More than 150 young people and senior mentors took part on Friday in the ‘Mentoring Talent’ 2nd Annual Meeting. The project, which is promoted by the Prince of Girona Foundation, aims to help young people with difficulties entering the labour market to boost their employability. It is being run with the support of 32 companies in Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia, Galicia, and the Basque Country.
The meeting included simultaneous workshops led by experts in employability, recruitment and skills development. Verónica Thayonat and Gabriela Gámez, from consultants KPMG, gave a workshop entitled ‘Beyond the interview: other personnel selection tools’ and challenged the young participants using different recruitment methods, from group dynamics to debates, in order to resolve specific problems.
Víctor Gay and María José Viñas from Koerentia offered young people the keys to develop their own skills, focusing on co-responsibility as one of the most important competences. Eva Snijders, storyteller and CEO of Química Visual, showed the participants the strategies that come from Storytelling in order to improve their communication skills which will, in turn, help them in their search for employment.
The meeting closed with a dinner, which also served as a networking opportunity for those taking part. This was followed by a concert given by Legend, a band formed of five mentors from the ‘Mentoring Talent’ project: a lawyer, an IT professional, a publicist, a doctor and an entrepreneur.
Mentoring Talent
The main aim of the Prince of Girona Foundation’s ‘Mentoring Talent’ programme is to boost the employability of young people who are the first in their families to have obtained a university degree or higher diploma in vocational training or who have studied with a grant. The programme applies an innovative methodology in which young people are mentored by professionals for a period of six months in 8-10 mentoring sessions that may either be face-to-face or virtual. This mentoring helps to build young people’s competences and skills to gain greater success in their professional futures.
Since the project began one year ago, 250 mentoring processes have been conducted as part of the programme. This total breaks down into 29 young person-mentor pairs in Girona, 55 in Barcelona, 114 in Madrid, 25 in Cordoba and 27 in Bilbao. Overall, 32 companies have joined the project, and 274 mentors and 1064 young people have shown an interest in the project. Currently, there are five autonomous communities involved in the project: Andalusia, Catalonia, Madrid, the Basque Country and Galicia.
Most of the participating companies are also members of the Prince of Girona Foundation Board of Trustees. Among them are Telefónica, OHL, Noel, Nestlé, Meliá, Indra, Hispasat, Hipra, Havas Media, Gas Natural Fenosa, Fundación Repsol, Frit Ravich, Esteve, Corsunsky & Moré, Sabadell, Axxon, Arcano, Acciona, and Alzamora. We should also mention the collaboration of several companies in executing the project, such as Telefónica, Koerentia, Essential for Business, Perfil Consultoría RRHH.
