Hilton Worldwide today announced that its industry-leading growth will create more than 8,500 employment opportunities in Europe in the next three years – bucking the trend of rising unemployment figures. An additional 2,500 hospitality careers will be safeguarded through the conversion of existing hotels to Hilton Worldwide brands.
With more than 110 hotels under development in the region, the global hospitality company will recruit for positions across Europe focusing on strategic growth markets including the UK, Russia, Turkey, Germany and Poland. With continued focus on new development opportunities, the company expects to generate an additional 1,500 new jobs in the coming months with the goal of creating 10,000 new hospitality careers within Hilton Worldwide-branded properties.
More than 30,000 people are currently employed at Hilton Worldwide properties and corporate offices across more than 215 hotels in Europe. The company also boasts the strongest European pipeline in the industry, with more than 110 hotels signed, all of which are expected to open between now and the end of 2014, providing thousands of career opportunities.
Simon Vincent, area president, Europe, said, “While unemployment figures in Europe continue to rise, Hilton Worldwide is experiencing an exciting period of growth which will see us continue to offer a wealth of rewarding career options. As owners and developers continue to affiliate with our world-class brands, attracting, retaining and developing the best people is paramount. We strive to be industry-leaders in this regard and we are working hard to make sure this excellence continues as we grow.”
Key growth markets such as the UK, Russia, Turkey, Germany and Poland will experience the biggest surge in career opportunities. With more than 25 hotels due to open in Russia in the next three years, up to 3,000 new roles are expected to be available in the country.
Approximately 1,500 people will embark on new careers with Hilton Worldwide hotels in the UK with more than 20 new properties expected to open and more than 1,900 careers will be safeguarded through 10 confirmed hotel conversions to the Hilton Worldwide portfolio. Around 800 jobs are expected to be created in Turkey with a development pipeline of more than 14 hotels due to open by 2014. More than 400 new positions are due to be filled in Germany with three new hotels due to open and approximately 750 positions will be created in Poland across 11new hotels.
Ben Bengougam, vice president HR, Europe said, “With continued growth across our European estate, driving the talent agenda is paramount to our recruitment strategy. We are seeking passionate people interested in hospitality careers with a range of experiences as well as transferable skills from backgrounds outside the hospitality industry. Many of our team members have experience in a broad range of sectors and we always welcome this diversity.”
As a leading global hospitality company, Hilton Worldwide offers a wealth of career options with opportunities currently available at entry-level through to senior management. A plethora of different industries help make up the team at Hilton Worldwide including sales & marketing, legal, engineering and construction, feasibility and development, procurement, finance, human resources and management. Hospitality is at the core of Hilton Worldwide’s business with many career opportunities available in food and beverage, front-of-house, fitness and wellness and event management – all of which can help bridge the youth unemployment gap.
Key hotels due to open within the next 12 months include: Hilton and Hilton Garden Inn Frankfurt, Germany (Q4 2011); Waldorf Astoria Berlin, Germany (Q2 2012); Hilton Garden Inn Krasnodar, Russia (Q2 2012); Doubletree by Hilton Lodz, Poland (Q4 2012); Hilton Bursa and Hampton by Hilton Bursa, Turkey (Q1 2012); DoubleTree by Hilton Lincoln, UK (Q4 2011); and Hilton St George’s Park, Burton on Trent and Hampton by Hilton St George’s Park, Burton on Trent, UK (Q3 2012).
Hilton Worldwide supports the Government’s Get Britain Working campaign, committing 100 placements at hotels around the country this year – more than one for every hotel it operates. The initiative is designed to help unemployed young people to develop the skills needed to secure a sustainable job and has resulted in 15 young people taking on full time, paid employment with Hilton Worldwide.
A range of award-winning training and development initiatives are also available at Hilton Worldwide such as the fast-track graduate programme, Elevator, which identifies and nurtures talented graduates and high potential candidates from within Hilton Worldwide. These rising stars go through a thorough 18 month training programme before assuming their first management position, and then are usually fast tracked to senior leadership positions, with the aim of developing into successful hotel general managers.
Apprenticeships are also a key focus at Hilton Worldwide, with its Chef Apprenticeship Academy helping 60 aspiring, young chefs into a 12-month apprenticeship. The programme combines college-based courses with on-the-job training from some of the company’s most talented chefs. Highlights of the programme include executive head chef master classes, an insight into the workings of Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows, personal mentoring and the chance to compete for the “Chef Apprentice of the Year” award.
Award-winning e-learning facility, Hilton Worldwide University, is also available to all team members across the world providing access to on-line learning and development. With more than 2,000 courses available in 18 languages, it offers five different ‘colleges’ titled Owners, Leaders, General Studies, Commercial and Hotel – each with its own Dean.
Hilton Worldwide has featured highly in workplace and graduate job surveys across Europe including the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2011; winner of the most popular graduate recruiter for hospitality, leisure and tourism at the 2011 Target Jobs National Graduate Recruitment Awards; and is the highest ranking hospitality employer in Germany’s Survey Schülerbarometer 2011 as voted by school leavers. Just this month, at the MKG Group’s 12th Annual Worldwide Hospitality awards in Paris, Hilton Worldwide was recognised with the Grand Prix award. A judging panel and members of the awards ceremony audience voted in favour of Hilton Worldwide based on successful global development, innovation, human resources and commercial performances.
Source: Onrec.com, Tuesday 29th November 2011
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Wednesday 30 November 2011
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Co-Op Graduate Job Scheme Expanded
The Co-op has announced plans to increase the number of places on its graduate job scheme from 19 to 27 in an effort to help with youth unemployment.
The Co-op Graduate Leadership Programme will now consist of four graduate programmes in Human Resources, Finance, Retail and Business Management.
Earlier this year, the Co-op also introduced an apprenticeship programme which seeks to put 2,000 young people into jobs in several of its various business enterprises.
The company will also continue to work with campuses across the UK to try to increase the employability of students so that they are in a better position to secure a graduate job when they leave university.
The Co-op Group has also tried to press other businesses and organisations to offer similar schemes to help out the job situation for graduates, students and young people in the UK.
Graduate programme manager for the Co-operative Group, Rachel Rotherham, said: “The expansion of our graduate programme reflects The Co-operative's commitment to inspiring young people and tacking the shockingly high youth unemployment in this country. In such a challenging economic climate, it is really tough for all young people, including graduates, to find a job and we would urge other business to take similar action by increasing the number of opportunities they offer young people.”
Source: E4s.co.uk, Monday 28th November 2011
The Co-op Graduate Leadership Programme will now consist of four graduate programmes in Human Resources, Finance, Retail and Business Management.
Earlier this year, the Co-op also introduced an apprenticeship programme which seeks to put 2,000 young people into jobs in several of its various business enterprises.
The company will also continue to work with campuses across the UK to try to increase the employability of students so that they are in a better position to secure a graduate job when they leave university.
The Co-op Group has also tried to press other businesses and organisations to offer similar schemes to help out the job situation for graduates, students and young people in the UK.
Graduate programme manager for the Co-operative Group, Rachel Rotherham, said: “The expansion of our graduate programme reflects The Co-operative's commitment to inspiring young people and tacking the shockingly high youth unemployment in this country. In such a challenging economic climate, it is really tough for all young people, including graduates, to find a job and we would urge other business to take similar action by increasing the number of opportunities they offer young people.”
Source: E4s.co.uk, Monday 28th November 2011
Monday 28 November 2011
Higher pay in public sector is due to skill levels
With a public sector strike planned for Wednesday, the timing of the release by the Government of a statistic comparing public and private sector pay has been carefully stage-managed (News, November 24).
It was disappointing that the Belfast Telegraph did not also refer to another Government report, published on July 5, that explains how difficult it is to make comparisons between the two sectors 'because of the differences in the types of job and characteristics of employees'.
Essentially, comparing the public sector with the private sector is not comparing like with like.
There is a higher proportion of higher-skilled and professional jobs in the public sector than the private sector and more lower-skilled jobs in the private sector.
Indeed, many lower-skilled jobs in the public sector have been outsourced to the private sector.
When similar jobs in each sector are compared, private sector pay tends to be higher. For example, a graduate in the private sector earns 5.7% more than a graduate in the public sector.
July's report points out that the data used to compare pay in each sector does not take into account bonus payments (worth £20bn last year in the private sector), company cars and private health insurance, all of which increase the value of private-sector pay.
Source: Belfasttelegraph.co.uk, Monday 28th November 2011
It was disappointing that the Belfast Telegraph did not also refer to another Government report, published on July 5, that explains how difficult it is to make comparisons between the two sectors 'because of the differences in the types of job and characteristics of employees'.
Essentially, comparing the public sector with the private sector is not comparing like with like.
There is a higher proportion of higher-skilled and professional jobs in the public sector than the private sector and more lower-skilled jobs in the private sector.
Indeed, many lower-skilled jobs in the public sector have been outsourced to the private sector.
When similar jobs in each sector are compared, private sector pay tends to be higher. For example, a graduate in the private sector earns 5.7% more than a graduate in the public sector.
July's report points out that the data used to compare pay in each sector does not take into account bonus payments (worth £20bn last year in the private sector), company cars and private health insurance, all of which increase the value of private-sector pay.
Source: Belfasttelegraph.co.uk, Monday 28th November 2011
Sunday 27 November 2011
Law graduates face a bleak future at the bar
With 65 students applying for each training place, many would-be solicitors face not finding a job within the five-year post-graduation limit.
Youth aside, clean-cut law students don't appear to have much in common with the Occupy London protesters. But last week there was a glimpse of the level of their anger when an unemployed bar school graduate launched a campaign to occupy the inns of court.
"Through no fault of our own, a generation of bar professional training course (BPTC) and legal practice course (LPC) graduates find ourselves with no jobs – or no jobs as lawyers anyway," wrote the graduate under the pseudonym OccupyTheInns on Legal Cheek, a blog I edit, after making contact with me on Twitter. "The lucky ones are paralegals," the graduate continued. "The unlucky ones work in bars (not the bar)."
While support for the campaign appears to have been very limited – many law graduates strongly criticised the sentiment behind it – the broad message of discontent has struck a chord. One poster wrote: "the losers (myself included) are beginning to sense their own strength. We are the majority. And the majority rules in the game of 'democracy'." Similar messages of support appeared on Twitter.
Certainly, the situation facing those graduating from law school is bleak. Only around a fifth of all graduates of the BPTC (the year-long course law graduates must take to become barristers) will ever practise at the bar. In the solicitors' branch of the profession, recent research by the Association of Graduate Recruiters found that 65 law students apply for each training contract place. In the context of rising general youth unemployment – joblessness among 16- to 24-year-olds hit 1 million between July and September, with one in five young people now out of work – it's no wonder wannabe lawyers are feeling pessimistic.
Not that it has ever been easy to enter the profession. While the impending legal aid cuts have seen barristers' chambers take on fewer recruits, changes to the bar's funding model under the last government have made the quest to become a barrister an increasingly uphill struggle for well over a decade. Indeed, Adam Fellows, a BPTC graduate with a 2.1 from St Andrews who was called to the bar in July but has yet to find a barrister traineeship, says a one to two year spell doing CV-bolstering legal support work has been the norm for some time. (Fellows is working as a legal researcher for a publishing company while he applies for jobs.) "The bar is extremely competitive," he explains. "I always knew how hard it was going to be, and having invested a lot in this, my plan is to keep going until the clock runs out [in five years when the BPTC expires]."
Similarly, graduate jobs at the top solicitors' firms have always been hard to come by, with places at magic circle City firms long the preserve of really high achievers. What has changed is the graduate hiring pattern of commercial law firms outside the elite bracket. Before the 2008 crash, the media law firm Olswang took on more than 20 trainees a year; this year it cancelled its 2013 graduate recruitment altogether. (Like many other large law firms, Olswang recruits two years in advance).
Krish Nair, an Edinburgh University graduate (2.1, history and politics) who completed law school this summer, is the sort of candidate who would have been snapped up during the boom years. Unable to find a training contract, he works four days per week as an unpaid volunteer at Citizens Advice in London while living at home with his parents. Nair is scraping by writing some paid blogs for law firms, while attempting to build a profile through his personal blog, The Training Contract Hawk.
"My strategy is to keep building my CV and show law firms that I might be able to add value to them in a way that sets me apart from other graduates," he says.
The last time unemployment was so high was in the early 1990s, when Thomas Laidlaw, head of academic development at LexisNexis UK, was attempting to bag a trainee lawyer position. After a series of paralegal roles and a spell in a law firm's post-room, Laidlaw secured a job at the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents. He hasn't looked back since, and has no regrets about not becoming a lawyer. His advice to today's graduates is to think outside the box.
"The 90s recession proved a blessing in disguise for me," he recalls. "Once I'd entered legal publishing, I found myself fairly quickly working with senior people in the legal profession and getting far more responsibility than my friends who had become solicitors."
The economic situation may be worse than the 1990s, but Laidlaw is far from gloomy about jobless law graduates' prospects. Indeed, he reckons there are some unique opportunities for open-minded legal wannabes.
"The liberalising effect of the Legal Services Act, allied to technological developments, means we're seeing a blurring of areas like law and IT. The status of actually practising as a lawyer may well begin to decline, and graduates who recognise this early on could find themselves well-positioned in the future," he says.
Other than a possible increase in non-legal options for law graduates, are there any other rays of hope?
Well, earlier this week Wilberforce Chambers, an elite group of barristers, announced it was raising its starting salary to £65,000. As with other areas of society, the very top rung of the legal profession continues to do rather well, with the commercial bar, in particular, benefiting from a wave of financial crisis-spurred bank-versus-bank litigation. Don't expect to find its members camping out in the inns of court any time soon.
Source: Alex Aldridge, Guardian.co.uk, Friday 25th November 2011
Youth aside, clean-cut law students don't appear to have much in common with the Occupy London protesters. But last week there was a glimpse of the level of their anger when an unemployed bar school graduate launched a campaign to occupy the inns of court.
"Through no fault of our own, a generation of bar professional training course (BPTC) and legal practice course (LPC) graduates find ourselves with no jobs – or no jobs as lawyers anyway," wrote the graduate under the pseudonym OccupyTheInns on Legal Cheek, a blog I edit, after making contact with me on Twitter. "The lucky ones are paralegals," the graduate continued. "The unlucky ones work in bars (not the bar)."
While support for the campaign appears to have been very limited – many law graduates strongly criticised the sentiment behind it – the broad message of discontent has struck a chord. One poster wrote: "the losers (myself included) are beginning to sense their own strength. We are the majority. And the majority rules in the game of 'democracy'." Similar messages of support appeared on Twitter.
Certainly, the situation facing those graduating from law school is bleak. Only around a fifth of all graduates of the BPTC (the year-long course law graduates must take to become barristers) will ever practise at the bar. In the solicitors' branch of the profession, recent research by the Association of Graduate Recruiters found that 65 law students apply for each training contract place. In the context of rising general youth unemployment – joblessness among 16- to 24-year-olds hit 1 million between July and September, with one in five young people now out of work – it's no wonder wannabe lawyers are feeling pessimistic.
Not that it has ever been easy to enter the profession. While the impending legal aid cuts have seen barristers' chambers take on fewer recruits, changes to the bar's funding model under the last government have made the quest to become a barrister an increasingly uphill struggle for well over a decade. Indeed, Adam Fellows, a BPTC graduate with a 2.1 from St Andrews who was called to the bar in July but has yet to find a barrister traineeship, says a one to two year spell doing CV-bolstering legal support work has been the norm for some time. (Fellows is working as a legal researcher for a publishing company while he applies for jobs.) "The bar is extremely competitive," he explains. "I always knew how hard it was going to be, and having invested a lot in this, my plan is to keep going until the clock runs out [in five years when the BPTC expires]."
Similarly, graduate jobs at the top solicitors' firms have always been hard to come by, with places at magic circle City firms long the preserve of really high achievers. What has changed is the graduate hiring pattern of commercial law firms outside the elite bracket. Before the 2008 crash, the media law firm Olswang took on more than 20 trainees a year; this year it cancelled its 2013 graduate recruitment altogether. (Like many other large law firms, Olswang recruits two years in advance).
Krish Nair, an Edinburgh University graduate (2.1, history and politics) who completed law school this summer, is the sort of candidate who would have been snapped up during the boom years. Unable to find a training contract, he works four days per week as an unpaid volunteer at Citizens Advice in London while living at home with his parents. Nair is scraping by writing some paid blogs for law firms, while attempting to build a profile through his personal blog, The Training Contract Hawk.
"My strategy is to keep building my CV and show law firms that I might be able to add value to them in a way that sets me apart from other graduates," he says.
