Empowering Academic Graduate Job Search

Abstract

A significant portion of academic graduates have difficulty finding a first job after graduation. Research shows that the expectations of academic graduate job seekers and employers do not align and this graduation project confirms that job seekers and employers do not speak the same language. On the one hand, job seekers do not seem very able to communicate their skills and abilities in a convincing manner. On the other hand, employers do not seem very able to communicate the job requirements effectively. In this graduation project, Jeroen ter Haar Romenij validated and developed a vacancy platform in collaboration with the start-up HelloCareer. The platform allows academic graduate job seekers to explore job opportunities with the use of a job task language. With this task-language, HelloCareer aims to bridge the gap between educational study programs and actual job profiles on the labour market. The task language enables job seekers and employers to express their preferences, respectively for a future job and a future employee, in a uniform language, thereby reducing the asymmetry of information between the two parties, ultimately resulting in better matches. During this graduation project, a task-language for the three master programmes that are a part of the TU Delft’s faculty of Industrial Design Engineering was co-developed with academic graduate job seekers. Based on intense involvement of both the job seekers and the employers, crucial learnings were acquired on how to best define and apply the task-language and shape the design of the task-based vacancy platform. The way in which the preferences of the job seekers are represented by the platform has a direct effect on the job opportunities that are presented to them. Therefore, the value of autonomy over self-representation is highly at stake and has been put central in the development of the task-based vacancy platform. To engrain this way of thinking in the design process, a design for values approach has been chosen. Through empirical research that was conducted with academic job seekers, it has been explored what the value of autonomy over self-representation means for them in the context of the vacancy platform. As a result, these insights have shaped the design of the task-based vacancy platform which is described in this thesis. The final result is of this graduation project is a User Interface Design that demonstrates in a clear and practical manner how the task-based vacancy platform operates.