How and when can we use technology to design and implement youth employment programs? We should ask ourselves whether investing in digital solutions is worth the time and money before deciding to include a digital component in our projects, because as much as technology can be transformative and help provide solutions, it is both expensive and time-consuming. Furthermore, we need to make sure we fully understand the problem that we are trying to solve.
Access to information (and particularly youth beneficiary data) is a key field where technology can make our lives easier, and online job platforms such as Tounes Ta3mal have been taking advantage of this to improve job matching capacity. Co-founded by Silatech and Microsoft, Ta3mal provides a variety of resources and services ranging from career guidance tools to job vacancies, psychometric and linguistic assessments, and over 700 e-learning courses. Yet, what makes Ta3mal unique is its hybrid approach that augments digital services with physical features such as career fairs and other activities implemented in partnership with universities’ career development centers. In fact, despite at first it was 100% virtual, Ta3mal was only able to grow exponentially when it added these physical features. To date, the platform has over 37,000 registered users and 750 registered employers who have published almost 5,000 job postings in Tunisia only.