY for final feedback

Impacts: 

• Skills development: on soft skills (definition, value, how to identify and improve them) and on workshop facilitation

• Handling Jobready tools: soft skills framework, digital platform, workshops facilitation

• Improved knowledge of the organization’s beneficiaries: their life experiences, their skills, their potential

• Improved relations with the organization’s beneficiaries

• Greater openness and connection to other organizations: discover organizations in the area (associations, private companies), improve visibility in the area, develop partnerships

• Expanding activities: diversify the service offering, integrate new support tools, improve results and impact for beneficiaries (e.g: better professional integration, better student jobs, improved well-being)

Our goals:

• Young people gain self-confidence and are able to identify the richness of their background in order to present it in a search for training, internship or employment

• Young people enter into a lifelong learning process and become actors of their own path

• The involvement of volunteer professionals from the regions gives young people a better understanding of the country's economic fabric and employment opportunities

Objective: To combat self-censorship and encourage people to enter higher education and the world of work:

• Improve high school students' self-awareness by identifying personal experiences and translating them into soft skills

• Enhance high school students' ability to articulate their soft skills to assert themselves and highlight their skills during educational, apprenticeship, internship, or job searches

• Strengthen high school students' engagement and involvement in their local community through volunteer missions

• Demystify and break down barriers in the business world

• Reinforce lifelong learning processes and combat school dropouts

• Promote positive projection in the construction of one's career path

Indicators: 

On the relevance of soft skills in career guidance and integration: 

• Improve understanding and appropriation of soft skills 

• Understanding the definition of soft skills: Familiarity with the concept, Understanding the usefulness of soft skills;

• Expanded view of experience as a source of skills: Connecting soft skills to engagement/interests, a sense of progress on soft skills.

• Increase reflective capacity

• On one's experience: awareness and appreciation of one's career path (preferences, strengths and areas for improvement); 

• On one's skills: awareness and appreciation of acquired soft skills; Improve self-esteem.

• Improve project construction and mastery of professional codes 

• On the professional project: Improve level of information, maturity of projection, confidence in the future and method of preparation;  

• On professional codes: Develop a network; Improve mastery of CV and cover letter; improve confidence before a job interview.

Methodology:

Our tools :

• 3 surveys distributed ahead of the program, just after the program and six months after the program to estimate the impact of the program and changes in young people's learning and academic/professional/personal situations. 
• Statistical analysis of platform data to study the relationship between user's sociodemographic characteristics and the way they use the platform.

The digital platform Jobready.fr uses the following core technologies : 

• A custom chatbot (VueJS/Php) that is able to communicate via an instant messaging system and contains questions and pre-determined scenarios. Each answer matches soft skills detailed in the JOBREADY frame of reference.

• Extracting soft skills from job offers: With support from Accenture, we've developed an Application Programming Interface (API) that detects soft skills in job listings using Natural Learning Processing (NLP). Following the same logic as the chatbot, our algorithm analyzes various aspects of the job description, including skills, professions, tasks, and target audiences. We use the "Spacy" library for preprocessing and the "FastText" model to convert parts of descriptions into vectors for similarity calculations.

• Openbadges: an image containing metadata certifying the skills of our users. We issue badges according to two types of evaluation: self-evaluation (the young person validates the soft skills proposals made by the platform); cumulative self-evaluation and hetero-evaluation (the young person validates the proposals and has them evaluated by peers). The strength of the badge increases with the number of evaluators. 

The chatbot uses an algorithm to match any type of life experience with skills, with predetermined scenarios. The matching algorithm is based on a matrix developed by a researcher that matches each experience with a soft skill from the Jobready framework : the intelligence matches the user’s response with the matrix, itself matched with the soft skills framework. The intelligence uses FastText vector similarities (a library for word learning and text classification developed by Facebook’s AI Research), a technology used by the Wikipedia platform. 

