Tackling youth unemployment through the eyes of a European entrepreneur

Exclusively written for the Sting by Davide Giordano, President of Junior Enterprise Torino Politecnico (J.E.To.P), member of JADE. Nowadays youth unemployment has become a major issue for many european countries, young graduates, with bachelor or master degrees struggle to find their way to work even if they possess good qualifications and skills. In Europe the average youth unemployment is 22%, in Italy it reaches 37.9%, Spain is 46% while Germany only 7%. Surely one of the main causes it’s the economical crisis that still troubles many of the european countries. An entrepreneurial mindset The solution, according to data, would be moving to another country, but not always this can happen, and moreover it cannot be considered as a solution since competition is becoming more and more intense. What if you start adopting an entrepreneurial mindset when building your own career plan? Or in other words, be the entrepreneur of yourself? Certain attitudes and behaviors that successful entrepreneurs have can move you one or two step ahead of any competitor, learn how to sell yourself, prepare an elevator pitch, be curious and learn new things, even if they don’t belong to your academic path. Books vs. Experience How do we implement these skills? Books can be useful, they can teach you how to write an elevator pitch, how to promote yourself, but experience is what matters the most. Take some time while studying for learning new skills, work in a startup, do an internship, attend networking events and create an accurate profile on LinkedIn to use when you feel ready to get in touch with the HR manager of the company you wish to work for. Is it reasonable for you? Probably yes, but you will face a very difficult challenge, time management. As we all know when studying it’s difficult to valuable time for other activities, but in this case you will have to. Time management is not only a challenge, but it’s definitely one of the most appreciated skills in any work environment, so be sure to be well organized and develop your own daily task schedule. Maybe your first internship won’t be as good as you expected, but be sure to put all your efforts on it because every experience will give you clues on what you are good at. When employment becomes a business All the experiences, whether they are a prestigious internship or a simple part-time job are tiles of your career path. Eventually they allow you a good insight on what companies are looking for, and that’s what happened with the BTS16 – Berlin Talent Summit, a group of graduates who saw an opportunity and created an exclusive three days event with the unique purpose of connecting talented students with top companies and startup in the Berlin ecosystem. Today the road to work has changed, most of students already know it, but they are afraid of taking the wrong choices, my advice to you is very simple, start doing something. Every experience will get you closer to know who you are and what you want from your future. About the author I think as an Engineer, I operate as an Entrepreneur. In January 2015 I’ve become President at J.E.To.P. – Junior Enterprise Torino Politecnico. I’ve managed a Junior Enterprise, an association composed by students, but structured exactly like an enterprise, with 61 students working on different projects, Event creation & organization, Mobile & Website development, Visual Design, Social Media Planning & Strategy. Together we created WTT: Wearable Tech Torino, the first exhibition in Italy on the wearable technologies. Today I’m Senior Advisor for J.E.To.P. and Master student in Computer Science at Politecnico di Torino.