Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

A guiding hand
If you’re at a loss about what to do regarding career options and where to go to get the right information, check out JobsNet. Vidushi Seneviratne has more
You’ve just sat for your Advanced Level eamination… a series of questions about what to do with your life lie ahead of you. Your parents think you’ll be quite at home being a doctor (since you’ve already studied medicine for the A/levels), your interest in the arts wants you to go through life lost in classical languages and the theatre of the world, while the voice inside your head is telling you to explore a career in creativity… Typical scenario in the life of a young adult?

If confusion and too many options is your problem, your solution might be literally just a click away. Providing modern employment that goes beyond conventional recruitment, JobsNet hopes to develop and implement a service facility for seekers and providers of all employment including self-employment. “We match the needs of the employers and the job seekers, and are basically an information source regarding employment,” says Dileepa Manawadu, Head of Marketing Communications, at JobsNet. “While job orders are sent in by employers, job seekers feed in information regarding their bio data as well. Then all the information goes into a common database, and an automatic matching is done between the needs of the employers and the job seekers. If the numbers of availabilities exceed the requirement, we do a further screening and limit it,” she said, explaining the basic process followed at JobsNet, adding that the entire procedure takes about two hours.

A project of the Ministry of Labour Relations and Foreign Employment, this information centre is a public sector – private sector partnership. Representing the combination of the public sector with the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, you also see the support and active participation of the private sector in this unique partnership. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce manages JobsNet, and while it was initially funded by the Royal Norwegian Aid Agency (NORAD), the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) funds it at present. “The draft national employment policy has formulated seven initiatives, and implementation of the seventh initiative, which is ‘Creating an Employment Sourcing and Delivery System – under the National Employment Policy of Sri Lanka,’ is what we at JobsNet do,” says Dileepa.

The Technical Collaborator for JobsNet is the International Labour Organisation (ILO). From the second year onwards the project is being supported by ILO with a dedicated project management unit.

So how exactly does JobsNet help you find employment? “You can either visit us at our 17 centres around the island, or get registered with us through our website which is www.jobsnet.lk,” says Dileepa. The central database of JobsNet is located in the Colombo head office connecting 17 JobsNet Service centres. The database carries information of jobseekers, self-employment seekers, companies (as members) who register with the system, and will continue to service these registered persons and organisations throughout. “When visiting us, you should bring your birth certificate, identifications, documents proving education qualifications, as well as a set of photocopies of all these documents. For all those of you registering online, when you need your CV sent to the employer, you need to bring these documents with you to a centre, since we need tangible evidence of your certification,” explains Dileepa. “Though our services for job seekers is free of charge, the employers who get in touch with us regarding recruitment need to pay a fee.”

Going onto explain how the recruitment is done, Dileepa adds that pre-interviews are held at JobsNet, where eligibility, working conditions and salaries of the job seeker’s intended job are discussed. “We then send in the job seeker’s CV and next direct the person to the employer,” says Dileepa.

JobsNet, also provides career guidance and counselling for those registered. “We also hold workshops for individuals registered with us, and organise seminars for schools, on request,” she said. Identifying skill and training deficiencies, directing for training, providing information on Job Market trends, skills required and training institutions, career guidance, membership to employers and training institutions, job matching on demand, web-based job matching, web advertising and assessing and developing business plans and marketing plans for self employment seekers, are the other services provided.

“We also have a career aptitude test which is a computer based test and we recommend it to students who have done their O/levels. For this you have to visit us at the centre and a fee of two thousand five hundred rupees will be charged,” explains Dileepa.

Email job alerts is another facility offered by JobsNet, where you will be informed of suitable employment opportunities. Training referrals which is information regarding the kind of training needed for specific jobs, is also provided by JobsNet. “One of the main problems young people have is that they don’t know where to go to get information regarding training for various careers. We have a collected resource base of what is available and where, so that these young people can be guided in the right direction,” says Dileepa.

A serious lack of direction and negative attitudes towards certain job categories due to poor knowledge is the main problem faced by young people today. The lack of career guidance is another such problem. This is what JobsNet strives to do.

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