The last time unemployment was so high was in the early 1990s, when Thomas Laidlaw, head of academic development at LexisNexis UK, was attempting to bag a trainee lawyer position. After a series of paralegal roles and a spell in a law firm's post-room, Laidlaw secured a job at the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents. He hasn't looked back since, and has no regrets about not becoming a lawyer. His advice to today's graduates is to think outside the box.
"The 90s recession proved a blessing in disguise for me," he recalls. "Once I'd entered legal publishing, I found myself fairly quickly working with senior people in the legal profession and getting far more responsibility than my friends who had become solicitors."
The economic situation may be worse than the 1990s, but Laidlaw is far from gloomy about jobless law graduates' prospects. Indeed, he reckons there are some unique opportunities for open-minded legal wannabes.
"The liberalising effect of the Legal Services Act, allied to technological developments, means we're seeing a blurring of areas like law and IT. The status of actually practising as a lawyer may well begin to decline, and graduates who recognise this early on could find themselves well-positioned in the future," he says.
Other than a possible increase in non-legal options for law graduates, are there any other rays of hope?
Well, earlier this week Wilberforce Chambers, an elite group of barristers, announced it was raising its starting salary to £65,000. As with other areas of society, the very top rung of the legal profession continues to do rather well, with the commercial bar, in particular, benefiting from a wave of financial crisis-spurred bank-versus-bank litigation. Don't expect to find its members camping out in the inns of court any time soon.
Source: Alex Aldridge, Guardian.co.uk, Friday 25th November 2011
Saturday 26 November 2011
The truth behind the new jobless generation
It is assessment day at the Warrington office of the recruitment company BMS, and a business studies graduate rises nervously from his chair. It is his turn to sell himself to an audience of his peers in 30 seconds, in what management types call an “elevator pitch”, a punchy summary short enough to be delivered to a superior or customer during a ride in a lift.
“The reason I think I’d be good at business-to-business sales,” he mumbles, “is… err… I’ve got good communication skills. I can describe products. I’ve got listening skills. Err…” His barely audible monotone falters and then trails off into silence. He finishes speaking before his time is up, then slumps in his chair.
The person in question is 21 years old and holds a degree from a respected redbrick university. He is one of 17 graduates here, on this grey retail estate, looking for a job in sales. Most of his competitors are, it must be said, rather more articulate. Ten are working in relatively menial jobs and seven are unemployed. One of the latter is claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance and six are entirely dependent on that strained but unfailing institution, the Bank of Mum and Dad. Mark Milsted, the man in charge of the assessment, has seen it all before: intelligent people who have failed to master basic communication and cannot organise their thoughts.
“They have gained a qualification because they have enjoyed the subject matter, without thinking where it is going to lead,” he says. “There is a mismatch between what employers want and what is on offer. If you are an old-school employer you don’t understand going to university to study something you will never use.”
The redbrick business graduate may hold a relevant degree, but his inability to sustain a train of thought puts him at the bottom of the class. Only six of the 17 are considered truly promising material.
Warrington has the third-highest rating in Britain for youth unemployment, a scourge that has re-erupted on to the political landscape. In the third quarter of this year the number of people between the ages of 16 and 24 looking for work passed the one million mark. At 1.02 million, the figure is the worst since the 1980s, and includes 286,000 students in full-time education seeking work to supplement their income. Even worse is the figure for 16- to 24-year-olds classed as Neet – Not in Employment, Education or Training. At 1.16 million, they represent one fifth of their age group, the problem being most acute in the North of England.
As the economy continues to splutter, with third-quarter growth of 0.5 per cent, the Coalition is faced with a political running sore. A sticking plaster was applied yesterday when the Government announced £1 billion of spending over three years to provide young people with subsidised places in the private sector. From next April, employers will be offered £2,275 per recruit for taking on people aged 18 to 24 for six months. Some 160,000 young people should benefit from the scheme, and up to 410,00 are to be offered placements of some kind or another, but the number of real jobs created is anyone’s guess.
In any case, such solutions do nothing to address one of the central failings of the British economy: the chronic inability of the British education system to deliver useful employees to commerce and industry. People like the tongue-tied business studies graduate illustrate a problem cited time and time again by employers: young people lacking basic skills, even at the graduate end of the scale, but imbued with an over-healthy sense of entitlement.
“It’s all very good going to university and coming out with these degrees, but you must have the social skills to go with them,” says Mandy Brook, director of the Eastbourne-based agency, Recruitment South East. “You need to be able to look someone in the eye and have a conversation. I would say 70 per cent of the children out of university and further education can’t do those things.”
Few applicants, she says, are prepared to lower their sights and take more menial jobs to gain knowledge of the workplace.
“They turn around and say: 'That’s not what I was looking for.’ You explain the market to them but they say they will wait or they strop off. They are hoping for £20,000 or more.”
A solution is readily available: thousands of polite, hard-working, well-qualified young people from the eastern countries of the European Union and elsewhere. With much of Britain’s human capital wasted, the gaps have been filled by foreigners. Of the 29.17 million people aged 16 and over in employment in the United Kingdom, 2.56 million are non-British nationals. At the same time there are 2.62 million in this country unemployed and 9.36 million people classed as economically inactive. While the British component of the workforce shrank by 280,000 in the year to September, the overseas workforce in Britain expanded by 147,000. By far the biggest foreign contingent is from the eastern EU – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic states. There are 669,000 workers from those countries here, an increase of 94,000 on last year.
“The foreigners are the keenest,” says Miss Brook. “They have the skills and they will work for pretty much any money. They are hard working, there on time and stay late if needed. It’s easier to take someone like that on than someone who thinks the world owes them a living.”
The competition for British young people comes not only from foreigners of a similar age. Miss Brook says she is encountering more applicants aged 55 and over, people driven back into work by inadequate pensions and rising prices.
Joblessness among the young is rising across the EU and the UK rate is close to the average of the 27 member states, 21.4 per cent. The situation is more acute in Spain (48 per cent), Greece (43.5) and Italy (29.3). But in Germany it is nine per cent.
Europe’s greatest economic power has long led the way in youth training with its dual education system, which combines highly regulated apprenticeships in the private sector with vocational training in colleges. Employers are locked into training contracts and cannot exploit apprentices by paying low wages for minimal instruction. The qualifications are highly regarded.
David Fox takes on at least six young people a year to train at PP Electrical Systems in Walsall.
“We like the idea of apprentices because if you take a youngster who has an aptitude for manufacturing you have a clean sheet of paper to work with,” he says. “We want people who pay attention, turn up on time and look tidy. People with the wrong attitude fail. You can’t change them; we have found it impossible. We had one incident in the factory when some people were firing air pistols.”
Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), says the UK must aim for a system similar to that in Germany.
“British political culture is short-termist,” he says. “Every new minister of every political colour is intent on leaving his or her mark on the education system. The Germans set up their apprenticeship system 50 years ago and they haven’t changed it substantially since.”
In a survey of 7,000 businesses, BCC asked members how confident they felt when hiring from British universities. Only 45 per cent expressed high confidence in the graduates they met.
“The overwhelming feeling among our members is that the system is not delivering. Funding in the British higher and further education system follows the interests of the learner, not the needs of the economy. So you hear employers complaining that the local college churns out more and more hairdressers and media studies people, but not the technicians they need in their factories. The reason is that the college is incentivised by the funding system to provide the courses asked for by students.”
An obsession with university as the be-all and end-all of education has, says Mr Marshall, distracted the nation from creating a workforce skilled at all levels.
“Tony Blair’s target of 50 per cent of pupils attending university was one of the most misguided policy ideas of the time – shovelling people into institutions without career prospects at the end. Sixty-five per cent of young people are never going to walk through the door of a university. Yet listening to our university-educated media, you would think universities are the only things that matter.”
Employers, he says, are not fundamentally biased against homegrown applicants but will often choose foreigners because they solve the problem.
“Our members say to us over and over again: I need the right person at the right time and I am not going to look at their ethnicity, just their suitability. Employers want the state to provide a base: people with literacy, numeracy, presentability, the ability to take instruction and solve problems. They say that if they are provided with these people they will do the rest – making them the best lathe turner or nuclear power worker. They want good raw material. What they resent is having to do the remedial work when the state and parents have failed.”
Companies are now doing that remedial work, setting up training schemes to instill basic skills. Vocational education, says Mr Marshall, must stop being a political football and become a strategic national concern.
“When we have a problem in this country, we re-badge something or change the institutional arrangements and hope it will go away; and two years later it is worse. It is a systemic problem. The solution is to be bold, be radical, make the reforms necessary and then stick with them.”
Adam Dilworth has learned the hard way. Now 23, he graduated in microbiology from Liverpool University last year. He has applied for 25 jobs in management and sales without success, and has been working full-time in a university coffee shop, earning £14,000.
“My school was very focused on getting degrees,” he says. “ I didn’t focus on the career I wanted; I thought I’d come out and be fine.
“There are a lot of jobs out there but people aren’t willing to do them. My job is, without sounding snobby, beneath me. But a job’s a job.”
Source: Emily Gosden and Neil Tweedie, Telegraph.co.uk, Saturday 26th November 2011
“The reason I think I’d be good at business-to-business sales,” he mumbles, “is… err… I’ve got good communication skills. I can describe products. I’ve got listening skills. Err…” His barely audible monotone falters and then trails off into silence. He finishes speaking before his time is up, then slumps in his chair.
The person in question is 21 years old and holds a degree from a respected redbrick university. He is one of 17 graduates here, on this grey retail estate, looking for a job in sales. Most of his competitors are, it must be said, rather more articulate. Ten are working in relatively menial jobs and seven are unemployed. One of the latter is claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance and six are entirely dependent on that strained but unfailing institution, the Bank of Mum and Dad. Mark Milsted, the man in charge of the assessment, has seen it all before: intelligent people who have failed to master basic communication and cannot organise their thoughts.
“They have gained a qualification because they have enjoyed the subject matter, without thinking where it is going to lead,” he says. “There is a mismatch between what employers want and what is on offer. If you are an old-school employer you don’t understand going to university to study something you will never use.”
The redbrick business graduate may hold a relevant degree, but his inability to sustain a train of thought puts him at the bottom of the class. Only six of the 17 are considered truly promising material.
Warrington has the third-highest rating in Britain for youth unemployment, a scourge that has re-erupted on to the political landscape. In the third quarter of this year the number of people between the ages of 16 and 24 looking for work passed the one million mark. At 1.02 million, the figure is the worst since the 1980s, and includes 286,000 students in full-time education seeking work to supplement their income. Even worse is the figure for 16- to 24-year-olds classed as Neet – Not in Employment, Education or Training. At 1.16 million, they represent one fifth of their age group, the problem being most acute in the North of England.
As the economy continues to splutter, with third-quarter growth of 0.5 per cent, the Coalition is faced with a political running sore. A sticking plaster was applied yesterday when the Government announced £1 billion of spending over three years to provide young people with subsidised places in the private sector. From next April, employers will be offered £2,275 per recruit for taking on people aged 18 to 24 for six months. Some 160,000 young people should benefit from the scheme, and up to 410,00 are to be offered placements of some kind or another, but the number of real jobs created is anyone’s guess.
In any case, such solutions do nothing to address one of the central failings of the British economy: the chronic inability of the British education system to deliver useful employees to commerce and industry. People like the tongue-tied business studies graduate illustrate a problem cited time and time again by employers: young people lacking basic skills, even at the graduate end of the scale, but imbued with an over-healthy sense of entitlement.
“It’s all very good going to university and coming out with these degrees, but you must have the social skills to go with them,” says Mandy Brook, director of the Eastbourne-based agency, Recruitment South East. “You need to be able to look someone in the eye and have a conversation. I would say 70 per cent of the children out of university and further education can’t do those things.”
Few applicants, she says, are prepared to lower their sights and take more menial jobs to gain knowledge of the workplace.
“They turn around and say: 'That’s not what I was looking for.’ You explain the market to them but they say they will wait or they strop off. They are hoping for £20,000 or more.”
A solution is readily available: thousands of polite, hard-working, well-qualified young people from the eastern countries of the European Union and elsewhere. With much of Britain’s human capital wasted, the gaps have been filled by foreigners. Of the 29.17 million people aged 16 and over in employment in the United Kingdom, 2.56 million are non-British nationals. At the same time there are 2.62 million in this country unemployed and 9.36 million people classed as economically inactive. While the British component of the workforce shrank by 280,000 in the year to September, the overseas workforce in Britain expanded by 147,000. By far the biggest foreign contingent is from the eastern EU – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic states. There are 669,000 workers from those countries here, an increase of 94,000 on last year.
“The foreigners are the keenest,” says Miss Brook. “They have the skills and they will work for pretty much any money. They are hard working, there on time and stay late if needed. It’s easier to take someone like that on than someone who thinks the world owes them a living.”
The competition for British young people comes not only from foreigners of a similar age. Miss Brook says she is encountering more applicants aged 55 and over, people driven back into work by inadequate pensions and rising prices.
Joblessness among the young is rising across the EU and the UK rate is close to the average of the 27 member states, 21.4 per cent. The situation is more acute in Spain (48 per cent), Greece (43.5) and Italy (29.3). But in Germany it is nine per cent.
Europe’s greatest economic power has long led the way in youth training with its dual education system, which combines highly regulated apprenticeships in the private sector with vocational training in colleges. Employers are locked into training contracts and cannot exploit apprentices by paying low wages for minimal instruction. The qualifications are highly regarded.
David Fox takes on at least six young people a year to train at PP Electrical Systems in Walsall.
“We like the idea of apprentices because if you take a youngster who has an aptitude for manufacturing you have a clean sheet of paper to work with,” he says. “We want people who pay attention, turn up on time and look tidy. People with the wrong attitude fail. You can’t change them; we have found it impossible. We had one incident in the factory when some people were firing air pistols.”
Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), says the UK must aim for a system similar to that in Germany.
“British political culture is short-termist,” he says. “Every new minister of every political colour is intent on leaving his or her mark on the education system. The Germans set up their apprenticeship system 50 years ago and they haven’t changed it substantially since.”
In a survey of 7,000 businesses, BCC asked members how confident they felt when hiring from British universities. Only 45 per cent expressed high confidence in the graduates they met.
“The overwhelming feeling among our members is that the system is not delivering. Funding in the British higher and further education system follows the interests of the learner, not the needs of the economy. So you hear employers complaining that the local college churns out more and more hairdressers and media studies people, but not the technicians they need in their factories. The reason is that the college is incentivised by the funding system to provide the courses asked for by students.”
An obsession with university as the be-all and end-all of education has, says Mr Marshall, distracted the nation from creating a workforce skilled at all levels.
“Tony Blair’s target of 50 per cent of pupils attending university was one of the most misguided policy ideas of the time – shovelling people into institutions without career prospects at the end. Sixty-five per cent of young people are never going to walk through the door of a university. Yet listening to our university-educated media, you would think universities are the only things that matter.”
Employers, he says, are not fundamentally biased against homegrown applicants but will often choose foreigners because they solve the problem.
“Our members say to us over and over again: I need the right person at the right time and I am not going to look at their ethnicity, just their suitability. Employers want the state to provide a base: people with literacy, numeracy, presentability, the ability to take instruction and solve problems. They say that if they are provided with these people they will do the rest – making them the best lathe turner or nuclear power worker. They want good raw material. What they resent is having to do the remedial work when the state and parents have failed.”
Companies are now doing that remedial work, setting up training schemes to instill basic skills. Vocational education, says Mr Marshall, must stop being a political football and become a strategic national concern.
“When we have a problem in this country, we re-badge something or change the institutional arrangements and hope it will go away; and two years later it is worse. It is a systemic problem. The solution is to be bold, be radical, make the reforms necessary and then stick with them.”
Adam Dilworth has learned the hard way. Now 23, he graduated in microbiology from Liverpool University last year. He has applied for 25 jobs in management and sales without success, and has been working full-time in a university coffee shop, earning £14,000.
“My school was very focused on getting degrees,” he says. “ I didn’t focus on the career I wanted; I thought I’d come out and be fine.
“There are a lot of jobs out there but people aren’t willing to do them. My job is, without sounding snobby, beneath me. But a job’s a job.”
Source: Emily Gosden and Neil Tweedie, Telegraph.co.uk, Saturday 26th November 2011
Friday 25 November 2011
The Co-op enhances apprenticeship and graduate schemes, encouraging other businesses to help young unemployed
The Co-operative Group has called on businesses to do more to support young people and help them get a job, following last week’s news youth unemployment has topped one million.
In response to increasing demand from graduates, the retailer has increased the number of places available on its Graduate Leadership Programme from 19 to 27.
This follows the launch of The Co-operative's Apprenticeship Academy earlier this year, which will provide 2,000 jobs for young people over the next two years right across its diverse family of businesses, including food, financial services, pharmacy, funerals and farms.
The Co-operative has also introduced two new graduate programmes to its portfolio. It now offers graduate roles across four different functions - HR, retail operations, business management and finance.
Rachel Rotherham, The Co-operative's graduate programme manager, said: "The expansion of our graduate programme reflects The Co-operative's commitment to inspiring young people and tacking the shockingly high youth unemployment in this country. In such a challenging economic climate, it is really tough for all young people, including graduates, to find a job and we would urge other business to take similar action by increasing the number of opportunities they offer young people."
The Co-operative Group works closely with universities throughout the UK to help undergraduates develop their employability and increase their chances of gaining employment after they graduate. Skills sessions run by The Co-operative Group at universities across the UK have had very high attendance levels from students.
Source: HRmagazine.co.uk, Thursday 24th November 2011
In response to increasing demand from graduates, the retailer has increased the number of places available on its Graduate Leadership Programme from 19 to 27.
This follows the launch of The Co-operative's Apprenticeship Academy earlier this year, which will provide 2,000 jobs for young people over the next two years right across its diverse family of businesses, including food, financial services, pharmacy, funerals and farms.
The Co-operative has also introduced two new graduate programmes to its portfolio. It now offers graduate roles across four different functions - HR, retail operations, business management and finance.
Rachel Rotherham, The Co-operative's graduate programme manager, said: "The expansion of our graduate programme reflects The Co-operative's commitment to inspiring young people and tacking the shockingly high youth unemployment in this country. In such a challenging economic climate, it is really tough for all young people, including graduates, to find a job and we would urge other business to take similar action by increasing the number of opportunities they offer young people."
The Co-operative Group works closely with universities throughout the UK to help undergraduates develop their employability and increase their chances of gaining employment after they graduate. Skills sessions run by The Co-operative Group at universities across the UK have had very high attendance levels from students.
Source: HRmagazine.co.uk, Thursday 24th November 2011
Thursday 24 November 2011
Nestlé to create 300 new jobs in Derbyshire
Nestlé UK & Ireland has invested £110 million in its Tutbury site in Derbyshire and the creation of 300 new jobs.
The extension to the existing NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto plant will treble its production capacity.
Already a major employer in the local area, the workforce at the factory has grown from 160 to 500 employees since 2006 and will expand to 800 people by 2013. Of the 300 new employees some will become part of the first intake into the Nestlé Academy, a new initiative under which Nestlé UK & Ireland has committed to double its number of graduates, apprentices and internships.
Paul Grimwood, chairman and CEO, Nestlé UK & Ireland said: "Over the past five years we have undertaken a multi-million pound investment programme in the UK, establishing our next generation of world class competitive manufacturing facilities. This investment in Tutbury will extend our best in class facility, trebling our production capacity for export to over 38 countries across the globe. In order to grow we need to innovate and we are committed to the continued modernisation of our UK manufacturing capability."
"Recruiting the best people for our business is the key to our continued success. Through the Nestlé Academy we will double our number of apprentices, graduates and internships supporting the economy through the training of skilled workers . We will also provide on the job training which will open academic study to those who otherwise might not feel this is a route open to them."
Tutbury is one of only two production centres for NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto in the world. Since its launch in 2006 demand for the 'coffee shop at home system' has been phenomenal with current growth of around 50%. NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto is now available in 41 countries and in 2010 had a turnover of CHF 450 million. In March 2011 Nestlé announced an investment of CHF 64 million into a new production line at the NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto factory in Spain which will double production and create 150 more jobs.
Recruitment is already underway for positions at the Tutbury factory. The Nestlé Academy brings together the company's Graduate and Apprentice Programmes, Direct Entry Schemes and 'on the job' vocational training and qualifications.
Source: HRmagazine.co.uk, Thursday 24th November 2011
The extension to the existing NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto plant will treble its production capacity.
Already a major employer in the local area, the workforce at the factory has grown from 160 to 500 employees since 2006 and will expand to 800 people by 2013. Of the 300 new employees some will become part of the first intake into the Nestlé Academy, a new initiative under which Nestlé UK & Ireland has committed to double its number of graduates, apprentices and internships.
Paul Grimwood, chairman and CEO, Nestlé UK & Ireland said: "Over the past five years we have undertaken a multi-million pound investment programme in the UK, establishing our next generation of world class competitive manufacturing facilities. This investment in Tutbury will extend our best in class facility, trebling our production capacity for export to over 38 countries across the globe. In order to grow we need to innovate and we are committed to the continued modernisation of our UK manufacturing capability."
"Recruiting the best people for our business is the key to our continued success. Through the Nestlé Academy we will double our number of apprentices, graduates and internships supporting the economy through the training of skilled workers . We will also provide on the job training which will open academic study to those who otherwise might not feel this is a route open to them."
Tutbury is one of only two production centres for NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto in the world. Since its launch in 2006 demand for the 'coffee shop at home system' has been phenomenal with current growth of around 50%. NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto is now available in 41 countries and in 2010 had a turnover of CHF 450 million. In March 2011 Nestlé announced an investment of CHF 64 million into a new production line at the NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto factory in Spain which will double production and create 150 more jobs.
Recruitment is already underway for positions at the Tutbury factory. The Nestlé Academy brings together the company's Graduate and Apprentice Programmes, Direct Entry Schemes and 'on the job' vocational training and qualifications.
Source: HRmagazine.co.uk, Thursday 24th November 2011
Wednesday 23 November 2011
Government move to create 32,000 jobs in house building
Further evidence that the coalition government sees the construction industry as essential to economic growth comes from today’s announcement of a £400 million fund to reinvigorate the house building sector. If this fund delivers on its aims, it could also mean a growth in graduate jobs. The government believes that the initiative can support up to 32,000 jobs. While a good proportion of those will be for trade professionals and experienced hires, it’s likely that a number of the jobs would be aimed at new graduates.
The ‘Get Britain Building’ fund aims to build up to 16,000 new homes. This is to include 3,200 affordable homes, which include rental properties owned and managed by local authorities and registered landlords.
The fund forms part of a wider government housing strategy, which also provides an additional £50 million (on top of this year’s budgeted £100 million) to help refurbish empty homes in (mostly) deprived areas to get them ready for people to use.
Another key part of the strategy is a new scheme for the government to underwrite some mortgages for new houses. The aim is to help first-time buyers, as this will reduce the deposit amount needed. As the construction industry has long lamented the unwillingness of banks to lend, this move should prove popular with house builders.
The Guardian quotes David Cameron and Nick Clegg as saying: ‘The housing market is one of the biggest victims of the credit crunch: lenders won’t lend, so builders can’t build and buyers can buy... It is doing huge damage to our economy.’ The Liberal Democrat communities minister was also quoted as saying: ‘At a time when we need to get every home back into use, tackling empty homes is a very high priority.’
The news is likely to be welcomed by house builders, which have generally faced challenging conditions over the last couple of years – especially felt by the medium-sized companies. Even leading house builders are cautious about their economic prospects. While Barratt revealed in their interim management statement last week that their private forward sales were up 27.4% year on year, their concluding sentences were measured: ‘Following a good start, the group remains on track to deliver profits in line with the board’s expectations for the year. However it is clear that unless we see a significant increase in the availability of mortgage finance then future growth prospects for the industry will remain constrained.’
The government’s housing strategy is the latest in a spread of measures seemingly aimed at revitalising the economy through construction. At the end of October, David Cameron highlighted the importance of infrastructure to the economy. And the National Planning Policy Framework, which has finished its consultation phase, is designed to enable more construction to get through the planning stages. The Guardian reported today that some of the UK’s largest house builders, including Barratt, Bovis and Redrow, strongly lobbied for the Framework’s ‘presumed yes’ response to development applications – a presumption that has alarmed conservationists.
For students looking for their graduate construction, quantity surveying and civil engineering jobs, however, the government’s work is potentially good news in the long term. At least the government is trying to do something to shake up the economic situation for the construction industry – something which is likely to have a positive impact on jobs eventually. Questions remain, though: will it work and how long will it take?
Source: Targetjobs.co.uk, Monday 21st November 2011
The ‘Get Britain Building’ fund aims to build up to 16,000 new homes. This is to include 3,200 affordable homes, which include rental properties owned and managed by local authorities and registered landlords.
The fund forms part of a wider government housing strategy, which also provides an additional £50 million (on top of this year’s budgeted £100 million) to help refurbish empty homes in (mostly) deprived areas to get them ready for people to use.
Another key part of the strategy is a new scheme for the government to underwrite some mortgages for new houses. The aim is to help first-time buyers, as this will reduce the deposit amount needed. As the construction industry has long lamented the unwillingness of banks to lend, this move should prove popular with house builders.
The Guardian quotes David Cameron and Nick Clegg as saying: ‘The housing market is one of the biggest victims of the credit crunch: lenders won’t lend, so builders can’t build and buyers can buy... It is doing huge damage to our economy.’ The Liberal Democrat communities minister was also quoted as saying: ‘At a time when we need to get every home back into use, tackling empty homes is a very high priority.’
The news is likely to be welcomed by house builders, which have generally faced challenging conditions over the last couple of years – especially felt by the medium-sized companies. Even leading house builders are cautious about their economic prospects. While Barratt revealed in their interim management statement last week that their private forward sales were up 27.4% year on year, their concluding sentences were measured: ‘Following a good start, the group remains on track to deliver profits in line with the board’s expectations for the year. However it is clear that unless we see a significant increase in the availability of mortgage finance then future growth prospects for the industry will remain constrained.’
The government’s housing strategy is the latest in a spread of measures seemingly aimed at revitalising the economy through construction. At the end of October, David Cameron highlighted the importance of infrastructure to the economy. And the National Planning Policy Framework, which has finished its consultation phase, is designed to enable more construction to get through the planning stages. The Guardian reported today that some of the UK’s largest house builders, including Barratt, Bovis and Redrow, strongly lobbied for the Framework’s ‘presumed yes’ response to development applications – a presumption that has alarmed conservationists.
For students looking for their graduate construction, quantity surveying and civil engineering jobs, however, the government’s work is potentially good news in the long term. At least the government is trying to do something to shake up the economic situation for the construction industry – something which is likely to have a positive impact on jobs eventually. Questions remain, though: will it work and how long will it take?
Source: Targetjobs.co.uk, Monday 21st November 2011
Tuesday 22 November 2011
Graduates urged not to overlook opportunities within small firms
According to a recent survey conducted by business services provider Iconnyx, the vast majority of graduate jobseekers are overlooking job opportunities within small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), despite the clear benefits to working within these organisations.
The study was conducted across thirty recruitment consultancies in the UK and found that just 3% of these agencies believed that graduates favoured smaller organisations over larger companies.
“What a lot of graduates don’t realise is that gaining employment within an SME can often be more beneficial to their careers," FDM Group Marketing Manager, Nabila Salem, said.
In addition, a whopping 68% of the graduates questioned for the Iconnyx survey stated that they would take the first job role offered to them, rather than the right one.
Source: Marcus Leach, Freshbusinessthinking.com, Tuesday 22nd November 2011
The study was conducted across thirty recruitment consultancies in the UK and found that just 3% of these agencies believed that graduates favoured smaller organisations over larger companies.
“What a lot of graduates don’t realise is that gaining employment within an SME can often be more beneficial to their careers," FDM Group Marketing Manager, Nabila Salem, said.
In addition, a whopping 68% of the graduates questioned for the Iconnyx survey stated that they would take the first job role offered to them, rather than the right one.
Source: Marcus Leach, Freshbusinessthinking.com, Tuesday 22nd November 2011
Monday 21 November 2011
Great expectations: the hopes, fears and challenges of today's young people
A lifetime in debt after university, jobs hard to find, mortgages out of reach and rents too high: in 2011, young people seem to be facing a tough time.
But on the surface at least, many seem as hopeful and positive as young people should be. Amy Baxendale, 20, from Wigan, is currently in her third year of a degree in photography at Falmouth. "I enjoy my freedom to come and go as I please, and having the means to experiment in my line of study before I go out into the big wide world! I enjoy being around likeminded people who are here for the same reason."
Oliver Meredith, 17, from Swindon, has just left college and is looking for work. "I want to get a job, move into a place with some friends and hopefully go into acting. Moving into a flat is likely. Acting is not likely but I'm still hopeful about it."
Nevertheless, there is evidence from many quarters that young people in the UK today really don't have it easy. Take Unicef's Report Card 7, published in 2007. This highlights the extent of the problem, ranking UK youth at the bottom of 20 OECD countries in three out of six dimensions of wellbeing including "family and peer relationships" and "behaviour and risks".
Of course, in practice many young people do have good relationships with their family and friends. According to Baxendale, "being away from my family and my boyfriend for so much of the year is really difficult. I've always been a family girl, and my friends are such an important part of my life."
Some young people have to overcome huge barriers in their lives, notably poverty. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, ethnic minority children experience a higher than average risk of income poverty compared with white children. Poverty has an impact on the sort of education a young person has – from the sort of school they go to, to the likelihood of them attending further or higher education, to the job they do or don't find. Students graduating in these economically straitened times face poor job prospects. In April, data from the Complete University Guide showed that only 64% of students found postgraduate study places or graduate jobs – compared with 68.5% two years earlier. And, according to a survey by Aldi Graduate Recruitment, nepotism is rife – one in three graduates gains employment through family connections.
Combined with the difficulties they may or may not be facing in their own lives, young people have to face the suspicions of adults. From time immemorial, adults have been concerned about the behaviour of young people, yet in recent years – and particularly since this summer's riots – this seems to have turned into a more widespread contempt and fear. This distrust is keenly felt by young people. Jacob Macmillan, 18, from Swindon, is doing further maths and biology A-levels at college. "Adults look at young people with fear, especially when we are in groups. They look down on us too."
Xavier Hussain, 16, a London region media representative for the UK youth parliament (an organisation that gives a voice to 11- to 18-year-olds, which is heard by local and national government), agrees: "Young people are hounded with regular accusations of vandalism and other antisocial behaviour. The recent rioting is a perfect example." However, young people were seen in a good light in the days following the riots, when they were prominent in street cleanup operations organised on social networking sites.
Communicating via sites such as Twitter and Facebook is an integral part of the lives of young people – many of whom simply cannot remember a time without it. "Social networking is important for knowing what's going on," says Macmillan. "It makes communication a lot easier." And for Baxendale: "I use it to keep in touch with my family and friends back home, to Skype with my boyfriend and my mum, to organise university group work, and to get inspiration."
Despite the current doom and gloom, many of the fears of young people seem remarkably similar to those of an older generation: they are afraid of growing up, taking on responsibilities, not reaching their goals, doing badly in their exams. "Right now," says Meredith, "my only challenge is getting a job."
The young people interviewed throughout this supplement vary a great deal in terms of their family background, income, education and ambition. Their expectations for the future vary too: some see many more reasons for hope than others.
But, despite all the problems, many young people are doing their utmost to get all they can out of life. Celeste Houlker, 20, is the editor of Live magazine, which helps inner-city youths acquire media skills in writing, graphic design and photography. "The trend now is for young people to group up and start their own enterprises," she says. "It is a hard time, but, because it is difficult, we are finding other ways to make sure our standard of living is maintained and we have a decent future ahead of us."
Source: Rizwan Syed, Guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19th November 2011
But on the surface at least, many seem as hopeful and positive as young people should be. Amy Baxendale, 20, from Wigan, is currently in her third year of a degree in photography at Falmouth. "I enjoy my freedom to come and go as I please, and having the means to experiment in my line of study before I go out into the big wide world! I enjoy being around likeminded people who are here for the same reason."
Oliver Meredith, 17, from Swindon, has just left college and is looking for work. "I want to get a job, move into a place with some friends and hopefully go into acting. Moving into a flat is likely. Acting is not likely but I'm still hopeful about it."
Nevertheless, there is evidence from many quarters that young people in the UK today really don't have it easy. Take Unicef's Report Card 7, published in 2007. This highlights the extent of the problem, ranking UK youth at the bottom of 20 OECD countries in three out of six dimensions of wellbeing including "family and peer relationships" and "behaviour and risks".
Of course, in practice many young people do have good relationships with their family and friends. According to Baxendale, "being away from my family and my boyfriend for so much of the year is really difficult. I've always been a family girl, and my friends are such an important part of my life."
