Concrete job offers needed to find asylum seekers

Skills supply

For almost half a year, there has been a great deal of attention on the issue of matching IT-skilled asylum seekers with the great needs that exist in the IT industry. So far, little has happened. The obstacles are many and there is no magic bullet to solve them. What is needed as a first step is a success story.

In the fall of 2015, when the number of asylum seekers began to increase sharply, interest also rose from various IT actors to see if they could solve their major skills needs and at the same time make an effort for integration. Two meetings were arranged around Christmas under the auspices of the IT&Telecom Companies' IT Skills Council, where the hope was, among other things, that some form of matching activity in collaboration with the Migration Agency could be arranged.

In February 2016, LinkedIn's Nordic organization launched the Welcome Talent platform, where Swedish employers who want to offer internships and work to asylum seekers and other foreign-born people can present themselves, and where asylum seekers can learn how to create a good profile on LinkedIn.

On Tuesday, March 8, the chairman of the IT Skills Council, Carl-Johan Hamilton, and I met with the representatives from LinkedIn who are responsible for the Welcome Talent initiative. They were able to tell us that there have been some challenges in reaching out to asylum seekers about the existence of the platform and at the same time the importance of companies throughout Sweden participating in the initiative and offering internships or jobs.

The conclusions of the meeting, which also set the direction for the way forward, were as follows:

  • Engaging asylum seekers remains a major challenge as they are, for example, geographically dispersed across Sweden.
  • The basic problem is to identify and get in touch with the IT talent that exists. The fact that they are far away should not be an insurmountable obstacle, it is possible to use Skype, do programming tests remotely, etc. The practical problems of travel and accommodation should be solvable, as long as there is a concrete case - assignment/internship/job.
  • One way to encourage contact will therefore be to find a success story that inspires both asylum companies and asylum seekers. We therefore invite all companies with concrete job or internship offers to register their interest via Welcome Talent.