Youth Boost is a game-changer for young job seekers, offering free tools and courses to enhance digital skills, handle work challenges, and ace interviews.
About
By signing up for a free Youth Boost account, young job seekers can access tools and resources to help strengthen in-demand skills and find jobs tailored to their career goals.
Led by Magnet, Youth Boost offers free upskilling courses and learning labs on building digital skills and dealing with workplace challenges.
Solution
Youth Boost offers young job seekers a free platform to build their portfolio of skills and apply for job opportunities. Users have access to:
- Funded paid work placements through the Canada Digital Adoption Program
- Prepr’s learning labs and courses that teach new skills and real-world applications
- ICTC’s Agile Industry Mindset (AIM) course that enhances the critical soft skills needed to succeed in digital work environments
- Seven ECO Canada courses offered free of charge on a first-come, first-served basis – available courses include Essential Skills for Job Seekers, Navigating Canadian Environmental Law, Technical Writing Basics, Essential Skills 200, Project Management Key Concepts, Project Management Essentials, and Communication Essentials
Strategic Alignment/Impact
Many young job seekers and students haven’t had the time or opportunity to develop digital workplace skills or gain experience outside the classroom, which can put them at a disadvantage when competing for jobs against applicants with more experience, broadernetworks, and a larger portfolio of skills.
Youth Boost was funded by Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED) as a component of the Canada Digital Adoption Program with the goal of channeling youth into paid placements offered through the program while providing them with the skills to thrive in those placements.
Magnet leveraged existing partnerships with Prepr, ICTC, ECO Canada, and others to build out an in-system marketplace of learning where job seekers could access industry-recognized learning and training to support career transitions and growth.
Youth Boost is an important addition to Magnet’s network of projects and will prove crucial to advancing overall efforts to prepare young Canadians for a changing labour landscape.
The project addresses an important gap by enabling students and recent graduates to use a single entry point to supplement academic training with self-guided learning under the umbrellas of human skills and digital skills.
Employers who apply for CDAP funding through the Magnet platform can target job seekers on Youth Boost, as well as job seekers affiliated with other Magnet projects.
Youth Boost demonstrates the potential of collaborative technology to address fragmentation and create a streamlined solution that encompasses student learning, work experience, and the creation of talent pipelines for Canada’s small and medium-sized businesses.
Partners
