The best support for VET trainers and students for a job interview

There is an evident gap in the proper interview training and preparation to equip learners to enter the labour market forces. VET learners admit that interviews can be very nerve-wracking, trying to make a great first impression and being able to tick all of the company’s boxes. So VET providers, trainers, career counsellors and mentors need to be equipped with tools and training resources to support young learners and especially those who are geographically excluded or/and NEETs, towards their labour market integration.

The HIRE project addresses these needs. Entities from Spain (Florida Universitària as coordinator, and MEUS), Greece (Kainomotia), Italy (University of Turin) and Cyprus (Cellock LTD) will develop the following training materials:

For VET trainers and institutions:

• Inclusive and interactive training material for interview preparation.
• Material to improve the interpersonal skills necessary to successfully pass an interview
• An interview simulation tool for their students, monitoring their progress with personalised feedback.

For VET students:

• A virtual interviewer (avatar) with whom they can practice, self-reflect and break the ice of a real job interview.
• Less anxiety, nervousness and other emotions that students and candidates often face in job interviews. Innovation Approach
• The AI Interviewer is a unique project result offered as OER to benefit many different target groups.
• By analyzing data on a person’s gestures, voice and movement, the HIRE App could detect important behavioural cues that reflect the emotions and intents of the interviewee, cues which are difficult to detect through traditional interviews.
• It offers trainees the option of choosing an avatar with which they will proceed in the interview process, adding a gamified element to the result.
• Through a customised feedback report issued automatically after the end of an interview session, each trainee can detect their acquisition of different skills as well as their emotional profile.
• The project has an inclusive character since people from disadvantaged backgrounds, as the main target group, can increase their employment opportunities through proper practice and preparation.

But the HIRE project not only provides us with a methodology and didactic contents, but also contains several innovations that give the project an added value:

1. Originality: The AI-based Interviewer -avatar- is the result of a unique project that is offered as OER (Open Educational Resources) to benefit many different target groups.
2. Technology: By analysing data on a person’s gestures, voice and movement, the AI-based application generated in HIRE will detect important behavioural cues that reflect the interviewee’s emotions (such as anxiety, fear, nervousness…) and intentions, cues that are difficult to detect in traditional interviewing techniques. In this way, it could be used by recruiters and hiring managers to more accurately assess applicants for vacant positions, allowing them to quickly and objectively identify which candidates may be the best fit for each position.
3. Gamification: The AI Interview Preparation APP offers learners the possibility to choose the avatar with which they will conduct the interview, adding a gamification element to the result.
4. Self-regulated learning: At the end of an interview session, a personalised evaluation report will be automatically issued for each learner, reporting the acquisition of different skills as well as their emotional profile, based on the psychometric parameters ΑΙ detected by the sensor function. This possibility allows learners to reflect on their achievements and detect their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Inclusion: The project has an inclusive character as people from disadvantaged backgrounds -as one of the main project’s Target Groups- can increase their employment opportunities through adequate practice and preparation with the material developed in HIRE.

The HIRE project is composed by a partnership of 5 entities related to the VET field, entrepreneurship and new technologies with a huge experience in EU projects, such as:

• FLORIDA CENTRE DE FORMACIÓ COOP.V (SPAIN), as Coordinator.
• MARKEUT SKILLS SL (SPAIN)
• CELLOCK (CYPRUS)
• KAINOTOMIA & SIA EE (GREECE)
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO (ITALY)

HIRE is a Erasmus+ KA220 Cooperation partnerships in VET project with a duration of 24 months, starting on 01/11/2023 till 31/10/2025.

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