Some young people have to overcome huge barriers in their lives, notably poverty. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, ethnic minority children experience a higher than average risk of income poverty compared with white children. Poverty has an impact on the sort of education a young person has – from the sort of school they go to, to the likelihood of them attending further or higher education, to the job they do or don't find. Students graduating in these economically straitened times face poor job prospects. In April, data from the Complete University Guide showed that only 64% of students found postgraduate study places or graduate jobs – compared with 68.5% two years earlier. And, according to a survey by Aldi Graduate Recruitment, nepotism is rife – one in three graduates gains employment through family connections.
Combined with the difficulties they may or may not be facing in their own lives, young people have to face the suspicions of adults. From time immemorial, adults have been concerned about the behaviour of young people, yet in recent years – and particularly since this summer's riots – this seems to have turned into a more widespread contempt and fear. This distrust is keenly felt by young people. Jacob Macmillan, 18, from Swindon, is doing further maths and biology A-levels at college. "Adults look at young people with fear, especially when we are in groups. They look down on us too."
Xavier Hussain, 16, a London region media representative for the UK youth parliament (an organisation that gives a voice to 11- to 18-year-olds, which is heard by local and national government), agrees: "Young people are hounded with regular accusations of vandalism and other antisocial behaviour. The recent rioting is a perfect example." However, young people were seen in a good light in the days following the riots, when they were prominent in street cleanup operations organised on social networking sites.
Communicating via sites such as Twitter and Facebook is an integral part of the lives of young people – many of whom simply cannot remember a time without it. "Social networking is important for knowing what's going on," says Macmillan. "It makes communication a lot easier." And for Baxendale: "I use it to keep in touch with my family and friends back home, to Skype with my boyfriend and my mum, to organise university group work, and to get inspiration."
Despite the current doom and gloom, many of the fears of young people seem remarkably similar to those of an older generation: they are afraid of growing up, taking on responsibilities, not reaching their goals, doing badly in their exams. "Right now," says Meredith, "my only challenge is getting a job."
The young people interviewed throughout this supplement vary a great deal in terms of their family background, income, education and ambition. Their expectations for the future vary too: some see many more reasons for hope than others.
But, despite all the problems, many young people are doing their utmost to get all they can out of life. Celeste Houlker, 20, is the editor of Live magazine, which helps inner-city youths acquire media skills in writing, graphic design and photography. "The trend now is for young people to group up and start their own enterprises," she says. "It is a hard time, but, because it is difficult, we are finding other ways to make sure our standard of living is maintained and we have a decent future ahead of us."
Source: Rizwan Syed, Guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19th November 2011
Sunday 20 November 2011
Internships: exploring new ways into work
For the 1.5 million under-35s currently unemployed, there has never been a better time to find work than in this recession. The problem is almost of all it seems to be unpaid. From the websites of private companies to the government's own job board, Graduate Talent Pool, adverts abound for unpaid work experience and internships.
From politics to media and fashion, the traditional "hot jobs" where demand outstrips the possible supply, young graduates and school-leavers are being targeted in an unprecedented way. Luxury brands such as Stella McCartney and Harrods beckon to today's bright young things offering a few weeks, sometimes even months, of experience. They suggest there is the opportunity to gain unprecedented access to the inside workings of their businesses. But when you dig a little deeper, what are these placements actually offering?
Scanning the posts on the Interns Anonymous website, some internships appear to be as dull and dreary as the worst clerical office job, except without the monthly salary. Other posts, though, offer a perfect introduction to the world of work and ultimately a job with the company you've grown to love working for. The biggest sticking point is always pay. It means that only a few can afford to get on the ladder to employment leaving a rump of poorer people behind.
Quintessentially – a "concierge" company co-founded by Tom Parker Bowles, which organises the lives of the rich and famous – has recently admitted to not paying their interns. The company argues that not only do a good proportion of their interns receive jobs with the company after their stint, but that "all tasks are given with a view to improve the intern's understanding of the industry, provide value for their CV, or develop their skills in their chosen sector." However, when asked exactly what was so rewarding, they describe the interns' tasks as "filing documents, assisting with mail and collecting marketing materials".
But internships can be done very differently. The publishing house Penguin says it pays all its interns – a policy that has come down directly from the CEO, Tom Weldon. It even pays expenses for those who do two weeks of shadowing. Paying the minimum wage – this rose to £6.08 an hour for over- 21s on 1 October – can not only mean all the difference to those seeking out work – it can also be a real boon to the company itself.
Penguin's HR executive Ellie Pike says that it would be easy to fill its four 10-week placements with the children of wealthy parents, but argues the company would ultimately suffer as a result.
"Publishing is meant to be a diverse industry," she says. "We publish a wide range of authors and we want a wide range of experience and background from our staff for the business to be successful. I don't think it would do us much good to just have a small minority of the population working here."
However, internships are a positive experience for some people. Gina Reay, 22, works in PR in Harrogate, and had two unpaid internships after she left university. The second led to a full-time job: "I used the experience as an opportunity to prove I was talented and committed and, thankfully, my hard work paid off!" says Reay. "It is an invaluable way to get noticed and, in my opinion, simply a prolonged interview process from an employer's perspective."
There is another push to make sure internships are the work trials they promise to be, rather than cheap ways of businesses getting free labour. After the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, made ending the culture of unpaid internships part of his social mobility strategy this spring, attention has also been focused on the fact that unpaid internships can be deemed a breach of national minimum-wage law.
Judges in recent employment cases have taken the side of interns over employers. Keri Hudson, 21, won more than £1,000 in back-pay after she worked unpaid for six weeks as an intern at the My Village entertainment reviews company. With help from the National Union of Journalists' "cashback for interns" campaign, Hudson scored a victory against the company in May after she claimed to have "practically run the company" alongside a multitude of other unpaid interns.
Becky Heath, from campaigning group Internocracy, has been consulting with companies to make work experience better and more productive for employers and young people alike. She is currently helping to advise the government on drawing up a gold standard on what work experience should be like – but getting the message through can be hard.
"We were at a roundtable event with Nick Clegg's office, the CBI and other employer organisations, and some of the things we were saying about young people's [internship] experiences were completely alien to them," she says.
In mid-September, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills published new guidance on pay which Heath says includes lots of helpful examples on who "should and shouldn't get paid" under the law. However, Heath adds, "What we're not seeing is the government committing to crack down on intern employers who don't pay which is disappointing."
The other major route into employment is an apprenticeship. These government-backed schemes, mainly targeted at school-leavers rather than graduates, are far more structured than internships in the way they develop skills. And thanks to an increase in government funding and ministerial backing, they are enjoying a boom. There is currently enough money to train 360,000 apprentices. The downside is that for those aged 16-18, pay is just £2.60 an hour and there is no ultimate guarantee of a job. But given the rises in tuition fees and the cutting of the educational maintenance allowance, this earn-while-you-learn system, much unloved by past administrations, could become the route of choice for those finishing GCSEs.
There are no easy answers to getting young people back into work. But despite a reputation for being feckless and living off the bank of mum and dad, young people are achieving – the statistics on educational attainment suggest that today's youth are the best educated in British history. They are also the most computer literate and, if given the chance, perhaps the most innovative. What everyone agrees is that they deserve a fair break.
Source: Shiv Malik, Guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19th November 2011
From politics to media and fashion, the traditional "hot jobs" where demand outstrips the possible supply, young graduates and school-leavers are being targeted in an unprecedented way. Luxury brands such as Stella McCartney and Harrods beckon to today's bright young things offering a few weeks, sometimes even months, of experience. They suggest there is the opportunity to gain unprecedented access to the inside workings of their businesses. But when you dig a little deeper, what are these placements actually offering?
Scanning the posts on the Interns Anonymous website, some internships appear to be as dull and dreary as the worst clerical office job, except without the monthly salary. Other posts, though, offer a perfect introduction to the world of work and ultimately a job with the company you've grown to love working for. The biggest sticking point is always pay. It means that only a few can afford to get on the ladder to employment leaving a rump of poorer people behind.
Quintessentially – a "concierge" company co-founded by Tom Parker Bowles, which organises the lives of the rich and famous – has recently admitted to not paying their interns. The company argues that not only do a good proportion of their interns receive jobs with the company after their stint, but that "all tasks are given with a view to improve the intern's understanding of the industry, provide value for their CV, or develop their skills in their chosen sector." However, when asked exactly what was so rewarding, they describe the interns' tasks as "filing documents, assisting with mail and collecting marketing materials".
But internships can be done very differently. The publishing house Penguin says it pays all its interns – a policy that has come down directly from the CEO, Tom Weldon. It even pays expenses for those who do two weeks of shadowing. Paying the minimum wage – this rose to £6.08 an hour for over- 21s on 1 October – can not only mean all the difference to those seeking out work – it can also be a real boon to the company itself.
Penguin's HR executive Ellie Pike says that it would be easy to fill its four 10-week placements with the children of wealthy parents, but argues the company would ultimately suffer as a result.
"Publishing is meant to be a diverse industry," she says. "We publish a wide range of authors and we want a wide range of experience and background from our staff for the business to be successful. I don't think it would do us much good to just have a small minority of the population working here."
However, internships are a positive experience for some people. Gina Reay, 22, works in PR in Harrogate, and had two unpaid internships after she left university. The second led to a full-time job: "I used the experience as an opportunity to prove I was talented and committed and, thankfully, my hard work paid off!" says Reay. "It is an invaluable way to get noticed and, in my opinion, simply a prolonged interview process from an employer's perspective."
There is another push to make sure internships are the work trials they promise to be, rather than cheap ways of businesses getting free labour. After the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, made ending the culture of unpaid internships part of his social mobility strategy this spring, attention has also been focused on the fact that unpaid internships can be deemed a breach of national minimum-wage law.
Judges in recent employment cases have taken the side of interns over employers. Keri Hudson, 21, won more than £1,000 in back-pay after she worked unpaid for six weeks as an intern at the My Village entertainment reviews company. With help from the National Union of Journalists' "cashback for interns" campaign, Hudson scored a victory against the company in May after she claimed to have "practically run the company" alongside a multitude of other unpaid interns.
Becky Heath, from campaigning group Internocracy, has been consulting with companies to make work experience better and more productive for employers and young people alike. She is currently helping to advise the government on drawing up a gold standard on what work experience should be like – but getting the message through can be hard.
"We were at a roundtable event with Nick Clegg's office, the CBI and other employer organisations, and some of the things we were saying about young people's [internship] experiences were completely alien to them," she says.
In mid-September, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills published new guidance on pay which Heath says includes lots of helpful examples on who "should and shouldn't get paid" under the law. However, Heath adds, "What we're not seeing is the government committing to crack down on intern employers who don't pay which is disappointing."
The other major route into employment is an apprenticeship. These government-backed schemes, mainly targeted at school-leavers rather than graduates, are far more structured than internships in the way they develop skills. And thanks to an increase in government funding and ministerial backing, they are enjoying a boom. There is currently enough money to train 360,000 apprentices. The downside is that for those aged 16-18, pay is just £2.60 an hour and there is no ultimate guarantee of a job. But given the rises in tuition fees and the cutting of the educational maintenance allowance, this earn-while-you-learn system, much unloved by past administrations, could become the route of choice for those finishing GCSEs.
There are no easy answers to getting young people back into work. But despite a reputation for being feckless and living off the bank of mum and dad, young people are achieving – the statistics on educational attainment suggest that today's youth are the best educated in British history. They are also the most computer literate and, if given the chance, perhaps the most innovative. What everyone agrees is that they deserve a fair break.
Source: Shiv Malik, Guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19th November 2011
Saturday 19 November 2011
Young graduates prove a win-win
Hundreds of thousands of new graduates are seeking employment each year in a job market which will continue to face challenges for some time.
Twice the number of graduates are chasing every job vacancy compared with a year ago, while youth unemployment has reached 991,000.
Many face a struggle to gain the skills required to give them a head start. While students and graduates must take ultimate responsibility for their own employability, employers have a key role in supporting their development to ensure a future skilled economy and industry.
Aberdeen-based Converged Communication Solutions is one local firm which supports the recruitment of graduates, reaffirming it as a win-win situation for the future of business, industry and the individuals themselves.
Neil Christie, technical director, said: “It’s important SMEs (small and medium enterprises) provide opportunities for graduates to gain experience and develop appropriate skills required for our industry, while also attracting them to stay and work in the north-east.”
The IT industry constantly faces challenges with attracting a talent pool prepared for the fast-moving, commercially-driven workplace, who aren’t attracted away to the rest of the UK and abroad.
He said: “At Converged we offer a variety of services so recruiting experienced professionals with the relevant skills can be challenging. Recruiting graduates through our graduate training scheme enables us to bring individuals with good general IT skills into the business and then train, develop and encourage them in the more complex areas of our services.”
According to figures from the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses), SMEs now account for 99% of all Scottish businesses and for more than 50% of the entire private sector and can be an excellent choice for graduates looking to gain in-depth experience with a real opportunity to make a visible contribution to the company itself.
That’s true for Converged’s current graduates who have just completed their first year graduate training programme.
Colin Cheung and Richard Bain, both graduates from Robert Gordon University, impressed Converged last year during the recruitment process and have become an integral part of the team throughout the year. Neil said: “The benefits and success the guys have brought to the business and the team has been unquestionable.”
Carol McKay from SPD Ltd, one of Converged’s valued clients, commented: “Richard and Colin have proved to be great ambassadors for Converged. They have certainly made a positive addition to our IT support from the Converged team.”
“The experience at Converged has been fantastic,” adds Richard, “We’ve been exposed to more technologies and we’re not just a number. We’ve gained great exposure to every part of the business which has been great for our learning and development. As a small team, and business, the culture is very positive and every day we’re faced with different challenges and opportunities which provide great preparation for our future in the IT industry.”
Richard is due to take up a role at Robert Gordon University while Colin will be continuing at Converged on an in-depth graduate programme for two years.
“It was a steep learning curve coming in at first but the knowledge, experience and opportunities we’ve been afforded by working with a company like Converged have been exceptional,” said Colin.
“University certainly provided a good grounding, but the experience of working directly with customers and a team of colleagues bring real every day challenges from which to develop our skills.”
“Our advice to other graduates would be to have the right attitude and use your initiative, gaining your degree alone does not provide a passport to the boardroom. The IT industry is extremely interesting; it is constantly changing so never expect to stop learning. Working with a small business affords you a great opportunity to gain significant responsibility and input within the business.
“Furthermore find an agency to help you look for work. I sent loads of CVs to many companies and got nowhere. Using an agency that specialises in your industry can really make a difference, especially when they take the time to understand you and what you want to do.”
Colin and Richard both came to Converged through recruitment agents Right People based in Aberdeen.
Shaun Windram, recruitment specialist at Right People, said: “It’s been really tough for graduates over the last few years. Being able to build and develop practical skills is certainly vital to help graduates into the workplace and up the career ladder. It would certainly be great to see more small and medium-sized businesses supporting graduate training schemes alongside the larger organisations to offer greater opportunities and a diverse combination of skills in the IT industry and support sector growth.
Bringing in graduates can provide a number of benefits; they are a long term prospect, cost effective and can provide fresh enthusiasm to the team and complement established teams well.”
“Buoyed by the success of Colin and Richard we would highly recommend other small businesses to bring graduates on to your team,” says Neil.
“They bring new skills and very quickly learn the ins and outs of your business. We plan to recruit for a new graduate position over the next few months with further plans to take on more graduates in 2012. These plans support our growth over the last three-quarters as we continue to expand our client base and service provision.”
Source: Pressandjournal.co.uk, Friday 18th November 2011
Twice the number of graduates are chasing every job vacancy compared with a year ago, while youth unemployment has reached 991,000.
Many face a struggle to gain the skills required to give them a head start. While students and graduates must take ultimate responsibility for their own employability, employers have a key role in supporting their development to ensure a future skilled economy and industry.
Aberdeen-based Converged Communication Solutions is one local firm which supports the recruitment of graduates, reaffirming it as a win-win situation for the future of business, industry and the individuals themselves.
Neil Christie, technical director, said: “It’s important SMEs (small and medium enterprises) provide opportunities for graduates to gain experience and develop appropriate skills required for our industry, while also attracting them to stay and work in the north-east.”
The IT industry constantly faces challenges with attracting a talent pool prepared for the fast-moving, commercially-driven workplace, who aren’t attracted away to the rest of the UK and abroad.
He said: “At Converged we offer a variety of services so recruiting experienced professionals with the relevant skills can be challenging. Recruiting graduates through our graduate training scheme enables us to bring individuals with good general IT skills into the business and then train, develop and encourage them in the more complex areas of our services.”
According to figures from the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses), SMEs now account for 99% of all Scottish businesses and for more than 50% of the entire private sector and can be an excellent choice for graduates looking to gain in-depth experience with a real opportunity to make a visible contribution to the company itself.
That’s true for Converged’s current graduates who have just completed their first year graduate training programme.
Colin Cheung and Richard Bain, both graduates from Robert Gordon University, impressed Converged last year during the recruitment process and have become an integral part of the team throughout the year. Neil said: “The benefits and success the guys have brought to the business and the team has been unquestionable.”
Carol McKay from SPD Ltd, one of Converged’s valued clients, commented: “Richard and Colin have proved to be great ambassadors for Converged. They have certainly made a positive addition to our IT support from the Converged team.”
“The experience at Converged has been fantastic,” adds Richard, “We’ve been exposed to more technologies and we’re not just a number. We’ve gained great exposure to every part of the business which has been great for our learning and development. As a small team, and business, the culture is very positive and every day we’re faced with different challenges and opportunities which provide great preparation for our future in the IT industry.”
Richard is due to take up a role at Robert Gordon University while Colin will be continuing at Converged on an in-depth graduate programme for two years.
“It was a steep learning curve coming in at first but the knowledge, experience and opportunities we’ve been afforded by working with a company like Converged have been exceptional,” said Colin.
“University certainly provided a good grounding, but the experience of working directly with customers and a team of colleagues bring real every day challenges from which to develop our skills.”
“Our advice to other graduates would be to have the right attitude and use your initiative, gaining your degree alone does not provide a passport to the boardroom. The IT industry is extremely interesting; it is constantly changing so never expect to stop learning. Working with a small business affords you a great opportunity to gain significant responsibility and input within the business.
“Furthermore find an agency to help you look for work. I sent loads of CVs to many companies and got nowhere. Using an agency that specialises in your industry can really make a difference, especially when they take the time to understand you and what you want to do.”
Colin and Richard both came to Converged through recruitment agents Right People based in Aberdeen.
Shaun Windram, recruitment specialist at Right People, said: “It’s been really tough for graduates over the last few years. Being able to build and develop practical skills is certainly vital to help graduates into the workplace and up the career ladder. It would certainly be great to see more small and medium-sized businesses supporting graduate training schemes alongside the larger organisations to offer greater opportunities and a diverse combination of skills in the IT industry and support sector growth.
Bringing in graduates can provide a number of benefits; they are a long term prospect, cost effective and can provide fresh enthusiasm to the team and complement established teams well.”
“Buoyed by the success of Colin and Richard we would highly recommend other small businesses to bring graduates on to your team,” says Neil.
“They bring new skills and very quickly learn the ins and outs of your business. We plan to recruit for a new graduate position over the next few months with further plans to take on more graduates in 2012. These plans support our growth over the last three-quarters as we continue to expand our client base and service provision.”
Source: Pressandjournal.co.uk, Friday 18th November 2011
Friday 18 November 2011
Education unions' concern over youth unemployment
Education unions are urging the government to put the issue of youth unemployment at the centre of the political agenda.
The concerns come as figures from the Office for National Statistics show the jobless total for 16- to 24-year-olds has hit a record of 1.02 million.
Government cuts and moves to axe grants for young people are damaging their prospects, union chiefs warned.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said he took the problem "very seriously".
The University and College Union urged the government to deliver policies to help young people without work.
General secretary Sally Hunt said: "Youth unemployment hits one million at a time when young people's access to education is being restricted.
"In order to help young people we need to be bringing in policies that encourage them get on, not erecting financial barriers to education.
"Aside from the financial cost of consigning hundreds of thousands of people to the dole queue, we risk producing a generation with few prospects and little chance to alter their situation."
The National Union of Teachers said the latest figures were "shocking" and accused ministers of attacking young people's life chances with the axing of the education maintenance allowance (EMA) and increased university tuition fees.
General secretary Christine Blower said: "The coalition must put reducing youth unemployment at the centre of the political agenda.
"We need to see practical support and help for students such as vocational training and apprenticeships that are linked to guaranteed employment for those who complete them.
"It is a disgrace that it is almost as expensive to keep a young person out of work as it is to create a job for them. Young people are the future."
Martin Freedman, head of pay, pensions and conditions at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said: "It is all too convenient for the government to blame the truly appalling youth unemployment figures on the eurozone crisis.
"But it is this coalition government's policies and paucity of thought have led to more than one young person in five being without a job.
"By cutting the EMA the government has stopped young people from less well-off homes being able to afford to stay in education.
"The government's sole policy for dealing with youth unemployment, increasing apprenticeships, is clearly in trouble given the lack of economic growth.
"And next year the huge increase in student fees will undoubtedly put many young people off going on to university."
The National Union of Students said there was a crisis in youth unemployment and the government needed to take concrete action immediately.
Vice-president Toni Pearce said: "It is not enough to simply tell young people to wait until things improve as they watch their futures slip away.
"Evidence shows that when young people fall into unemployment that it holds them back for the rest of their lives."
The business secretary said the government was taking concrete action, including the expansion of an existing government-backed apprentice scheme to bring down youth unemployment.
"It's a very serious problem and we take it very seriously," Mr Cable said.
"It's longstanding and it's deep-rooted and there's no silver bullet.
"But it certainly is a very serious problem and we don't want to get into a position where significant numbers of young people can't get into the labour market because they haven't got employment backgrounds."
Source: BBC.co.uk, Wednesday 16th November 2011
The concerns come as figures from the Office for National Statistics show the jobless total for 16- to 24-year-olds has hit a record of 1.02 million.
Government cuts and moves to axe grants for young people are damaging their prospects, union chiefs warned.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said he took the problem "very seriously".
The University and College Union urged the government to deliver policies to help young people without work.
General secretary Sally Hunt said: "Youth unemployment hits one million at a time when young people's access to education is being restricted.
"In order to help young people we need to be bringing in policies that encourage them get on, not erecting financial barriers to education.
"Aside from the financial cost of consigning hundreds of thousands of people to the dole queue, we risk producing a generation with few prospects and little chance to alter their situation."
The National Union of Teachers said the latest figures were "shocking" and accused ministers of attacking young people's life chances with the axing of the education maintenance allowance (EMA) and increased university tuition fees.
General secretary Christine Blower said: "The coalition must put reducing youth unemployment at the centre of the political agenda.
"We need to see practical support and help for students such as vocational training and apprenticeships that are linked to guaranteed employment for those who complete them.
"It is a disgrace that it is almost as expensive to keep a young person out of work as it is to create a job for them. Young people are the future."
Martin Freedman, head of pay, pensions and conditions at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said: "It is all too convenient for the government to blame the truly appalling youth unemployment figures on the eurozone crisis.
"But it is this coalition government's policies and paucity of thought have led to more than one young person in five being without a job.
"By cutting the EMA the government has stopped young people from less well-off homes being able to afford to stay in education.
"The government's sole policy for dealing with youth unemployment, increasing apprenticeships, is clearly in trouble given the lack of economic growth.
"And next year the huge increase in student fees will undoubtedly put many young people off going on to university."
The National Union of Students said there was a crisis in youth unemployment and the government needed to take concrete action immediately.
Vice-president Toni Pearce said: "It is not enough to simply tell young people to wait until things improve as they watch their futures slip away.
"Evidence shows that when young people fall into unemployment that it holds them back for the rest of their lives."
The business secretary said the government was taking concrete action, including the expansion of an existing government-backed apprentice scheme to bring down youth unemployment.
"It's a very serious problem and we take it very seriously," Mr Cable said.
"It's longstanding and it's deep-rooted and there's no silver bullet.
"But it certainly is a very serious problem and we don't want to get into a position where significant numbers of young people can't get into the labour market because they haven't got employment backgrounds."
Source: BBC.co.uk, Wednesday 16th November 2011
Thursday 17 November 2011
Graduates are not receiving enough career advice or training opportunities
It is increasingly important for young people to have the opportunity of training with almost one million 16-24 year olds unemployed.
According to Schneider Trading Associates (STA) the amount of advice and information offered to graduates and school leavers around training and career advice is not enough.
In a recent survey by City & Guilds found that 22% of those studying for A-level and university qualifications haven’t received any careers advice and 28% of BTec and GNVQ students were not given any guidance either. The increase in tuition fees and the lack of graduate jobs available may mean that vocational training opportunities are the most advantageous path. Many companies aren’t offering the opportunity of this training to their graduates, graduate jobs that offer training are few and far between and most employers don’t see the advantages that this can bring.
Matt Silvester, head of training at Schneider, commented: “A new face-to-face National Careers Service for those aged 19 and over is due to be formed in the next six months by Government whilst schools will legally be obliged to offer careers advice.”
This is good news, yet because of the amount of graduate’s unemployed offering this service nationally is going to be the biggest problem. Many recent graduates are losing out on positions on graduate schemes because they don’t have the necessary experience, the dilemma is that they cannot gain this experience because they are not been given the chance.
It has also been reported that around three quarters of employers require applicants to have been rewarded or predicted at least a 2:1 grade. With an average of 83 applicants per graduate job this year graduates must gain extra skills through training, yet they are not receiving this.
Source: Pareto.co.uk, Wednesday 16th November 2011
According to Schneider Trading Associates (STA) the amount of advice and information offered to graduates and school leavers around training and career advice is not enough.
In a recent survey by City & Guilds found that 22% of those studying for A-level and university qualifications haven’t received any careers advice and 28% of BTec and GNVQ students were not given any guidance either. The increase in tuition fees and the lack of graduate jobs available may mean that vocational training opportunities are the most advantageous path. Many companies aren’t offering the opportunity of this training to their graduates, graduate jobs that offer training are few and far between and most employers don’t see the advantages that this can bring.
Matt Silvester, head of training at Schneider, commented: “A new face-to-face National Careers Service for those aged 19 and over is due to be formed in the next six months by Government whilst schools will legally be obliged to offer careers advice.”
This is good news, yet because of the amount of graduate’s unemployed offering this service nationally is going to be the biggest problem. Many recent graduates are losing out on positions on graduate schemes because they don’t have the necessary experience, the dilemma is that they cannot gain this experience because they are not been given the chance.
It has also been reported that around three quarters of employers require applicants to have been rewarded or predicted at least a 2:1 grade. With an average of 83 applicants per graduate job this year graduates must gain extra skills through training, yet they are not receiving this.
Source: Pareto.co.uk, Wednesday 16th November 2011
Wednesday 16 November 2011
'No interviews' after 40 job applications for Leeds graduate
Twenty-two-year-old Ian Pattison has a masters degree in politics, but despite applying for more than 40 jobs, has not yet been invited for an interview.
Mr Pattison, from Roundhay, Leeds, is among a growing number of people aged 16 to 24 who are out of work and claiming benefit. October's figures show youth unemployment has reached a record high of more than one million.
Mr Pattison was among protesters who re-enacted the 1936 Jarrow March earlier this month to raise awareness about youth unemployment.
The group marched from Jarrow, Tyne and Wear, to London 75 years after 200 jobless men marched on the government calling for employment help.
Mr Pattison hopes to become a press officer, but has applied for a range of jobs, including academic mentoring and with charities and advisory bodies.
"There's just not enough jobs out there," he said. "There's big cuts in the public sector and less investment by private businesses so it's much harder to be taken on."
He believed his masters research and voluntary work gave him a good chance for one charity's internship, but later found out he had been one of 100 applicants.
Since September, he has searched for jobs on websites, in newspapers and at job centres.
"I usually don't hear anything back," he said.
He said he was in a better position than many young people because his parents had been "very supportive" and he had avoided mounting debt while studying.
Mr Pattison took postgraduate qualifications to make himself "more employable" in a "worrying" market but was now living on Job Seeker's Allowance.
"To study for my masters I moved back home but I don't really have any prospect of moving out with an income of £53 a week," he said.
He added: "It can be very demoralising when people ask 'what do you do?' and I have to say 'I'm unemployed'... you're labelled by what you are and it's difficult saying you're not doing anything."
However, he believes he will eventually work as a press officer because he did such work voluntarily for student and youth campaigns and was good at it.
He said he was inspired by taking part in the Jarrow march re-enactment and that some marchers were even offered jobs along the 300-mile route.
Protesters handed a petition to 10 Downing Street calling for job creation schemes, new apprenticeships as well as the reinstatement of the Education Maintenance Allowance and axed youth services.
Mr Pattison said he was wary of taking work which paid the minimum wage or below as well as jobs "with terrible conditions" or hidden contracts.
"I put my time into the best applications, the best CVs and best covering letters and I want to focus on getting the job and career I want," he said.
Twenty-one-year-old Stephanie Maston has also moved back in with her parents after falling on hard times.
Ms Maston, from Ilkley, Leeds, said she was getting her life on track when she lost Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) of about £50 a week and housing benefit after being assessed under new government rules.
"I'm not on Job Seeker's Allowance, but there's a lot of people like me, not claiming it but who are unemployed," she said.
"It just shows the figures are a lot higher than they seem."
Ms Maston has bipolar disorder and is a recovering anorexic and claims she was wrongly assessed under the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) scheme.
She had been looking into voluntary placements to see whether teaching or veterinary work were suitable careers, but now felt demoralised.
"Since moving back home my morale has completely dropped and my self confidence has dropped. I just think why should I get a voluntary job when it won't lead to an actual job after that?" she said.
Like many young people she has begun campaigning against cuts which she said were happening while aid was going to "already rich" banks and businesses.
Ms Maston, who has joined the Occupy Leeds protest, called for decent affordable homes and an improved welfare system.
"We are the first generation who are worse off than our parents are and it's not just unfortunate, it's ridiculous - it just doesn't make sense," she said.
The government has put rises in youth unemployment down to the international financial crisis. Prime Minister David Cameron is hosting a breakfast with business leaders to discuss the issue.
Source: BBC.co.uk, Wednesday 16th November 2011
Mr Pattison, from Roundhay, Leeds, is among a growing number of people aged 16 to 24 who are out of work and claiming benefit. October's figures show youth unemployment has reached a record high of more than one million.
Mr Pattison was among protesters who re-enacted the 1936 Jarrow March earlier this month to raise awareness about youth unemployment.
The group marched from Jarrow, Tyne and Wear, to London 75 years after 200 jobless men marched on the government calling for employment help.
Mr Pattison hopes to become a press officer, but has applied for a range of jobs, including academic mentoring and with charities and advisory bodies.
"There's just not enough jobs out there," he said. "There's big cuts in the public sector and less investment by private businesses so it's much harder to be taken on."
He believed his masters research and voluntary work gave him a good chance for one charity's internship, but later found out he had been one of 100 applicants.
Since September, he has searched for jobs on websites, in newspapers and at job centres.
"I usually don't hear anything back," he said.
He said he was in a better position than many young people because his parents had been "very supportive" and he had avoided mounting debt while studying.
Mr Pattison took postgraduate qualifications to make himself "more employable" in a "worrying" market but was now living on Job Seeker's Allowance.
"To study for my masters I moved back home but I don't really have any prospect of moving out with an income of £53 a week," he said.
He added: "It can be very demoralising when people ask 'what do you do?' and I have to say 'I'm unemployed'... you're labelled by what you are and it's difficult saying you're not doing anything."
However, he believes he will eventually work as a press officer because he did such work voluntarily for student and youth campaigns and was good at it.
He said he was inspired by taking part in the Jarrow march re-enactment and that some marchers were even offered jobs along the 300-mile route.
Protesters handed a petition to 10 Downing Street calling for job creation schemes, new apprenticeships as well as the reinstatement of the Education Maintenance Allowance and axed youth services.
Mr Pattison said he was wary of taking work which paid the minimum wage or below as well as jobs "with terrible conditions" or hidden contracts.
"I put my time into the best applications, the best CVs and best covering letters and I want to focus on getting the job and career I want," he said.
Twenty-one-year-old Stephanie Maston has also moved back in with her parents after falling on hard times.
Ms Maston, from Ilkley, Leeds, said she was getting her life on track when she lost Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) of about £50 a week and housing benefit after being assessed under new government rules.
"I'm not on Job Seeker's Allowance, but there's a lot of people like me, not claiming it but who are unemployed," she said.
"It just shows the figures are a lot higher than they seem."
Ms Maston has bipolar disorder and is a recovering anorexic and claims she was wrongly assessed under the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) scheme.
She had been looking into voluntary placements to see whether teaching or veterinary work were suitable careers, but now felt demoralised.
"Since moving back home my morale has completely dropped and my self confidence has dropped. I just think why should I get a voluntary job when it won't lead to an actual job after that?" she said.
Like many young people she has begun campaigning against cuts which she said were happening while aid was going to "already rich" banks and businesses.
Ms Maston, who has joined the Occupy Leeds protest, called for decent affordable homes and an improved welfare system.
"We are the first generation who are worse off than our parents are and it's not just unfortunate, it's ridiculous - it just doesn't make sense," she said.