Open Badges are digital badges containing all necessary information. The only reliable way to certify an Open Badge is through peer review, as used by JOBREADY. Open Badges are a recognized tool that can be integrated into widely used platforms such as Linkedin.

The Jobready soft skills frame of reference includes 45 soft skills, split into 11 skill families, designed by an expert researcher in work organisation and approved by external collaborators (HR, consulting firms). This frame is based on that designed by the Elene4work consortium (12 European universities), itself sponsored by the EU's Erasmus+ program. 

The JOBREADY program relies on:

8 full-time employees
1 part-time employee

Article 1 launched the first experimentations on soft skills in 2016. The development of the Jobready platform and workshops started 2 years later. Jobready.fr was launched in December 2019. In total, our organization has been working on JOBREADY for 8 years. 

The association's name, Article 1, refers to the first articles of the founding texts of French society and its democratic and republican model. Our reference is primarily the first article of the 1789 Declaration of Human and Civic Rights: "Social distinctions may be based only on considerations of the common good”. Article 1 does not establish any distinction based on a person's identity, origin or disability (gender; age; citizenship; belief; social, ethnic, economic, geographic or cultural origin; visible or invisible disability; etc.).

On diversity and inclusiveness: 

Article 1 develops inclusive recruitment and management. We don't impose a specific educational curriculum on applicants or employees. We focus on skills and soft skills (Jobready reference framework) to determine the candidates we hire and their evolution within the association. Article 1 has in-house expertise and vigilance regarding inclusive recruitment and management, which is the subject of training courses for managers.

On providing opportunity for staff: 

> Salaries: Our remuneration scale is based on the level of responsibility of employees rather than their educational background. Enhanced attention is given to the salaries offered upon hiring, to guarantee equivalent remuneration for all employees, in equivalent positions, and with equivalent diplomas, experiences and required skills. 

> Skill development: Regular skill development is a lever to promote individual advancements for all. Skill development objectives are defined between each team member and their manager and evolve based on each person's aspirations and progress. Article 1 collects the training requests expressed by each employee annually. In this way, the association ensures that each team member benefits from one or several training sessions useful for their professional development each year.

> Salary progression: Equity of treatment is at the heart of our policy on raises, based on objective criteria and collectively discussed. Salary reviews must be supported by written and factual arguments submitted to the HR management. The association also ensures that wage gaps do not widen over time, especially during annual salary reviews.

On building a safe work environment: 

Article 1's Social and Economic Committee (CSE, employee representative body) set up a training course for all its members and the Human Resources team in 2023 on preventing violence in the workplace. 

Referents have also been appointed within the CSE and the HR team so that the association's employees can report cases of sexual harassment, sexist abuse and psychosocial risk situations.

The JOBREADY program has two components: one aimed at young people, in particular those coming from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, with classroom workshops and access to a digital platform, which is entirely free of charge for these young people. 

The other is aimed at training companies on the notion of equal opportunities in professional integration, and the usefulness and use of soft skills as a non-discrimination tool as a job seeker or recruiter. These activities are available for companies supporting globally financially Article 1 or as services.

Article 1's economic model, as applied to the JOBREADY program, relies on local, regional, national, and international grants, donations and subsidies. Each regional branch also establishes financial partnerships with local or national institutional and private actors. Program revenue relies on: 

• Sponsorship: 

Funding of the program by private companies invested in the subjects of equal opportunities, diversity and inclusiveness, that can come into being a lever for their Corporate Social Responsibility strategy and their employer brand. We also partnerships with private foundations and endowment funds to secure our sources of income and extend our network of partners.

• Public subsidies: 

Article 1 establishes partnerships with French public authorities at local, regional and national levels.
JOBREADY program is also funded by the European Social Fund. 

• Workshops facilitation:

Facilitation of workshops (on equal opportunities in professional integration, soft skills, inclusive recruitment) and partner’s training sessions are charged with a cost adapted to the partner and the service provided (ex: for private companies).