CEO MONTHLY / MAY 2026 9 orway, like most European countries, has persistently high dropouts in education, with estimations pointing towards one in five students not completing high school. More concerning is that difficulty completing school is starting at an earlier age, with a number of pupils struggling to make it through primary school. It is clear then that the system is simply not capable of supporting all students, and that public schools need strengthening through supplementary alternatives that pick up where the traditional educational system has failed. Moreover, a labour market that is continuing to raise entry requirements is doing little to strengthen the future prospects of this school-weary youth, with a university degree or other such academic credential being seen as the only accepted qualifications for work. This is even impacting traditionally practical fields such as IT and tech, resulting in more than 700,000 across Norway being outside of the workforce looking in. A lack of higher education is a primary barrier to their entry. JobLoop exists to create new pathways to development, education, and employment. Working to reduce social exclusion by preventing school drop-outs, helping individuals to qualify through alternative education and up-skilling programmes, and ultimately getting more people into employment. It does this by providing inclusive, tailored training and qualifications alongside the labour market, public authorities, and schools. “The goal is not to compete with, but to work together to strengthen the public school and welfare system,” added CEO Sina Erichsen. Sina met her co-founders in 2019, and has been the CEO of JobLoop since the very beginning. Her main aim is to ensure the company fulfills its mission, and to do that it needs a healthy economy, a healthy culture, and satisfied stakeholders. The most important stakeholders for JobLoop are the students and young adults it serves, with these individuals trusting the company to support them through its training programmes. Sina’s leadership is shaped by a number of elements, a background in psychology, her work in start-up communities, and the use of the Scandinavian model of employeeship. Being an entrepreneur was actually last on Programs to Bridge the Competency Gap with Alternative Education Alternative pathways to employment are as urgent as they are overdue. With Western civilisation having shifted from a production/industrial economy to a knowledge economy, higher education has become how workers are certified. This would be less of a problem if academia was for everyone, but it is not. Working tirelessly to offer new paths and tackle unemployment, JobLoop represents society’s changing status quo. Sina Erichsen, named Most Influential CEO 2026 – Professional Training (Norway), was on hand for more on these important issues. Sina’s career bucket list, but after meeting her co-founders and working on a single inclusion-project, this social enterprise began to take shape. This one project has quickly grown into an entire company, and JobLoop today has around 60 employees running multiple pilots, recurring programmes, and public tender contracts across several groups. One such group is young people interested in gaming and IT, with the team taking their motivation and mapping it onto school work (for the youngest group) or a career in the tech industry (for adult groups), delivering the professional training that allows them to fill the skill gaps in today’s IT sector. As Sina explained, this is not without its challenges: “Many companies have started hiring only senior candidates, arguing that AI will replace junior roles. Yet, the criteria for reaching senior status typically include both a recognised higher education and a minimum of 5–10 years of work experience. The unresolved part of this puzzle is: how do we ensure that we create enough opportunities to train future seniors?” This feeds back into what is JobLoop’s overarching goal, helping employers realise that screening for degrees first excludes many candidates, and that alternative candidates bring so much to the table. In closing, Sina appealed to our readers: “Leaders can choose to actively use the responsibility their roles carry to help shape society, moving it closer to the kind of world they would like to live in. We do not need to create larger groups of ‘disadvantaged’ people for reasons that are not, in fact, disadvantageous to society; like having practical training instead of an academic background. “If all companies took even small steps in this direction, unemployment would not be the challenge it is today.” Using Norway as an example, if every employer with 10 employees or more took on just one alternative candidate or hired their next candidate from an inclusion program, involuntary long-term unemployment would be abolished. Beyond a thriving state economy, employers and society alike would benefit from embracing a fully diversified and flourishing workforce. N Contact: Sina Erichsen Company: JobLoop Web Address: https://www. jobloop.no/en
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