In an economy that’s changing so fast that 65% of young people today will work at jobs that haven’t been invented yet, you can’t train for jobs that don’t exist. But elite, brand name schools know that you can future-proof students by connecting them to people in sectors at the vanguard of change like AI, robotics, edtech, medtech, fintech and more. That’s why schools like Stanford aren’t simply offering career counseling anymore; they’re building what’s being called call “career community.” They have 40 employees in career services to help you put one foot in front of the other when you walk out their door. And that’s not including the thousands of alumni who could guide you.
But if you are one of the 100M students in emerging markets enrolling in higher education, it’s not so simple. These students want to be prepared for the future and to land great jobs. Over 50,000 colleges lack career services or alumni networks to help them find pathways to employment. These students are hungry to know what roles are out there once they graduate and what skills and contacts they’ll need to succeed.
Meanwhile, $429B is spent on talent recruitment annually with $17B spent in emerging markets. 40% of employers surveyed in 43 countries reported facing a talent shortage. The main reason is lack of applicants, followed by lack of skilled candidates in sectors ranging from STEM to accounting to sales.
That’s where Localized comes in. Localized solves a broken pipeline problem for companies, colleges and students in emerging economies. On our platform, students access career guidance, role models and expertise from global professionals who share language, culture and roots. Think Slack meets Quora for career readiness in emerging markets, drawing on diaspora and local talent. They also connect to employers who hire locally or remotely.
So How does it Work? On Localized, experts create Channels to offer insights on future trends or best practices in their industries. Students join to learn about these fields and have their questions answered. Our model is B2B. Schools pay an annual subscription fee. We work with schools that have career services and those that don’t.
Our experts are incredible and busy. That’s why Localized is a one-to-many model; because they don’t have time to mentor one student after another, but they would love to help level the playing field for 50 or 100 students from their communities-of-origin. We recruit mentors through partnerships with companies, affinity groups and diaspora professional associations.
A gallup poll recently found that with better mobile technologies, companies in every industry are increasing their distributed workforces. As these companies hire more people remotely and expand into new markets, they need to find, train and retain excellent employees no matter where they live. But this is especially true as some expand into emerging markets and thus venture into new linguistic, cultural and geopolitical terrain. We’re recruiting top companies to the platform to ensure that students have a pathway to the jobs of the future.
