By Jacco Leeuwerink
Paris, Wednesday 14 November 2012.
Last week I visited Paris regarding the European tender for a national employment agency. The ultimate goal: matching suitable candidates with the right jobs. What I did not suspect is that the relevance of this initiative of the French government would become immediately visible to me.
When I arrived in Paris, I got on the subway. About two stops along, a young man enters. I think he is about 30 years old. As soon as the metro leaves the station, he speaks to all travelers. This man turns out to be unemployed, for about five months. He is handing out his CV in the subway, hundreds of copies to whoever will take it. Hopefully his extra effort will get him a job.
This example is not unique. These kind of stories also appear in other countries. Experiences like these make me realise more and more how dire the increasing unemployment situation in Europe is. Unemployment rates in several countries have risen above 10, 15%. In Greece and Spain even above 20%. People are using all resources in order to find a job. No measure is too crazy anymore. Not even handing out CVs in the subway.
Jacco Leeuwerink is technical consultant at Textkernel. Textkernel offers software tools that facilitate matching supply and demand in the labour market. On the demand side, Textkernel retrieves information from millions of jobs found on the web. On the supply side, Textkernel extracts relevant information from CVs and social media profiles. Combined with strong products in the field of semantic searching and matching, Textkernel provides tools to accelerate the matching process of the labour market
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