The government has put rises in youth unemployment down to the international financial crisis. Prime Minister David Cameron is hosting a breakfast with business leaders to discuss the issue.
Source: BBC.co.uk, Wednesday 16th November 2011
Tuesday 15 November 2011
Graduates learn some networking skills
If you turn up at a networking event to find yourself surrounded by groups of people already chatting intently, how do you break into a conversation? "Avoid groups of four," says David Radcliffe, a 22-year-old graduate in criminology and sociology from Liverpool University.
"Look for people standing in a V shape," Ayesha Salahuddin, also 22, who studied law, adds. "Their body language is implying they're being welcoming."
And how do you get away when the conversation has died? You can conveniently spot someone across the room and excuse yourself saying you need to speak to them, he says. Failing that, there's always the old fallback of saying you need to nip to the gents or ladies.
Radcliffe and Salahuddin learned their new networking skills at a "graduate bootcamp" run by Liverpool University's careers service, in partnership with the city's chamber of commerce.
With the latest figures showing graduate unemployment at a 15-year high, Liverpool, along with other universities, believes these "soft skills" are more important than ever. Recent Higher Education Statistics Agency figures revealed that more than a quarter of graduates are still without full-time work more than three years after leaving university.
Once, your degree alone would get you a job, says Paul Redmond, head of the careers and employability service. Today employers can afford to demand much more of prospective staff. "The competition for jobs is so intense, and often the differentiators are those so-called soft skills," he says. "Small talk isn't small talk in a business setting."
So far, 185 graduates have been trained on the 10-day Gradvantage programme. Of those who have been through the course, only 32 had graduated this year. "Once the credit crunch happened we thought 'we've got to start doing different things for graduates'," Redmond says.
Research by the Sutton Trust in 2009 found that while only 7% of children in the UK are privately educated, the majority of those at the top of the leading professions went to independent fee-paying schools. Among the leading judges and barristers, seven in 10 benefited from a private education, as well as 55% of partners at top law firms and 54% of leading journalists and medics.
And as unpaid internships – often obtained through family contacts – become increasingly ubiquitous, experts on social mobility believe young people from less privileged backgrounds are being put at an even greater disadvantage.
Gradvantage is not specifically aimed at graduates from less well-off families – anyone based in Merseyside, with a degree from any university, can participate (another of its aims is to encourage graduates to stay in the area).
But Redmond hopes it will help to create a more level playing field for young people who don't necessarily have the ready-built networks of their more middle-class peers.
Paul Cullinan, who works for the service liaising with employers and also teaches the networking skills section, gets the groups to map the people they know as a diagram to get them thinking where fruitful links might be.
"You get some people saying they don't know anyone," says project co-ordinator Sharon Nicholson. "It's not always someone in your network who can help, but they might be able to put you in touch with someone else who can. Some people do struggle with that to begin with."
Graduates are taught the harsh reality that while they might be looking for jobs on websites and in newspapers, many employers only advertise vacancies once they've looked internally for candidates and then asked contacts if they know anyone suitable. This means that making themselves known to those potential employers is imperative.
"We encourage them to go to the sorts of places where the people they want to speak to hang out – going to recruitment fairs and not just picking up the leaflets, but talking to people and getting business cards," says Nicholson.
The course aims to be as hands-on as possible: Cullinan demonstrates his tips on getting the most out of networking events by telling half the group to start chatting amongst themselves, while the others observe their body language.
"If people are standing face to face, they're saying they don't want anyone else to join in, but slowly but surely they'll open out," he says. "That's when to introduce yourself."
Other elements include mock interviews and putting together group presentations to test public speaking skills. Graduates may also be able to secure a 14-hour-a-week (unpaid) work experience placement through the chamber of commerce, lasting 13 or 26 weeks.
Martin Pennington, the interim chief executive of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, says universities have been focusing increasingly on skills like networking since the recession. "It's not just about helping with their CV or job application, which careers services have always done, but help with selling yourself, getting out there and pushing yourself in front of employers.
It's possible the advice on how to work a room would sound obvious to a seasoned professional, but for recent students it has been an eye-opener.
Chris Kennedy, 22, who studied psychology at Liverpool, says he didn't realise the value of networking. "I honestly didn't even know what it really meant before the session. Now I've found out about all sorts of events and I feel a lot more confident I can get something out of them."
"While you're at university, you've been taught to do online applications, and everything is very computer-based," Salahuddin says.
"Paul's point was 'what's wrong with face-to-face interaction?'. That's something I've lost at university, just going out there and speaking to people."
Source: Rachel Williams, Guardian.co.uk, Monday 14th November 2011
"Look for people standing in a V shape," Ayesha Salahuddin, also 22, who studied law, adds. "Their body language is implying they're being welcoming."
And how do you get away when the conversation has died? You can conveniently spot someone across the room and excuse yourself saying you need to speak to them, he says. Failing that, there's always the old fallback of saying you need to nip to the gents or ladies.
Radcliffe and Salahuddin learned their new networking skills at a "graduate bootcamp" run by Liverpool University's careers service, in partnership with the city's chamber of commerce.
With the latest figures showing graduate unemployment at a 15-year high, Liverpool, along with other universities, believes these "soft skills" are more important than ever. Recent Higher Education Statistics Agency figures revealed that more than a quarter of graduates are still without full-time work more than three years after leaving university.
Once, your degree alone would get you a job, says Paul Redmond, head of the careers and employability service. Today employers can afford to demand much more of prospective staff. "The competition for jobs is so intense, and often the differentiators are those so-called soft skills," he says. "Small talk isn't small talk in a business setting."
So far, 185 graduates have been trained on the 10-day Gradvantage programme. Of those who have been through the course, only 32 had graduated this year. "Once the credit crunch happened we thought 'we've got to start doing different things for graduates'," Redmond says.
Research by the Sutton Trust in 2009 found that while only 7% of children in the UK are privately educated, the majority of those at the top of the leading professions went to independent fee-paying schools. Among the leading judges and barristers, seven in 10 benefited from a private education, as well as 55% of partners at top law firms and 54% of leading journalists and medics.
And as unpaid internships – often obtained through family contacts – become increasingly ubiquitous, experts on social mobility believe young people from less privileged backgrounds are being put at an even greater disadvantage.
Gradvantage is not specifically aimed at graduates from less well-off families – anyone based in Merseyside, with a degree from any university, can participate (another of its aims is to encourage graduates to stay in the area).
But Redmond hopes it will help to create a more level playing field for young people who don't necessarily have the ready-built networks of their more middle-class peers.
Paul Cullinan, who works for the service liaising with employers and also teaches the networking skills section, gets the groups to map the people they know as a diagram to get them thinking where fruitful links might be.
"You get some people saying they don't know anyone," says project co-ordinator Sharon Nicholson. "It's not always someone in your network who can help, but they might be able to put you in touch with someone else who can. Some people do struggle with that to begin with."
Graduates are taught the harsh reality that while they might be looking for jobs on websites and in newspapers, many employers only advertise vacancies once they've looked internally for candidates and then asked contacts if they know anyone suitable. This means that making themselves known to those potential employers is imperative.
"We encourage them to go to the sorts of places where the people they want to speak to hang out – going to recruitment fairs and not just picking up the leaflets, but talking to people and getting business cards," says Nicholson.
The course aims to be as hands-on as possible: Cullinan demonstrates his tips on getting the most out of networking events by telling half the group to start chatting amongst themselves, while the others observe their body language.
"If people are standing face to face, they're saying they don't want anyone else to join in, but slowly but surely they'll open out," he says. "That's when to introduce yourself."
Other elements include mock interviews and putting together group presentations to test public speaking skills. Graduates may also be able to secure a 14-hour-a-week (unpaid) work experience placement through the chamber of commerce, lasting 13 or 26 weeks.
Martin Pennington, the interim chief executive of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, says universities have been focusing increasingly on skills like networking since the recession. "It's not just about helping with their CV or job application, which careers services have always done, but help with selling yourself, getting out there and pushing yourself in front of employers.
It's possible the advice on how to work a room would sound obvious to a seasoned professional, but for recent students it has been an eye-opener.
Chris Kennedy, 22, who studied psychology at Liverpool, says he didn't realise the value of networking. "I honestly didn't even know what it really meant before the session. Now I've found out about all sorts of events and I feel a lot more confident I can get something out of them."
"While you're at university, you've been taught to do online applications, and everything is very computer-based," Salahuddin says.
"Paul's point was 'what's wrong with face-to-face interaction?'. That's something I've lost at university, just going out there and speaking to people."
Source: Rachel Williams, Guardian.co.uk, Monday 14th November 2011
Monday 14 November 2011
Graduate Job Prospects Improving Say Hescu
A report by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HESCU) suggests that the number of people in graduate jobs has improved by almost 10 per cent on last year.
The report is based on a survey of over 230 thousand graduates and found that close to 150 thousand 2010 graduates had managed to secure a graduate job within six months of finishing their degree. That 63.4 per cent conversion rate represents an improvement of nearly 10 per cent on graduates of 2009.
Architect graduates were the biggest beneficiaries of new graduate job vacancies with the sector improving by over 70 per cent compared to last year. Marketing and advertising vacancies for graduates also showed a strong improvement, with almost a third more places filled than graduates of 2009 managed.
It is the first time that graduate unemployment has fallen in the United Kingdom since the recession began with, overall, just a fraction short of 7 in 10 graduates finding employment of some kind within six months, even if that wasn’t a graduate job.
Deputy research director with the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Charlie Ball, welcomed the report’s findings but warned that graduates are not out of the woods completely just yet.
“Slow but sustained economic recovery should be mirrored in the graduate labour market but developments over the next few months will need to be closely monitored. Many parts of the graduate employment market remain fragile, and recovery has not spread to all sectors or regions of the country,” said Mr Ball.
The market for graduate jobs was still susceptible to the current economic climate so there are no guarantees that a full recovery will happen imminently, added Mr Ball.
Source: E4s.co.uk, Monday 14th November 2011
The report is based on a survey of over 230 thousand graduates and found that close to 150 thousand 2010 graduates had managed to secure a graduate job within six months of finishing their degree. That 63.4 per cent conversion rate represents an improvement of nearly 10 per cent on graduates of 2009.
Architect graduates were the biggest beneficiaries of new graduate job vacancies with the sector improving by over 70 per cent compared to last year. Marketing and advertising vacancies for graduates also showed a strong improvement, with almost a third more places filled than graduates of 2009 managed.
It is the first time that graduate unemployment has fallen in the United Kingdom since the recession began with, overall, just a fraction short of 7 in 10 graduates finding employment of some kind within six months, even if that wasn’t a graduate job.
Deputy research director with the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Charlie Ball, welcomed the report’s findings but warned that graduates are not out of the woods completely just yet.
“Slow but sustained economic recovery should be mirrored in the graduate labour market but developments over the next few months will need to be closely monitored. Many parts of the graduate employment market remain fragile, and recovery has not spread to all sectors or regions of the country,” said Mr Ball.
The market for graduate jobs was still susceptible to the current economic climate so there are no guarantees that a full recovery will happen imminently, added Mr Ball.
Source: E4s.co.uk, Monday 14th November 2011
Sunday 13 November 2011
Young entrepreneurs are finding the courage to turn ideas into reality
Tom Morgan doesn't mind being called a jammy devil.
The 32 year-old fine-art graduate fully admits his business idea was somewhat of a fluke and came from having the guts to ask his university to sponsor his final-year art-project-turned hobby – now a moneymaking business employing 20 staff.
He is the founder of The Adventurists, a Bristol-based "experience" company offering thrill-seekers unconventional trips abroad, ranging from a 10,000-mile car rally across Mongolia to a 3,000-mile rickshaw run in India.
It all started when he convinced his university to fund his first trip to Asia. "I used art as an excuse and got them to pay for me to go abroad in my final year," he said. That is where he got the idea for his business.
The young entrepreneur now sells enough "adventures" to help him and his staff draw a decent salary and keep as far away from the more usual employment rat race as possible – Morgan's sole motivation for going it alone. Perhaps he is less jammy and more cunning.
With Global Entrepreneurship Week kicking off tomorrow, the Government is hoping more students and recent graduates like Morgan will take the initiative to turn their business ideas into a reality, helping to create wealth and jobs for the ailing UK economy.
To celebrate the best in student enterprise, Telegraph Media Group has teamed up with Lloyds Banking Group to launch a competition to find Britain's best student and graduate businesses – with £50,000 up for grabs for the winner to invest in their company. Starting from today, university and graduate entrepreneurs are invited to enter the Lloyds TSB Enterprise Awards to compete for regional and national recognition, the significant cash prize and two years' worth of mentoring involving senior executives from Lloyds.
John Maltby, group director, commercial, at the bank, explains: "We want to ensure that the talent emerging from our universities does not go unrecognised, and play our part in nurturing and supporting entrepreneurs, to give them the best chance of future growth." The competition taps into Britain's "proud history" of enterprise, he says.
It comes as new research reveals six out of 10 undergraduates plan to set up their own business in the future, with a fifth of those keen to do so within three years – a promising sign if the UK economy is to rebalance itself towards innovation and job creation.
The study of 2,017 recent and current university students by Lloyds found that one in 10 had already taken the plunge, with almost half of those saying they wanted to control their own destiny and were excited by running a business.
Students taking creative subjects were more likely to have already set up a firm compared with business students, the report showed.
However, more than half the students said their biggest challenge in starting a business was raising finance, with other concerns including how to actually set up and deal with legal matters.
The majority believed more business skills should be taught at school and university, with three quarters wanting better advice from educational institutions and banks on how to run a business.
It's a familiar message in many business quarters. Jamie Murray-Wells, the founder of online retailer Glasses Direct – who started the business aged 21 during his final year at university – says the UK is missing out on huge untapped potential by failing to encourage and inform more young people about enterprise.
The latest official figures show that just 4pc of graduates are self-employed after university, with 72pc entering full-time work. Murray-Wells believes the number of self-employed university leavers could rise to 10pc with the right encouragement.
"When you're at university, the general assumption is that you're going to have a career and work for someone. Becoming an entrepreneur is seen as an outside, slightly eccentric, very high-risk – maybe a bit cowboyish – thing to do," he said.
The 28 year-old believes universities could be like breeding grounds for new businesses if young people were given greater "permission" by their teachers to have a go at enterprise. Students are able to test out their ideas and products on others cheaply and easily, while tapping into all the disciplines they need to get their business up and running – from marketing to computer programming, he says.
He has plenty of ideas for encouraging student enterprise, including a "Duke of Edinburgh-style" achievement scheme that praises entrepreneurial flair. The Government should also give angel investors tax relief to help them back student start-ups, he says.
But universities could also set aside more time in the curriculum to encourage entrepreneurial skills, such as project work or setting up a charity to raise money for a particular cause, Murray-Wells believes.
"In universities we have a melting pot of many different talents and people with big vision. We could be doing a lot more to tap that source – that's where the next Google is going to come from. It's about making entrepreneurialism acceptable and giving students permission to be an entrepreneur."
This is exactly what the University of Hertfordshire – recently named entrepreneurial university of the year by the Times Higher Education magazine – does.
Professor Nigel Culkin, enterprise director at the university, says lecturers work towards key performance indicators which demand evidence of innovation and enterprise in the curriculum. This could be by setting coursework that obliges students to work in teams, or creates opportunities for them to visit local employers.
"If nothing [like this] was going on, it would pass the students by," he says. "The default mode at most universities is to talk about getting a job, so we have to have extra-curricular enterprise activities going on to mitigate against that."
The university actively promotes industry placements, talks and advice on enterprise. The UK risks "falling behind" on an international scale if more universities don't try harder to spur innovation and wealth creation, Prof Culkin says.
But he remains realistic. He knows that not every student has the desire or skill to set up their own business. "But encouraging teamwork and communication also helps to overcome many of those complaints that employers make [about graduates]," he says. Many businesses, particularly in the current climate, are crying out for fresh blood that can deliver innovation and entrepreneurial flair.
Morgan – who recalls that setting up a business was "never really discussed as an option" during his education – agrees students should at least be encouraged to give enterprise a go and not be afraid of failure.
"Everyone I know has ideas about a business that can work, but people don't implement those ideas. People should be encouraged to just do it," he says, adding that the rewards are enormous for those who can break the mould of getting a "normal" job.
"It's easy to make money – just become a banker. But money has never really been my motive. Running a business for me is about ideas and passion."
Source: Louisa Peacock, Telegraph.co.uk, Sunday 13th November 2011
The 32 year-old fine-art graduate fully admits his business idea was somewhat of a fluke and came from having the guts to ask his university to sponsor his final-year art-project-turned hobby – now a moneymaking business employing 20 staff.
