Increasing Digital Platform Use to Help Youth Find Work

Young people face many obstacles in finding work, and more than 71 million are unemployed globally. These obstacles are more pronounced for marginalized youth and first-time jobseekers. Digital professional platforms may give some youth a more effective way to find work than traditional job search strategies.

Some obstacles facing youth include:

1. limited job search skills,
2. poor labor market information, and
3. difficulty accessing jobs.

The authors use the studies referred to throughout the policy brief to:

1. explore digital professional platform use in developing economies,
2. present evidence on low-cost ways to teach youth to use these platforms, and
3. draw policy implications for the education and workforce development field.

(This report is 6 pages long.)

The authors’ findings include:

1. digital professional platforms like LinkedIn can increase the rate at which some marginalized youth find work in developing economies,
2. new research shows that educating youth to use these platforms successfully can be accomplished at a low cost,
3. education, training, and skills providers should teach digital professional platform use and promote career guidance and job placement support services, and
4. governments should consider equity in digital platform access and promote low-cost mechanisms for using these powerful platforms.

Emerging evidence indicates that the use of digital professional networking platforms contributes to easing youth transition to the labor market but that their rate of use is sub-optimal. However, the research presented here demonstrates that some young people can be taught to use these platforms at a low cost. This evidence has policy implications, and the authors recommend the following approaches:

• Teach digital literacy and professional networking skills: Youth can be taught digital professional networking skills that aid in job search and labor market transitions. For youth with access to digital resources, education and training providers should integrate digital jobs-platform use into their training curricula, particularly curricula focused on career counseling and job placement.
• Reduce data cost constraints: Youth face constraints in using digital services, including the cost and availability of connections, and must make tradeoffs between personal/social and professional services use. To ease these constraints, public and private stakeholders might provide low-cost or free Internet access for work-seekers to use these services during active unemployment periods.
• Promote more inclusive and comprehensive digital platforms: Digital solutions must attend to issues of equity. Bias in digital algorithms and differential access to digital platforms has been well-documented, in addition to concerns that platforms like LinkedIn are only relevant for particular job categories and jobseekers of certain socioeconomic backgrounds.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2020
• Author(s): Johnson, E. M.; Lehoahoa, E.; Shaw, P.; Urquhart, R.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies