Entrepreneurs and SMEs can now rely on talented employees who believe in their mission and form a team on a single mission.
On May 31, 2017, the InternsValley team announced the launch of the second version “BETA” of its matching web platform InternsValley.com, following the success of the initial release “ALPHA”, which began early last year and has attracted 74 emerging projects and 4,900 university students to date.
InternsValley platform aims to connect university students and fresh graduates with entrepreneurs, start-ups and medium-sized companies to work together and exchange experiences. The platform provides students and graduates with opportunity to apply what they have learned in a real world in a practical training, and entrepreneurs on the other hand to build a proactive, passionate team with the ability to challenge flexibly without the cost being a constraint.
While the university student or graduate is looking for a real job opportunity in the field in which he aspires to work in the future or on a specialization that suits his passion and gives him the experience that backs up his academic studies, it becomes difficult to achieve this in practical terms due to the overcrowding of the job market with hundreds of thousands of graduates who are looking for jobs, too.
On the other hand, entrepreneurs of emerging startups are struggling to reach human resources, especially good calibers who can work on their projects without affecting their limited financial resources. Most entrepreneurs avoid building a human resources department during the early startup stages, neither outsourcing the recruitment process altogether to third parties, to save fund for more priority activities. Since financial resources are usually the biggest challenge to growth and stability of any emerging business, reducing the initial labor costs is one of the most creative ways to push these projects forward.
The integration of entrepreneurial market and academic environments in universities helps reduce obstacles for startups, and provides students with opportunities to know and learn about the job market before graduation and the practical skills required for work.
InternsValley.com provides businesses with the ability to post their needs of young talents who are willing to participate in their projects as “interns/trainees” for a period ranging from one to three months or up to 6 months and sometimes up to 12 months. In many cases, permanent employment contracts are subsequently concluded with the employers if the trainees prove their worth, which is also an additional advantage that contributes to opening employment to university graduates based only on professional competence.
According World Bank studies on emerging markets – as in Arab countries, 4 out of each 5 opportunities available in the job market, are provided by small and medium enterprises. Therefore these environments provide great opportunities for training besides easy access to them in contrast with major and global companies.
InternsValley platform is providing a variety of training opportunities through the participant companies from different fields.
Through the initial release of the website, InternsValley team has already been able to achieve this goal in an excellent way and to have great interaction between students and companies on the platform, and to gain appreciation of our effort to connect them to work together. According to the companies that posted training opportunities (Internships / Traineeships) on the our website, the number of applicants was very sufficient, and the candidates were very close to their requirements, which enabled them to choose the best people within a short period of time of “Call for interns!” ad.
The team was able to monitor and evaluate the interaction of users, and to collect their observations and suggestions during the trial period and to take them into consideration during the development phase of the next release, to improve site characteristics and maximize the benefit to them.
The new version enables both student and entrepreneur to reach his goal more efficiently and in less time; here is a brief of the new improvements:
New user interface; featuring a very smooth experience to the user in a simple and easy way, in addition to the enhanced compatibility with most browsers to ensure design consistency for all users.
New student profile; serves as a brief resume that is more appropriate for university students and recent graduates and at the same time replies to questions of the startup and mid-sized companies who are looking for the right candidates. The new profile replaces traditional CVs and expresses the skills of the student in simple and clear way.
New Dashboard: “student’s account”; now includes a notification system that shows updates continuously to the user, such as the status of his application for a particular opportunity, informing him of the transition from the waiting state to reviewing, determining whether it has been shortlisted or has been excluded from the opportunity.
InternsValley team hopes that the new website will appeal to its users and help convey our vision as a link between the academic community and the business world, especially entrepreneurial, to boost interaction between them and to increase employment rates in our countries, release youth energies for learning and innovation, to become a source of talents that contributes to the rise of startups and med-sized companies in the near future, as a means to economic growth of our societies to evolve and flourish.
