Summer quickly approaches and while the season’s arrival heralds three months of unadulterated slothing and maybe some vacations for most students, many will take the opportunity to get some much needed job experience. To hopefully ease of the formative experience known as the Summer Job Search, the White House has put out a call for help to developers to build apps for browsers, social media platforms, and smartphones that will put these youngsters in touch with job opportunities.
The open-source initiative, Code Sprint, which was conceived by the White House and the Department of Labor, is aimed at building an app capable of providing low-income and disconnected youths aged 16 to 24 years old with access to information regarding summer jobs, internships, and the sort. The program through which the app will be developed, Summer Jobs+, is an open call for employers from multiple industries to provide the aforementioned demographic with a way to foster good work ethics and maybe even make some money in the process, as well.
By providing developers with the Summer Jobs+ API, and thereby with a database of thousands of summer internships, training and mentorships opportunities, Code Sprint is being regarding as a challenge to the developer community to construct job search apps that will realize the goal of the White House and the Department of Labor.
The unemployment drag certainly hasn’t left the 16- to 24-year-old demographic unaffected as less than half, 48.8%, were employed last July, a time in which youth employment typically sees a boost. Comparatively, 59.2% of that demographic was employed in the month of July only five years ago. More troubling, the percentages of minority youths who were employed last July was less than the national average.
In the blog post that announced the Code Sprint, Brian Forde, Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer, listed only the barest of requirements and essentially handed over all creative license to the developers. “Some ideas we’d love to see include an easy way to receive job opportunities through SMS, localized job search apps for the city you live in, map based interfaces or easy way to create summer training playlists that help youth plan a summer of job skills development,” he said. “These are just a few of our ideas but we’re confident that you have even better ones.”
The White House seems to be spearheading the whole mobile technology/development/search aspect when it comes to fixing some of the country’s ills. Last month, a competition was announced for developers to build apps that could be used by case workers and caregivers of homeless veterans that would expedite the process of locating nearby services for the homeless.
The deadline to develop and submit the apps is April 9, 8AM, after which some of the best ones will be featured on the White House’s website. More information about the Summer Jobs+ API can be found on the Department of Labor’s website.
[Via Mashable.]