StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 68 LockdownInterns is a staffing and recruiting company that allocates students and young graduates to work from home on paid or unpaid company projects during extended periods of quarantine and lockdown, such as the first half of 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. CEO QUOTE "When you can't leave your house, you become an underutilised resource. Multiply this by a billion and you get the full picture of waste of human potential. We stepped in to simply find some use and give some purpose to all those millions of young people who are not lucky enough to have an actual work-from-home job. Group projects done for a company are a great leg-in-the-door: a testing period that can lead to a job offer after the end of the lockdown. In the meantime, these projects are also great for socialising young people and channelling their energy into developing skills and creating some value for society. In a sentence: we turn #LockdownInterns into #FreedupProfessionals...

StartupRealities No 45 RangeExchange is a professional development company that exposes school-age students to a wide range of professions to help them make better-informed decisions about their future career options. The company's programme is an elective integrated into the school curriculum available in different formats to all K-12 ages. It includes visits to companies and institutions, meetings with professionals, discussions of the content and responsibilities of different jobs, and role play. CEO QUOTE "We help students identify which vocation best suits their interests, passion and talent. In a given year, the student can choose 10 professions they would like to explore and our professional development consultants add another 10 based on the student's profile. The programme's depth and detail progressively increase with the age of the students. The idea is that a student can choose to explore the same 10 professions year after year and will keep learning ...

StartupRealities No 43 NorthKoreaWorks is a staffing agency which recruits young North Korean workers under contract with the North Korean government and places them in travel and hospitality jobs in the US and Europe. Part of the workers' salary is paid as tax to the North Korean government but workers are free to save the rest in their personal US/European bank account. CEO QUOTE "Airlines and hotels love employing North Korean staff: they are hard-working, dependable and very respectful to customers. By working with us, the young North Koreans also have a chance to see the world, which the remaining 99% of North Koreans can only dream of," said NorthKoreaWorks founder and CEO Kim Wonk. "We sometimes get accused of supporting an authoritarian regime but do you see anything wrong in giving young people a chance, vocational training, foreign language skills and an opportunity to open up their mind. Who knows who the next leader of North Korea may be. He or she...