Tech News: Europe-Wide Job Hunting with EURES and SEEMP
Europe-Wide Job Hunting, EURES
Free movement of labour in Europe is fine in principle but problematic in practice. Short of registering with employment agencies in several different countries, how do you begin to look for a job in a market covering 27 Member States? The European funded SEEMP project may have the answer. Citizens of the European Union have, in principle, the right to work in any of its 27 Member States, but exercising that right is difficult unless you know how to look for a job in an unfamiliar country. At present, there is no simple method of searching for a job throughout Europe. Your local employment agency is unlikely to be able to help you look for posts beyond regional or national borders, and pan-European job seekers may have to register independently with several agencies in different countries.
A notable exception is EURES, an EU-funded web portal to promote mobility within Europe. EURES allows job seekers to search for vacancies provided by public employment services in 31 countries and to file CVs which can be searched by potential employers, but presently there is no attempt to match CVs with vacancies. If you look at Europe as a whole, there is not currently a structured way to organise this job change mechanism,” says Salvatore Virtuoso of TXT e-solutions, who is acting coordinator for the project. “SEEMP is meant to address exactly this problem. We do not want to create another job portal but are aiming to enhance what is already provided by national or regional e-employment services.”
With SEEMP, a job-seeker need only register and supply their details once, and their local agency broadcasts the request to the network and collects job offers from the other participating agencies. This means dealing with differences not just in language but in job titles and descriptions, qualifications, structure of CVs and job offers.
Labels: Employment Agencies, EU, jobs
