Labour market insertion

In today's ever-changing environment, it is difficult to anticipate the demand for skills in the future. This is fuelling a growing mismatch between the available workforce and the one sought by employers. In addition, employers often lack information on labour market trends and have difficulty accessing qualified candidates. This makes recruitment expensive and inefficient. Jobseekers, on the other hand, lack information about jobs, networks, soft and technical skills or work experience needed to find productive employment or self-employment. 

Creating interfaces between job supply and demand 

Swisscontact improves connectivity between companies, training providers, financial service providers and job seekers. Together with our partners, we enable local actors to act as an interface between labour supply and demand. We also provide the necessary information, advice, matching and matchmaking services to companies and job seekers. The target groups can be general or specific. In combination with vocational education and training, labour market integration also helps school leavers and out-of-school people with their social and professional integration. Our labour market activities lead to an improvement in the long-term employability and personal and professional development potential of individuals, and to better business performance. This contributes to poverty reduction and resilient livelihoods. Swisscontact acts as a facilitator and capacity-builder in employment projects. We catalyse innovations and mobilise relevant private and public actors to initiate change and take ownership of the delivery of better and more relevant services. 

Our areas of work in the field of labour market inclusion 

Through our interventions, we seek to promote sustainable employment services in enterprises, education and training providers and to support specific communities. The key services we offer typically include 

• Access to labour market information for enterprises and job seekers
• Guidance and counselling services
• Tailored recruitment services, including help with applying for internships and jobs in the private sector.

We usually start with local interventions and then scale up. Our projects create a sustainable impact on the system, including 

• Making public and private service providers more employable,
• Facilitating employment policy dialogue and collaboration between stakeholders,
• Strengthen governance and diversification of labour market integration services,
• Improving quality assurance tools and mechanisms,
• Improving labour market information systems. In some cases, these services are linked to unemployment insurance and labour market measures.