He is the founder of The Adventurists, a Bristol-based "experience" company offering thrill-seekers unconventional trips abroad, ranging from a 10,000-mile car rally across Mongolia to a 3,000-mile rickshaw run in India.
It all started when he convinced his university to fund his first trip to Asia. "I used art as an excuse and got them to pay for me to go abroad in my final year," he said. That is where he got the idea for his business.
The young entrepreneur now sells enough "adventures" to help him and his staff draw a decent salary and keep as far away from the more usual employment rat race as possible – Morgan's sole motivation for going it alone. Perhaps he is less jammy and more cunning.
With Global Entrepreneurship Week kicking off tomorrow, the Government is hoping more students and recent graduates like Morgan will take the initiative to turn their business ideas into a reality, helping to create wealth and jobs for the ailing UK economy.
To celebrate the best in student enterprise, Telegraph Media Group has teamed up with Lloyds Banking Group to launch a competition to find Britain's best student and graduate businesses – with £50,000 up for grabs for the winner to invest in their company. Starting from today, university and graduate entrepreneurs are invited to enter the Lloyds TSB Enterprise Awards to compete for regional and national recognition, the significant cash prize and two years' worth of mentoring involving senior executives from Lloyds.
John Maltby, group director, commercial, at the bank, explains: "We want to ensure that the talent emerging from our universities does not go unrecognised, and play our part in nurturing and supporting entrepreneurs, to give them the best chance of future growth." The competition taps into Britain's "proud history" of enterprise, he says.
It comes as new research reveals six out of 10 undergraduates plan to set up their own business in the future, with a fifth of those keen to do so within three years – a promising sign if the UK economy is to rebalance itself towards innovation and job creation.
The study of 2,017 recent and current university students by Lloyds found that one in 10 had already taken the plunge, with almost half of those saying they wanted to control their own destiny and were excited by running a business.
Students taking creative subjects were more likely to have already set up a firm compared with business students, the report showed.
However, more than half the students said their biggest challenge in starting a business was raising finance, with other concerns including how to actually set up and deal with legal matters.
The majority believed more business skills should be taught at school and university, with three quarters wanting better advice from educational institutions and banks on how to run a business.
It's a familiar message in many business quarters. Jamie Murray-Wells, the founder of online retailer Glasses Direct – who started the business aged 21 during his final year at university – says the UK is missing out on huge untapped potential by failing to encourage and inform more young people about enterprise.
The latest official figures show that just 4pc of graduates are self-employed after university, with 72pc entering full-time work. Murray-Wells believes the number of self-employed university leavers could rise to 10pc with the right encouragement.
"When you're at university, the general assumption is that you're going to have a career and work for someone. Becoming an entrepreneur is seen as an outside, slightly eccentric, very high-risk – maybe a bit cowboyish – thing to do," he said.
The 28 year-old believes universities could be like breeding grounds for new businesses if young people were given greater "permission" by their teachers to have a go at enterprise. Students are able to test out their ideas and products on others cheaply and easily, while tapping into all the disciplines they need to get their business up and running – from marketing to computer programming, he says.
He has plenty of ideas for encouraging student enterprise, including a "Duke of Edinburgh-style" achievement scheme that praises entrepreneurial flair. The Government should also give angel investors tax relief to help them back student start-ups, he says.
But universities could also set aside more time in the curriculum to encourage entrepreneurial skills, such as project work or setting up a charity to raise money for a particular cause, Murray-Wells believes.
"In universities we have a melting pot of many different talents and people with big vision. We could be doing a lot more to tap that source – that's where the next Google is going to come from. It's about making entrepreneurialism acceptable and giving students permission to be an entrepreneur."
This is exactly what the University of Hertfordshire – recently named entrepreneurial university of the year by the Times Higher Education magazine – does.
Professor Nigel Culkin, enterprise director at the university, says lecturers work towards key performance indicators which demand evidence of innovation and enterprise in the curriculum. This could be by setting coursework that obliges students to work in teams, or creates opportunities for them to visit local employers.
"If nothing [like this] was going on, it would pass the students by," he says. "The default mode at most universities is to talk about getting a job, so we have to have extra-curricular enterprise activities going on to mitigate against that."
The university actively promotes industry placements, talks and advice on enterprise. The UK risks "falling behind" on an international scale if more universities don't try harder to spur innovation and wealth creation, Prof Culkin says.
But he remains realistic. He knows that not every student has the desire or skill to set up their own business. "But encouraging teamwork and communication also helps to overcome many of those complaints that employers make [about graduates]," he says. Many businesses, particularly in the current climate, are crying out for fresh blood that can deliver innovation and entrepreneurial flair.
Morgan – who recalls that setting up a business was "never really discussed as an option" during his education – agrees students should at least be encouraged to give enterprise a go and not be afraid of failure.
"Everyone I know has ideas about a business that can work, but people don't implement those ideas. People should be encouraged to just do it," he says, adding that the rewards are enormous for those who can break the mould of getting a "normal" job.
"It's easy to make money – just become a banker. But money has never really been my motive. Running a business for me is about ideas and passion."
Source: Louisa Peacock, Telegraph.co.uk, Sunday 13th November 2011
Saturday 12 November 2011
A Graduate in China - Where I Arrive in Guangzhou to Start Teaching English
Ni hao from Guangzhou! Why am I here, one of 13 million in China's third largest city? And what am I doing, a middle-class history graduate in the heart of this humid, sub-tropical centre of Oriental industry?
It was Easter when I decided not to take up my university place for a law conversion course, increase my debt and still be unemployed. Instead, I invested £900 in a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course (TEFL) in order to follow my girlfriend East.
Surely this was also an excellent way to expand my CV and open up employment opportunities across the planet? In fact, the TEFL course taught me more about grammar than 13 years of school and three of university! What's a gerund among friends?
My problems began when the course ended. I had sorted out a job in China before I started the TEFL course, largely because my girlfriend and a few other university friends were already there. But I do not recommend getting a job before doing a TEFL.
This is why. Two weeks after completing the course, a lady I had never spoken to at the Phoenix City School emailed me in a brusque manner demanding my TEFL certificate. I told her that it took a number of weeks to process the certificate and made a joke about British bureaucracy verses Chinese efficiency. In hindsight, this was not a good idea.
My jokes went down like talk of Tibetan independence and I realised that humour was not the way forward. As the correspondence continued it became clear that she was an Oriental version of the school matron: commanding yet sympathetic.
I signed a contract that said I would start on 1 September, but as the emails went from one side of the world to the other, August all but disappeared. Once it became clear that I would not be going at the same time as my girlfriend and other new teachers, I resigned myself to a start a couple of weeks later.
More hurdles suddenly appeared on the track. It appeared that my teaching experience was insufficient to obtain a working permit. This had not happened to my peers, who had applied barely weeks earlier. The law had changed. Two years' teaching experience were now necessary to obtain a work permit. This school appeared to know nothing of the tightened legislation.
But hurdles are put there for jumping and I made it at the second attempt. I've now been in China for two and a half weeks and have been teaching most days. The problem with accepting a job before getting your hands on a TEFL certificate is that language schools need all your documents before they can apply for your visa. I am known here as a 'foreign expert' which means I have a skill and/or qualification to prove it. Remember that if you decide to follow my footsteps.
The journey here was not one I would wish on a school matron, or anyone. Family visits, a lingering hangover from a drunken reunion with university friends, luggage 10kg overweight, tearful farewells, a desperate conversation with the check-in lady and a Burger King. All that and eventually I was on the plane.
Not having a personal TV screen was as bad as all the visa disappointments. The Atlantic was not like this! A mere 19 hours of flying and two hours of immigration later I arrived to meet a gleeful girlfriend and my 'school matron', a very small, over-excited Chinese lady of around 25.
My first impressions were smog, heat and traffic. How can a city the size of Guangzhou manage with an airport terminal about the size of Stansted's? The sheer volume of people and cars make the arrivals pick-up area utterly chaotic.
But that was serene compared to what followed: my first experience of Chinese roads. With heavy traffic in Britain, most road users stay in their lane and weather the storm. But in China, at the first sign of congestion, everyone changes lane as a point of principle. Hairy manoeuvres in one direction while indicating the opposite are normal. Lorries heaving with cargoes of all shapes and sizes lumber along in the middle lane and the horn does not signal discontent, but determine intent. To beep whenever and wherever possible is expected.
After an hour of near-death experiences I made it to my home for the next eight months. In this blog I will chart my experiences for your edification and, hopefully, entertainment. There is already much to tell.
I look forward to discussing the differences between China and Britain, between the Orient and the Occident and supplying Huffington readers with an idea of life in this part of the world.
Source: Sam Bence, Huffingtonpost.co.uk, Saturday 12th November 2011
It was Easter when I decided not to take up my university place for a law conversion course, increase my debt and still be unemployed. Instead, I invested £900 in a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course (TEFL) in order to follow my girlfriend East.
Surely this was also an excellent way to expand my CV and open up employment opportunities across the planet? In fact, the TEFL course taught me more about grammar than 13 years of school and three of university! What's a gerund among friends?
My problems began when the course ended. I had sorted out a job in China before I started the TEFL course, largely because my girlfriend and a few other university friends were already there. But I do not recommend getting a job before doing a TEFL.
This is why. Two weeks after completing the course, a lady I had never spoken to at the Phoenix City School emailed me in a brusque manner demanding my TEFL certificate. I told her that it took a number of weeks to process the certificate and made a joke about British bureaucracy verses Chinese efficiency. In hindsight, this was not a good idea.
My jokes went down like talk of Tibetan independence and I realised that humour was not the way forward. As the correspondence continued it became clear that she was an Oriental version of the school matron: commanding yet sympathetic.
I signed a contract that said I would start on 1 September, but as the emails went from one side of the world to the other, August all but disappeared. Once it became clear that I would not be going at the same time as my girlfriend and other new teachers, I resigned myself to a start a couple of weeks later.
More hurdles suddenly appeared on the track. It appeared that my teaching experience was insufficient to obtain a working permit. This had not happened to my peers, who had applied barely weeks earlier. The law had changed. Two years' teaching experience were now necessary to obtain a work permit. This school appeared to know nothing of the tightened legislation.
But hurdles are put there for jumping and I made it at the second attempt. I've now been in China for two and a half weeks and have been teaching most days. The problem with accepting a job before getting your hands on a TEFL certificate is that language schools need all your documents before they can apply for your visa. I am known here as a 'foreign expert' which means I have a skill and/or qualification to prove it. Remember that if you decide to follow my footsteps.
The journey here was not one I would wish on a school matron, or anyone. Family visits, a lingering hangover from a drunken reunion with university friends, luggage 10kg overweight, tearful farewells, a desperate conversation with the check-in lady and a Burger King. All that and eventually I was on the plane.
Not having a personal TV screen was as bad as all the visa disappointments. The Atlantic was not like this! A mere 19 hours of flying and two hours of immigration later I arrived to meet a gleeful girlfriend and my 'school matron', a very small, over-excited Chinese lady of around 25.
My first impressions were smog, heat and traffic. How can a city the size of Guangzhou manage with an airport terminal about the size of Stansted's? The sheer volume of people and cars make the arrivals pick-up area utterly chaotic.
But that was serene compared to what followed: my first experience of Chinese roads. With heavy traffic in Britain, most road users stay in their lane and weather the storm. But in China, at the first sign of congestion, everyone changes lane as a point of principle. Hairy manoeuvres in one direction while indicating the opposite are normal. Lorries heaving with cargoes of all shapes and sizes lumber along in the middle lane and the horn does not signal discontent, but determine intent. To beep whenever and wherever possible is expected.
After an hour of near-death experiences I made it to my home for the next eight months. In this blog I will chart my experiences for your edification and, hopefully, entertainment. There is already much to tell.
I look forward to discussing the differences between China and Britain, between the Orient and the Occident and supplying Huffington readers with an idea of life in this part of the world.
Source: Sam Bence, Huffingtonpost.co.uk, Saturday 12th November 2011
Friday 11 November 2011
Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games boost for graduates
A £10m scheme which aims to provide 1,000 jobs for graduates as a legacy of the 2014 Commonwealth Games is being unveiled by Glasgow City Council.
The Commonwealth Graduate Fund will pay employers 50% of the salary costs for graduates they take on, up to a maximum of £10,000 per graduate for one year.
It follows several other city projects linked to the legacy of the games.
They include the Commonwealth Apprenticeship Initiative and the Commonwealth Jobs Fund.
The graduate initiative is being unveiled by council leader Gordon Matheson at the 14th State of the City Economy Conference.
Mr Matheson said his vision for Glasgow was to create "a city of excellence", where young people were encouraged to succeed and businesses supported to grow.
He said: "Times are hard. But there are things the council can do to help - by maintaining our capital programme, allowing industry leaders to shape our economic strategy, by looking at new ways of funding, improving the planning system, and offering support to help you create jobs and foster entrepreneurship."
He added: "Graduates account for 32% of our workforce - well above the UK average - and I want those leaving university to believe they can fulfil their dreams in this city."
Glasgow Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stuart Patrick said he warmly welcome the move by the city council.
He added: "We know the labour market is especially tough for young new entrants at this time at all skill levels.
"We have already seen the positive impact of the two existing Commonwealth funds on youth unemployment in Glasgow.
"To include graduates with this new fund recognises the challenges they are also facing in securing jobs, helping us retain the talent that will help attract new investment to the city in the future."
Other measures being announced by Mr Matheson include the creation of youth enterprise zones, offering young people mentoring, business start-up advice and training and support as well as micro-finance.
The local authority estimates that its Commonwealth Apprenticeship Initiative has helped about 1,800 Glasgow school-leavers into modern apprenticeships since its launch three years ago.
The Commonwealth Jobs Fund, launched last year, has set a target of creating 1,000 jobs for unemployed young people.
The fund seeks to help those who have been out of work for more than six months.
Source: BBC.co.uk, Friday 11th November 2011
The Commonwealth Graduate Fund will pay employers 50% of the salary costs for graduates they take on, up to a maximum of £10,000 per graduate for one year.
It follows several other city projects linked to the legacy of the games.
They include the Commonwealth Apprenticeship Initiative and the Commonwealth Jobs Fund.
The graduate initiative is being unveiled by council leader Gordon Matheson at the 14th State of the City Economy Conference.
Mr Matheson said his vision for Glasgow was to create "a city of excellence", where young people were encouraged to succeed and businesses supported to grow.
He said: "Times are hard. But there are things the council can do to help - by maintaining our capital programme, allowing industry leaders to shape our economic strategy, by looking at new ways of funding, improving the planning system, and offering support to help you create jobs and foster entrepreneurship."
He added: "Graduates account for 32% of our workforce - well above the UK average - and I want those leaving university to believe they can fulfil their dreams in this city."
Glasgow Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stuart Patrick said he warmly welcome the move by the city council.
He added: "We know the labour market is especially tough for young new entrants at this time at all skill levels.
"We have already seen the positive impact of the two existing Commonwealth funds on youth unemployment in Glasgow.
"To include graduates with this new fund recognises the challenges they are also facing in securing jobs, helping us retain the talent that will help attract new investment to the city in the future."
Other measures being announced by Mr Matheson include the creation of youth enterprise zones, offering young people mentoring, business start-up advice and training and support as well as micro-finance.
The local authority estimates that its Commonwealth Apprenticeship Initiative has helped about 1,800 Glasgow school-leavers into modern apprenticeships since its launch three years ago.
The Commonwealth Jobs Fund, launched last year, has set a target of creating 1,000 jobs for unemployed young people.
The fund seeks to help those who have been out of work for more than six months.
Source: BBC.co.uk, Friday 11th November 2011
Thursday 10 November 2011
Etihad welcomes latest Emirati graduates
A total of 31 UAE national cadet pilots, 10 graduate managers, one engineer graduate and 77 contact centre staff from the UAE and an additional 11 graduating cadet pilots of other nationalities, were welcomed to Etihad in a ceremony held yesterday at the Al Raha Beach Hotel in Abu Dhabi.
The graduating cadet pilots - who have completed an 18 month training course - have now joined the airline as second officers.
James Hogan, Chief Executive Officer of Etihad Airways, said: “The most valuable asset of any organisation is its people and that’s why staff development is such a big focus for us. We continuously strive to develop our training programmes and have invested in state – of – the art educational facilities.
“As the national airline of the UAE, and as part of our support of the Abu Dhabi 2030 plan, we are committed to training and developing a national workforce of skilled motivated Emiratis.”
Etihad’s cadet pilot programme has grown considerably since it was launched in January 2007 and now boasts 106 UAE nationals who are currently training to become fully qualified pilots.
