Young jobseekers often face a big barrier to finding their dream job: a lack of experience.

‘Most employers are mainly looking for people with experience in the labour market,’ explains Lucie Havlinová, Project Manager at the Regional Branch of the Labour Office in Příbram, Czechia ‘Many of them will eventually be discouraged from accepting [an inexperienced] candidate, because a person without experience must, of course, be given increased attention, with uncertain results.’

Lucie is working with young people enrolled in the Youth Guarantee (YG) project in the Central Bohemia Region. It receives funding from the European Social Fund (ESF) and offers young unemployed people a remarkable opportunity. By contributing to their wages, the project motivates employers to give more chances to young people without previous work experience.

Youth Guarantee Central Bohemia also offers counselling and various motivational or retraining courses to persons under 30 years of age if they are involved in the project and have less than three years’ work experience.

A programme participant, Denisa Krajčířová was very pleased about the opportunities she was offered, ‘‘I was surprised by the breadth of the range of possible retraining courses. They offered a lot – even strictly for the position of waitress. I could have taken a cocktail mixing course,’ she recalls.

One of the advantages of the Youth Guarantee is connecting young people with potential employers. The Czech project helps by contributing to participants' salaries for one year. To ensure that both the employer and the young person are satisfied (and to ease the adaptation of the young person), the project allows to do flexible work trials – part time for three months.

‘I really appreciate this chance’ says Denisa. ‘It didn't even take that long for my current boss to find me. [...] Hopefully I'll stay here as long as possible, because I'm really happy’.

So far, 1 153 unemployed young jobseekers like Denisa have successfully completed their training, and 851 young people have undergone one year of professional experience with an employer. Of these, 352 people have been offered open-ended employment immediately when they were recruited.