On Friday, October 4, 2019, the first student conference called “Skills of the future” took place in the premises of the Pan-European University in Bratislava. The organizer of the conference, the Alliance for YOUth, whose one of the founding members is also EPIC non-profit, has prepared a rich all-day program in the form of interesting lectures and workshops where members of the alliance like EPIC, Junglee, dm drogerie markt, Amrop Jenewein, Nestlé and TESCO, in cooperation with Future Generation Europe, sought to bring secondary school students closer to the current situation in the labor market and what skills today’s young people should have in order to meet employers’ requirements. More than 100 secondary school students from different parts of Slovakia could hear what job fields will be important in the future, what soft skills will be demanded by employers, the paradoxes of time management, how to navigate in the labor market or the skills of the future leader. In the afternoon, visitors to the conference had the opportunity to attend interesting workshops, such as how to create a digital CV, tips and tricks on how to organize their time, understand the payroll question and during the entire afternoon students could try a job interview simulator. EPIC led workshops focusing on the experience of successful job search projects in Slovakia, Australia and Finland.

* Alliance for YOUth – Helping young people motivates us. The Alliance for Youth is a voluntary association of companies who are not indifferent to whether young people find a dream job. Poor quality of preparation for future employment disadvantages young people in the labor market. We cannot and we do not want to leave the solution only to public institutions, whether national or supranational. We do business in Slovakia and we want our business to benefit the society here, to help young people find a job, thereby increasing our chances of finding quality and motivated employees.