Jobs for Ukraine, the platform launched by InnovX-BCR and Jobful: more than 9,000 Ukrainians are active users

Jobs for Ukraine, the platform developed by the InnovX-BCR business accelerator and the Romanian technology start-up Jobful, managed to become a human resources hub with a positive impact in supporting and integrating refugees from Ukraine. A year after its launch, more than 9,000 Ukrainian candidates and 2,200 employers are present on jobs4ukr.com, where more than 2,800 jobs are available. Job postings cover 57 countries and 285 cities, many of which offer remote work.

The Jobs for Ukraine platform was created with the support of technology partners Druid AI, Microsoft and EY Romania and is currently under the coordination of the Proiect Voiajor Association. Within a year of its launch, jobs4ukr.com has registered more than 133,000 unique visitors with more than 700,000 online browsing sessions and has expanded into the offline business area.

Efforts to integrate victims of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine also benefited from the collaboration between the Voyager Project Association and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which led to the organization of the largest job fair for Ukrainian citizens. Thus, in November 2022, at the Palace of the Bucharest Chamber of Commerce and Industry, within the Jobs for Ukraine project, 20 immigrants, out of the more than 200 present, were recruited on the spot. During the fair, the Proiect Voiajor Association organized a series of free trainings for refugees, from Romanian and English language courses to cultural accommodation activities. In addition, IOM also supported jobs4ukr.com by updating and adding new functionalities within the platform, such as the employer verification function or the skills assessment option, which ensure a safe and secure work climate.

“One year after the outbreak of the war, we supported more than 5,000 refugees from Ukraine to have access to the labor market in Romania. More than 4,300 Ukrainian citizens have been helped through jobs4ukr.com and other online channels, and more than 500 people have benefited from our help offline through career counseling, participation in job fairs and other activities and events. On the platform, in addition to job ads, users can also find a suite of resources offered by the governments of other European countries, answers to the most frequently asked questions, personalized assistance, but also details about free Romanian and English language courses, supported by the help of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to overcome the language barrier between them and the employers. Our mission does not stop here and we want to integrate even more facilities into the platform in the future, by building complete and complex integration programs”, Roxana Popa, Executive Director, Voiajor Project Association.

“Last year we developed the platform in record time, in just 4 days, with the help of InnovX-BCR and technology partners. It was a real team effort, guided by the desire to give Ukrainian citizens the opportunity to resume at least a part of their pre-war life. In just a few days after the launch, the platform already counted more than 200 job ads and more than 300 Ukrainians looking for jobs“, Mihai Cepoi, Founder and CEO, Jobful.

To bring even more relevance and communicate more easily with Ukrainian refugees, the Voyager Project Association hired and trained four refugees to provide professional advice to Ukrainian job seekers, all with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Online and offline communities have also been created to offer services complementary to employment, such as language courses.

“In the development of InnovX-BCR we focused on accelerating projects that create habit with evolution and technology, that kind of projects that encourage partnerships, the adoption of innovation and generate high added value. And jobs4ukr.com is one such project, through which we managed to develop a real-time support solution, through which refugee citizens could resume their usual routine and lifestyle, which ensured them a minimum of psychological comfort. This is what happens when innovation and humanity meet, and the integration of refugees into the labor market creates a context for agile economic evolution and means real help through which people in Ukraine can capitalize on their qualification”, Anca Luca, Community Manager InnovX-BCR.

Jobs4ukr.com is a platform launched in March 2022 with the help of Jobful and the innovation accelerator InnovX-BCR, to support the labor market integration of Ukrainian refugees in the medium and long term