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Straight to employment after the graduation: Candidates for Graduation Programme – get activated and employed!

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In Slovenia, the number of young unemployed graduates and women remaining prevalent has been increasing. Lucija and Tjaša are graduates who managed to get employed immediately after the completion of their studies via the Candidate for Graduation Programme – get activated and employed that they were included into in 2010.

The programme is co-financed by the European Social Fund on the basis of the Operational Programe for Human Resource Development for the period, Priority axis 2. Promotion of the employability of job seekers and the inactive, Priority orientation 2.1 Promotion of the employability of job seekers and the inactive.

The Candidate for graduation programme enables co-financing of costs related to on-the job training of candidates for graduation and after their graduation it subsidizes their employment at the same workplace by the employer where training had been provided.

The workplace has to be in conformance with the level and field of an individual’s education. The Candidate for graduation programme that was designed upon the initiative of the Student Organization of Slovenia and has been implemented by the Employment Service of Slovenia has been allocated almost EUR 1.4 million. In 2010, 149 candidates for graduation were included.

The Programme’s objective is to reduce the number of unemployed young graduates.

Thus, candidates for graduation can acquire new knowledge, skills and work experience and get in touch with the future employer already during their studies. This increases their employment possibilities after graduation as well as makes their entry the labour market easier and faster and as first job seekers they experience less problems whereas employers can thus avoid time consuming looking for new employees.

Under the Candidate for Graduation Programme Lucija was employed as the member of the staff responsible for human resources and organisation of work for indefinite period of time by the employer, a company specialised in tourism development and destination management in the Notranjska region. She has been given the opportunity for further professional development in the field she is most interested in. She remembers how a co-worker from the Human resource Department in the company where she worked as a student told her about the programme. Therefore the public tender concerning the Candidate for Graduation Programme came »in the nick of time« she added. Already then she also performed activities in the field of human resource management that suited her formal course of education, the university study programme of sociology, human resource management at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. Since the company was interested in her further career development in the same field and she herself wanted to acquire more practical experience in the same professional field, they soon agreed and the Candidate for Graduation Programme was an additional encouragement as Lucija mentioned. Lucija can see the advantage of the Candidate for Graduation Programme in the possibility of developing and upgrading the knowledge acquired during the studies in practice even before getting employed. Another advantage of the programme is that it encourages an individual’s development in the field of their formal education. »This enables us to work in the desired field« explained Lucija.

As a student Tjaša also worked in a company where she is now temporarily employed under the programme Candidate for graduation. The initiative for her integration into the programme came from the company where she is now employed and which deals with the design of web-sites and applications. After the completion of practical training the student of a Pedagogical Faculty graduated and was employed as a project manager. Thus she was granted the first job for a period of one year and in the future she wishes to continue her professional development in the same field.