This mission-driven startup wants to tackle youth unemployment!

The?International Labour Organisation reports?that 75 million young people are now unemployed. Across the 27 member states of the European Union, the overall?youth unemployment?rate was 15.1 percent with rates of 32% in Spain and 27% in Greece. Additionally, although youth unemployment has declined from 18.2% in the first quarter of 2021 to 15.%, young people are still twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the rest of the working-age population.

This is the problem?Swedish-based social start-up ComPass hopes to solve with an approach based on a paid micro-gig platform that is designed to help students and graduates to identify the top skills they need to thrive in their industry and confirm these skills by working on real-life projects with startups facilitated by the help of a mentor.

How does ComPass work?

Students ( young professionals) would register for free to ComPass and by simply stating their specific career path or education background, the platform would generate a skill path which includes the top 10 skills they would need to confirm to be successful in their desired field.

Students will then have the opportunity to undertake paid ‘micro-gigs’ with tech companies matched based on skills connected to their career path with the help of mentors to acquire each skill identified in their skills path. During this whole process, the student ( young professional) gains experience while building their competency, while the startups gets a quality service at an affordable price. In order to ensure that students are supported and have all the help they need to successfully complete each project in their skills path, there will be a support system provided by their dedicated mentors.

According the founder of ComPass, Jason Holness, an avid social entrepreneur with a background in Human Resources :

"Entire generations are at risk of failing in this post-COVID era of financial (+political, +social) crisis. Simultaneously, a lot of young people invest in their education —?acquire advanced degrees or complete their study programs— only to realise that, when they graduate that they are not prepared for the job market, a significant percentage of them are not even aware of how to apply their skills to?be competitive in the market."

Unemployment at a global scale is a tremendous problem of social arrangement and culture: It impacts the economic, social, physical and psychological activity of individuals, as well as how they decide to use their energy, skills, and capabilities in order to shape their future and impact their environment.

Unemployed people are typically disconnected and in many cases isolated from the markets; they tend to spend their energy in search of the next ‘good, safe job’. ?ComPass (Competency Pass) wants to assist in making this journey to gainful employment easier by filling the gap between skills, training, experience and workplace.

And while many governments offer services and programs for unemployed people, they often fail to deal with the problem at its core. The best way forward is to encourage the youth to use their talents and capabilities, to identify their skills in order to be better prepared to go after professional opportunities.

Jason, Founder of ComPass, wants to give students and the youth a gateway to expand their skills and profession and receive as much exposure as possible.

"I want to give every youth an opportunity to earn a living through self employment. We have had experiences of graduates missing out on jobs because they lack the skills or experience and I want ComPass to be their saviour."

How ComPass differs from internships and other services?

The key difference between traditional internships and what ComPass will offer is that it is outcomes based & job is guaranteed. Instead of students doing a whole summer, it’s a specific outcome or specific projects. The average micro-gig would pay around $350 would take anywhere from a few days to a week to complete. Each micro-gig would be liked to a particular skill and would include projects, like product management, marketing & communications, development, data etc…?

ComPass is a unique platform that will offer the youth an opportunity to learn in a different way by recognising and confirming their unique skills to become career ready. Despite the fact that there are similar sites, the founder of ComPass stressed that it is more than just a site that links a job seller to job buyers.

The company is on a mission to substantially reduce the proportion of young people not in employment, education or training and providing them a passport towards gainful employment.

ComPass is still in development phase and have built out a landing page to start gathering a waiting list of first adopters to give exclusive access to the MVP version of the platform.They are also looking to build partnerships with universities, startups, angel investors and mentors to help them scale and bring their solution to youths.

Find out more about ComPass and to follow their journey as well as join their waiting list here : https://page.mmntm.build/compass