The Youth Online Employment Strategy (YOES) is an innovative pre-employment program designed by CultureLink to teach youth ages 15-29 how to market themselves in today’s digital world.  Starting in October 2016, YOES has been offering school-based, pre-employment training workshops to help students prepare for today’s competitive job market. Through step-by-step instruction, students in this program learn how to build a professional digital profile by creating new-media based resumes and, how to leverage social media tools in their job search.

Over the past few months, students in Greenwood Secondary School’s Career Studies and Riverdale Collegiate Institute’s Co-op classes have been putting their digital and creative skills to use to build creative infographic resumes that showcase who they are beyond the bullets of their traditional resumes. This has been a positive and fun experience for many students and has helped them identify their strengths, skills and build their confidence when speaking about their various work, volunteer and school experiences.

Here is what some of the students had to say:

“The most awesome thing about it was learning how to make an infographic resume and seeing how it stands out more in bold and vivid colors, texts and pictures” – Co-op student from Riverdale Collegiate

“I found that this workshop is helping me know more about myself by working on an online resume and how to get a job” – Career Studies student from Greenwood Secondary

“I am very glad we had the opportunity to take this course.  Thanks.” – Co-op student from Riverdale Collegiate

In addition to in-class workshops, YOES is also offered online.  We will be relaunching our popular NextGen Resumes – Creative Self-Marketing MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Canvas.net this coming March.  Stay tuned for details.  For more information about this program and upcoming workshops, please contact Asal at aafshar@culturelink.ca or 416-588-6288×211.

Asal Afshar, Youth Online Employment Strategy