Between Finding Talent and Finding Where Talent Belongs

Her statement points to a challenge faced by the other 66.5 million Indonesians' Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) who contribute more than 60% of national GDP and absorb roughly 97% of the country's workforce. Although experience matters, anyone who has built a business knows that the strongest candidate on paper is not always the strongest candidate in practice.

Arini Sidik, a brand consultant and lecturer, understood this reality from a different angle. Through the Swiss Skills for Competitiveness (SS4C) initiatives, implemented by Swisscontact, Arini soon discovered that the strongest opportunity was beyond helping MSMEs tell better stories. It was connecting them with talent whose values and behaviors match the workplaces where they are most likely to thrive.

Arini has spent years navigating two worlds that rarely speak the same language. One is the classroom, filled with students trying to discover their potential. The other is corporate boardrooms, where her role as a branding consultant helped drive business growth. Then she noticed something. Many hiring decisions focused heavily on technical skills, yet workplace success often depended on something else entirely.

Values. Behaviour. Learning styles. Motivation. Culture fit. In short, personal branding.

This insight led Arini to rethink her entire business model that previously focused solely on commercial branding services. By collaborating with Swisscontact through SS4C, Arini's CSR community, WHITESPACE, was strengthened and introduced to an approach that helped educational institutions teach what industries actually need (Industry-Based Curriculum) and ensured that internships become structured learning experiences rather than simply temporary work placements (Structured Internship).

A series of capacity-building sessions between Swisscontact and WHITESPACE's team took place, making the connection immediate. Suddenly, branding is no longer just about helping people tell their stories. It becomes a way to understand people more deeply through personal branding and connect them with opportunities where they can genuinely thrive.

So one day, a familiar classroom closing scene took on a different meaning. Instead of students leaving the classroom feeling merely inspired, they raised their smartphones and scanned a QR code flashed on the screen. One by one, they answered a series of questions exploring how they learn, how they behave, what motivates them, and what kind of environment allows them to thrive. Nearly 900 students have completed the personal branding assessment. For WHITESPACE, data matters because it created visibility into student profiles and became the foundation of a matching system designed to solve a problem that MSME employers and young job seekers have wrestled with for years. “Finding the right person has always been expensive. Finding the wrong person costs even more,” she said.

WHITESPACE soon discovered that preparing students alone would never be enough. Curriculum, policies, and academic leadership are key. Arini and her team began sitting down with faculty members and institutional leaders to discuss how to reshape vocational education through the Industry-Based Curriculum. The conversations sparked action. To date, twelve educational institutions in her network have implemented policies, regulations, or activities that place greater emphasis on industry relevance.

Simplifying Internship Management for MSMEs

Discovering gain points is equally essential to understanding pain points. Many MSMEs need administrative talent to keep sales operations running and maintain inventory records. What they often do not have is the time or capacity to design structured learning plans for interns. WHITESPACE knows this. Instead of waiting for MSMEs to build their own vocational learning plan (VLP), WHITESPACE picks up ready-to-use VLPs from the Industry-Based Curriculum for sales administration roles. The approach removes friction and allows small businesses to swiftly participate in structured internships without having to start from zero.

For MSMEs accustomed to informal hiring and onboarding practices, adopting structured flows requires a big adjustment. WHITESPACE proves and creates a new income stream from MSMEs who are willing to pay for the matchmaking service. The result is also beginning to speak for itself, as ten prospective interns are in the recruitment process using the personal branding method. A simple progress, proving that a successful internship is not only about whether a student can perform a task, but whether the student belongs in that environment.

The Next Chapter

These days, WHITESPACE is preparing its next pilot through a collaboration with Bogasari, a subsidiary of PT. Indofood Sukses Makmur. Bogasari’s programme supports flour-based SMEs across Indonesia through training in business management, branding, product development, and entrepreneurship. Among WHITESPACE’s missions is connecting ready-to-work vocational students in the personal branding database with structured internship opportunities across the SME ecosystem.

WHITESPACE is adamant about exploring how students from secondary vocational schools (SMKs) within Bogasari's assisted network can now be connected to structured internship opportunities across several of the 1,500 SMEs supported by Bogasari’s programme. The challenge is bigger than placing students. It is about finding where they truly belong with a ready-to-use Vocational Learning Plan for flour-based food production staff.

For a local service provider like WHITESPACE, turning internship matching into a more deliberate process is a mission. In doing so, they reflect the essence of both SS4C and Swisscontact: lasting change happens when local actors continuously innovate and create solutions that keep working beyond a development programme’s timeline. WHITESPACE is no longer a participant in the system, they are helping the system work. One student. One SME. One meaningful opportunity created at a time.

Images courtesy of WHITESPACE