Establishing cooperation and creating strong links between the VET schools and employers is of essential importance for both sides. In fact, many of you have already established cooperation. For those employers that haven’t done so yet, you can choose from the VET schools in the country and initiate cooperation. They can find you students for internship who are committed to on-the-job training, but also recommend workers from their lists of graduates.

You as employers know that even with the present level of unemployment, it is often very hard to find suitable workers. We have identified the occupations that are in demand at the moment, as well as those that will be in demand in the near future. Now we need the occupational standards that best describe what you need. With active involvement and contribution to the development of occupational standards, you as employers will benefit, above all, by having workers and employees that have the set of skills you need.

On the other hand, recruiting VET graduates will enable employers to fill the skills gaps that exist within their current workforce, due to the fact that VET students begin to learn sector specific skills from day one, developing specialist knowledge that will positively affect your business processes.

The benefits of having internship programmes for vocational / practical work also arise from: returns from productive performance of trainees, (saved) costs of recruiting external skilled workers, (saved) outage costs when skilled workers are in short supply, performance differences between company trained and external skilled workers, supply benefit (e.g. image improvement). Employers reap benefits by saving costs they would incur if they had to hire new employees, including the recruitment process, integration of new employees, and the risk of hiring a person that is not known to the company from previous experience.