Also, among the graduates was Loulua Abdulla Salem Abdulla Mohamed, who is Etihad’s second female Emirati graduate engineer.
Etihad’s engineering programme offers UAE nationals the opportunity to obtain a diploma in Aviation Engineering Technology (Airframe and Aero engines or Avionics). On completion of the programme trainees received an approved GCAA higher diploma in Aviation Engineering including on the job training.
In 2009, Etihad announced the creation of an all female UAE national contact centre facility in Al Ain, and a six month contact centre agents training course was designed and delivered in partnership with Abu Dhabi University in Al Ain. The extensive 10 week programme consists of core skills, service skills and generic English language skills. This programme is further reinforced with close to three weeks of on the job training.
The graduation ceremony also recognised the fourth group of graduate managers, who completed a 21-month training programme which included a nine-month workplace orientation in key Etihad departments, followed by a six month placement with a specified team and, finally, a business-based project. They will now be placed in various departments across Etihad’s network, including positions at outstations in Munich, Chicago, London and Melbourne.
Khaled Al Midwahi, one of the graduating managers who is now Sponsorship Manager in Etihad’s Marketing department, said: “The course has helped me develop my leadership and managerial skills and understand Etihad better. Through the rotational programme, spending time in Etihad’s nine departments, I was able to get a view of the bigger picture, and finally be able to choose the department that best suits my skills and interests.”
The Etihad Airways Emiratisation Programme offers a wide range of training opportunities tailored to attract large numbers of UAE nationals to join Etihad and build their career within the airline industry.
Mohammad Al Banna, Airport Operations Duty Manager at Chicago Airport, said: “This programme was just great. We learned a lot and it helped me develop so many skills, both professionally and personally. My education and background is media therefore this program helped introduce me to the airline industry and prepared me to work in a totally different environment. After graduating from university I needed something to make me ready for the real job, and this programme was perfect.”
Etihad’s Emiratisation programme currently has 228 UAE national trainees deployed across the airline, including 103 cadet pilots, 38 graduate managers and 57 technical engineers.
A total of 14% of those working for Etihad Airways are UAE nationals.
Source: Arabianaerospace.aero, Thursday 10th November 2011
The graduating cadet pilots - who have completed an 18 month training course - have now joined the airline as second officers.
James Hogan, Chief Executive Officer of Etihad Airways, said: “The most valuable asset of any organisation is its people and that’s why staff development is such a big focus for us. We continuously strive to develop our training programmes and have invested in state – of – the art educational facilities.
“As the national airline of the UAE, and as part of our support of the Abu Dhabi 2030 plan, we are committed to training and developing a national workforce of skilled motivated Emiratis.”
Etihad’s cadet pilot programme has grown considerably since it was launched in January 2007 and now boasts 106 UAE nationals who are currently training to become fully qualified pilots.
Also, among the graduates was Loulua Abdulla Salem Abdulla Mohamed, who is Etihad’s second female Emirati graduate engineer.
Etihad’s engineering programme offers UAE nationals the opportunity to obtain a diploma in Aviation Engineering Technology (Airframe and Aero engines or Avionics). On completion of the programme trainees received an approved GCAA higher diploma in Aviation Engineering including on the job training.
In 2009, Etihad announced the creation of an all female UAE national contact centre facility in Al Ain, and a six month contact centre agents training course was designed and delivered in partnership with Abu Dhabi University in Al Ain. The extensive 10 week programme consists of core skills, service skills and generic English language skills. This programme is further reinforced with close to three weeks of on the job training.
The graduation ceremony also recognised the fourth group of graduate managers, who completed a 21-month training programme which included a nine-month workplace orientation in key Etihad departments, followed by a six month placement with a specified team and, finally, a business-based project. They will now be placed in various departments across Etihad’s network, including positions at outstations in Munich, Chicago, London and Melbourne.
Khaled Al Midwahi, one of the graduating managers who is now Sponsorship Manager in Etihad’s Marketing department, said: “The course has helped me develop my leadership and managerial skills and understand Etihad better. Through the rotational programme, spending time in Etihad’s nine departments, I was able to get a view of the bigger picture, and finally be able to choose the department that best suits my skills and interests.”
The Etihad Airways Emiratisation Programme offers a wide range of training opportunities tailored to attract large numbers of UAE nationals to join Etihad and build their career within the airline industry.
Mohammad Al Banna, Airport Operations Duty Manager at Chicago Airport, said: “This programme was just great. We learned a lot and it helped me develop so many skills, both professionally and personally. My education and background is media therefore this program helped introduce me to the airline industry and prepared me to work in a totally different environment. After graduating from university I needed something to make me ready for the real job, and this programme was perfect.”
Etihad’s Emiratisation programme currently has 228 UAE national trainees deployed across the airline, including 103 cadet pilots, 38 graduate managers and 57 technical engineers.
A total of 14% of those working for Etihad Airways are UAE nationals.
Source: Arabianaerospace.aero, Thursday 10th November 2011
Wednesday 9 November 2011
Law graduate on theft charge
A law graduate filmed on CCTV riding off on a stolen bicycle has been fined £70.
Christopher Lindsay of Granville Street, Boston, was also ordered to pay £180 compensation, £85 costs and a £15 victim's surcharge after pleading guilty to a theft charge.
Prosecutor Daniel Paulson said the bike had been left chained to a lamppost in an alleyway off Boston Market Place on August 31.
Boston Magistrates heard the 28-year-old was seen by CCTV operators riding the bicycle after he and another man briefly entered the alleyway.
Mitigating, Sasha Waxman claimed the other man used bolt cutters to free the bike from the lamppost and Lindsay then rode it away.
She revealed he had a law degree and planned to move to Manchester within the next few weeks where he had a job lined up.
Miss Waxman added Lindsay, who had previous criminal convictions, was "deeply regretful and ashamed to be in court."
Source: Thisislincolnshire, Wednesday 9th November 2011
Christopher Lindsay of Granville Street, Boston, was also ordered to pay £180 compensation, £85 costs and a £15 victim's surcharge after pleading guilty to a theft charge.
Prosecutor Daniel Paulson said the bike had been left chained to a lamppost in an alleyway off Boston Market Place on August 31.
Boston Magistrates heard the 28-year-old was seen by CCTV operators riding the bicycle after he and another man briefly entered the alleyway.
Mitigating, Sasha Waxman claimed the other man used bolt cutters to free the bike from the lamppost and Lindsay then rode it away.
She revealed he had a law degree and planned to move to Manchester within the next few weeks where he had a job lined up.
Miss Waxman added Lindsay, who had previous criminal convictions, was "deeply regretful and ashamed to be in court."
Source: Thisislincolnshire, Wednesday 9th November 2011
Tuesday 8 November 2011
Ernst and Young facing recruitment deluge
Ernst & Young, the international financial services firm, is facing a daunting recruitment deluge for its graduate trainee schemes this year, after experiencing a surge in applications.
The accountancy firm has received 3,200 applications for its next 800 places on its schemes - which is a rise of 140 per cent on the figures from the same time last year.
The company's head of graduate recruitment, Stephen Isherwood, said that they are also expecting the numbers to keep rising, after registering a 25 per cent increase in the number of students attending the events it holds at university campuses across the country. Their work experience schemes are also seeing rising numbers of potential new recruits clamouring for roles, with 1,700 students applying so far for 750 places throughout the course of the coming year.
Isherwood advised that any students wanting to be considered for the schemes should make sure to get started early.
"Having already received four applications for every place on our graduate trainee scheme, students need to get organised if they want to secure their dream job after finishing university and start applying for vacancies," he said.
Isherwood also advised the applicants to consider their other centres, in Reading and Southampton as well. He explained, "[They] provide the same career development opportunities as working in the capital, plus the chance to work across a greater variety of clients."
Geoff Newman, chief executive of online recruitment agency RecruitmentGenius.com has had a similar experience on another graduate recruitment drive.
"Recently recruiting for a top 10 consultancy firm we had 600 jobs and several thousand job applications within only seven days. Interestingly though many firms are taking non-graduates who are academically bright but put off from higher tuition fees. In the current climate there is a fierce battle for the top jobs."
Source: Geoff Newman, Journalism.co.uk, Monday 7th November 2011
The accountancy firm has received 3,200 applications for its next 800 places on its schemes - which is a rise of 140 per cent on the figures from the same time last year.
The company's head of graduate recruitment, Stephen Isherwood, said that they are also expecting the numbers to keep rising, after registering a 25 per cent increase in the number of students attending the events it holds at university campuses across the country. Their work experience schemes are also seeing rising numbers of potential new recruits clamouring for roles, with 1,700 students applying so far for 750 places throughout the course of the coming year.
Isherwood advised that any students wanting to be considered for the schemes should make sure to get started early.
"Having already received four applications for every place on our graduate trainee scheme, students need to get organised if they want to secure their dream job after finishing university and start applying for vacancies," he said.
Isherwood also advised the applicants to consider their other centres, in Reading and Southampton as well. He explained, "[They] provide the same career development opportunities as working in the capital, plus the chance to work across a greater variety of clients."
Geoff Newman, chief executive of online recruitment agency RecruitmentGenius.com has had a similar experience on another graduate recruitment drive.
"Recently recruiting for a top 10 consultancy firm we had 600 jobs and several thousand job applications within only seven days. Interestingly though many firms are taking non-graduates who are academically bright but put off from higher tuition fees. In the current climate there is a fierce battle for the top jobs."
Source: Geoff Newman, Journalism.co.uk, Monday 7th November 2011
Monday 7 November 2011
UK graduates fail to make the cut for international graduate jobs
Lack of language skills in UK graduates means they are hampered when trying to find international graduate jobs.
Graduates from UK universities are losing out on the top international positions because they are unable to speak a second language according to academics and business leaders.
There are serious concerns about the lack of language skills in UK graduates, which was raised at a policy meeting at the Houses of Parliament on 19th October. They discussed the fact that the current education system is not doing enough to encourage graduates to study languages. Yet many countries within the European Union are expected to speak several languages regardless of what they are studying.
"No university should be producing graduates who cannot function at a basic level in another language," said Baroness Coussins, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, after the event, which was organised by the Industry and Parliament Trust.
"There is a feeling that 'English is enough' because it is spoken everywhere, but this is not true," she said. "Businesses are not looking for people who are fluent, but those who can do basic conversation and break the ice. It gives a good impression of that company."
With graduates unable to speak languages other than English, it is harming Britain’s economic competitiveness and University leavers are failing to win top places at multinational companies.
Tim Connell, former director of language studies at City University London, said life skills gained by multilingual graduates on year-abroad placements were also attractive to employers.
Professor Connell, who is vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, commented that "Students have to be so adaptable because the skill sets required by businesses are changing so quickly. What you learn in your degree is normally out of date within five years, so what students carry with them are their skills. I think higher education is very modest about the transferable skills that it gives to students."
Source: Pareto.co.uk, Monday 7th November 2011
Graduates from UK universities are losing out on the top international positions because they are unable to speak a second language according to academics and business leaders.
There are serious concerns about the lack of language skills in UK graduates, which was raised at a policy meeting at the Houses of Parliament on 19th October. They discussed the fact that the current education system is not doing enough to encourage graduates to study languages. Yet many countries within the European Union are expected to speak several languages regardless of what they are studying.
"No university should be producing graduates who cannot function at a basic level in another language," said Baroness Coussins, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, after the event, which was organised by the Industry and Parliament Trust.
"There is a feeling that 'English is enough' because it is spoken everywhere, but this is not true," she said. "Businesses are not looking for people who are fluent, but those who can do basic conversation and break the ice. It gives a good impression of that company."
With graduates unable to speak languages other than English, it is harming Britain’s economic competitiveness and University leavers are failing to win top places at multinational companies.
Tim Connell, former director of language studies at City University London, said life skills gained by multilingual graduates on year-abroad placements were also attractive to employers.
Professor Connell, who is vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, commented that "Students have to be so adaptable because the skill sets required by businesses are changing so quickly. What you learn in your degree is normally out of date within five years, so what students carry with them are their skills. I think higher education is very modest about the transferable skills that it gives to students."
Source: Pareto.co.uk, Monday 7th November 2011
Sunday 6 November 2011
Bedfordshire graduates fare well in job market
Fewer graduates from the University of Bedfordshire went straight into jobs after completing their courses last summer, compared to three years earlier.
But the figures, from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), also show Bedfordshire graduates are having more success finding work than those from other universities in the region.
The survey found nearly 44 per cent of full-time students who left the university in 2010 had secured graduate jobs six months after leaving.
Out of eight institutions across the region only one other had a better success rate.
However, over half of the class of 2007 had found degree-level jobs in the same period.
Professor Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the university, said: “This is a pleasing result and is testament to our policy of embedding employability into all our courses, our high-quality teaching in modern, state-of-the-art facilities and strong student support, which ensure students are well prepared for the world of work.”
Figures also show nearly one in ten of Bedfordshire graduates are assumed unemployed.
Only two of the other universities across the region - Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge, Essex, Hertfordshire, Northampton, Suffolk and the University of East Anglia - had lower levels of unemployed 2010 graduates.
Source: Bedfordtoday.co.uk, Friday 4th November 2011
But the figures, from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), also show Bedfordshire graduates are having more success finding work than those from other universities in the region.
The survey found nearly 44 per cent of full-time students who left the university in 2010 had secured graduate jobs six months after leaving.
Out of eight institutions across the region only one other had a better success rate.
However, over half of the class of 2007 had found degree-level jobs in the same period.
Professor Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the university, said: “This is a pleasing result and is testament to our policy of embedding employability into all our courses, our high-quality teaching in modern, state-of-the-art facilities and strong student support, which ensure students are well prepared for the world of work.”
Figures also show nearly one in ten of Bedfordshire graduates are assumed unemployed.
Only two of the other universities across the region - Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge, Essex, Hertfordshire, Northampton, Suffolk and the University of East Anglia - had lower levels of unemployed 2010 graduates.
Source: Bedfordtoday.co.uk, Friday 4th November 2011
Saturday 5 November 2011
Why it’s a good time to go for a job in a small company
Small and medium-sized companies are particularly interested in recruiting graduates at the moment, according to a recent report from university careers services. It seems that they are taking advantage of the tough jobs market to snap up talent that might, in a different economic climate, have been absorbed by the big blue-chip companies that traditionally take on large numbers of graduates.
According to the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), the trend is particularly noticeable with very small companies, which could be because these organisations have realised for the first time that graduates might be interested in working for them.
Getting a job with a small or medium-sized company (SME) could be great for your future career:
- You can develop skills in different areas and become an all-rounder rather than specialising in a particular aspect of business from the outset – and discover aptitudes you never knew you had.
- You can get involved in a relatively new enterprise at an early stage, giving you the opportunity to be part of a business that is growing, developing and establishing itself.
- There’s likely to be scope for you to play a key role in influencing change.
Other hot spots for graduates in a cold economic climate
That’s not the only positive graduate recruitment trend taking shape, as the AGCAS report, published at the beginning of November and drawing on its quarterly survey of vacancies and employer activity, makes clear:
- Big employers in all areas are continuing to recruit. This is because they are mindful of the need to keep developing new employees so that they do not suffer from a shortage of talent when conditions are more favourable for growth. In past recessions many employers cut back on graduate hiring, only to find themselves engaged in an expensive war for talent when times improved.
- Graduate vacancies in many high-tech areas of science, engineering and ICT are up, and many employers say there is a shortage of highly-skilled technical graduates.
- There has also been an increase in vacancies in retail, advertising, marketing and PR. This is good news for arts graduates, as most employers in these areas recruit candidates from any degree background. Graduates who are creative, commercially-minded and have strong communication skills will find their strengths are in demand.
However…
- Large companies are often taking on fewer graduates as permanent employees, and are making more use of temporary contracts and internships.
- Competition for vacancies is high, particularly as there is a backlog of graduates from the last couple of years all chasing the same opportunities.
- Public sector vacancies have continued to fall. Recruitment in the construction industry and the legal profession has also been affected by pressure on funding for the public sector.
- While employers are still maintaining a presence on campus, particularly at big graduate recruitment fairs, some are visiting fewer individual campuses. This means the onus is increasingly on students to be creative and use their initiative in seeking out opportunities.
What can you do to improve your chances?
Anne-Marie Martin, AGCAS president and director of The Careers Group at the University of London, commented, ‘It’s easy to get the impression that there are no jobs out there. On the contrary, there are lots, but admittedly competition for them is tough. Those who consciously improve their skills, accumulate work experience, proactively seek out “hidden” vacancies and make the most of the resources their careers service offers will have a definite edge.’
Source: Alison, Targetjobs.co.uk, Friday 4th November 2011
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