Win work experience for a graduate career in hospitality

Students who are considering a career in hospitality, leisure and tourism can win work experience placements with top employers via an online competition organised by People 1st, the sector skills council for the industry.

The competition is hosted on the UKSP website, which is run by People 1st and provides information about careers, jobs and training in hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism.

Video and film production student Shandice Wright won the most recent round and undertook a week’s work experience at The Dorchester hotel in London, where she received training across front of house, kitchen and dining, and events.

Shandice said that the experience had encouraged her to consider a career in the industry. She said, ‘Everyone at The Dorchester is very passionate about their work and knows their role really well. They have provided some great mentoring during the week and have inspired me to go into hospitality.’

Melanie Whitaker, learning and development manager at The Dorchester, said that Shandice had a ‘bright career in front of her’ in the sector. She added, ‘The work experience competition is shining a light on the exciting careers available, not only within The Dorchester, but in hospitality in general.’

The next round of the work experience competition is now open and is offering the winner a chance to win a week’s work experience with the catering company Baxter Storey.

A graduate career with great opportunities for early responsibility

Many students are interested in pursuing a career in management, thought they are not always sure about the industry that they want to work in. The hospitality sector is an attractive option because it offers its graduate recruits the chance to gain face to face management experience at an early stage in their careers. A quarter of managers in the sector are under 30, so it is an area in which it is possible to make your mark soon after graduation.

Management jobs in hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism are expected to increase in the next couple of years. It has been predicted that the sector will need another 34,000 managers in the UK between now and 2017.

Source: Targetjobs.co.uk, Wednesday 13th June 2012

PwC to offer Higher Apprenticeships in tax

Sixty new recruits will start their two-year apprenticeships in PwC’s tax division next month, making the firm the first to offer places under the new government-sponsored professional services Higher Apprenticeship framework. The aim of the framework is to provide 1,500 higher apprenticeships in tax, audit and management consulting by March 2015.

On-the-job training, coaching and assessment will give new recruits a work-based route into the professional services sector. While working, they will undertake a qualification with the Association of Tax Technicians.

Gaenor Bagley, head of people and a partner at PwC, enthused, ‘The programme reflects our commitment to widening access to the profession, encouraging social mobility and offering top quality school leaver career opportunities. Last year we signed up to the government’s Business Compact on Social Mobility because we think it is vital to encourage diversity, to reflect the communities we work in and the clients we have.’

As we commented when we first broke the news about this alternative route into professional services, since the Big 4 continue to increase their graduate intake year on year, current students should see these programmes less as competition and more as an opportunity for greater diversity in the firms they choose to join.

Source: Targetjobs.co.uk, Tuesday 12th June 2012

'I'm going to be a graduate': Emotional Depression-era dropout, 97, receives her high school diploma EIGHTY YEARS later

It takes most high school students four years to get their diploma, but for 97-year-old dropout Ann Colagiovanni, graduation has been eight decades in the making.

The last time Colagiovanni, or Anna Lupica as she was known in the 1930s, sat in a classroom, Franklin Roosevelt was president and the Great Depression was in full swing.

At age 17, the statuesque, raven-haired beauty quit school to help her family financially by working at her father’s business, Lupica’s Grocery Meat Market, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, according to MyFox8.com.



Pomp & Circumstance: Ann Colagiovanni dressed up in a white cap and gown to receive her honorary high school diploma.



Proud moment: Colagiovanni, 97, was surrounded by family and friends when she finally became a high school graduate.

‘She did what her father wanted her to do, even though she wanted to graduate. She put her father, her family, before herself,’ said her daughter Emilia Colagiovanni Vinci.

But on Wednesday, the 97-year-old’s lifelong dream of becoming a graduate has finally come true when Shaker Heights High School bestowed her with an honorary diploma dated June of 1934.

‘That’s when we believe that would be the appropriate date,’ Mark Freeman, Shaker Heights School District Superintendent, told Colagiovanni.



Timeless: Colagiovanni's diploma was dated June 1934, which is when she was supposed to have graduated.

After quitting high school, Colagiovanni continued working at the family store until it closed in the 1960s. She eventually got married, had two daughters and 11 grandchildren.

The diploma, however, was the one piece of the puzzle she truly missed, according to her daughter.

‘When I told her she was getting a diploma, she sobbed as if a pain had been relieved from her heart,’ Colagiovanni Vinci said. ‘I never knew what it meant to her.’

As friends and family hummed Sir Edward Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ the proud nonagenarian entered a classroom with the help of a walker dressed in a white cap and gown.

Overcome with emotion, she said her father had always wanted her to have this special moment.

‘He’d be so happy to know that finally I’m going to be, I’m going to be a graduate,’ she said.

This week is special not only for Colagiovanni. Her grandson, Thomas Vinci, is also graduating from Shaker Heights – just one day after her.

‘It’s a big moment for us,’ Vinci said. ‘She looks so cute in that thing. I don’t even really know what to think.’



Although she will not be walking with her grandson and the rest of the class of 2012, Colagiovanni will be cheering on the graduates from the sidelines. Her daughter, however, promised that her 97-year-old mother will be decked in her graduation attire.

‘People are going to be confused when they see a 97-year-old in a cap and gown, but she’s going to wear her cap and gown tomorrow,’ Colagiovanni Vinci said.

Source: Snejana Farberov, Dailymail.co.uk, Friday 8th June 2012

Craft beer firm BrewDog to create 40 new jobs as sales pour in

Craft beer firm BrewDog has revealed plans to create dozens of new jobs after announcing “record growth” this year.

The Fraserburgh-born brewery is set to recruit 40 new members of staff, set up a graduate recruitment programme and open three new bars over the next quarter.

The company is also full steam ahead with the development of a state-of-the-art carbon-neutral brewery, expected to be completed by the end of June.

Despite a downturn in the economy, BrewDog has bucked the trend in 2012 and is expecting to achieve a turnover of £12m this year.

Co-founder James Watt said that the economic crisis had been the company’s “biggest catalyst for success”.

He added: “Five years ago BrewDog was Martin Dickie, myself, some second hand equipment and Bracken the dog. Now we’re Scotland’s largest independent brewery, selling our craft beer in 27 different countries and owning eight craft beer bars across the country.

“We’re opening three more bars in three months adding 40 new members of staff, yet all we hear about in the media is redundancies, downturns and Lady Gaga.”

The firm announced last July that they were launching a share scheme for private investors in a bid to generate £2.2m to partly fund the carbon neutral brewery based on the outskirts of Aberdeen.

The investment offer which was subsequently launched - Equity For Punks II – was used to expand BrewDog's bar portfolio to locations throughout the UK and to develop the eco-friendly base.

Source: Dionne Abolghassem, Stv.tv, Thursday 7th June 2012

Divorced Welsh mum-of-two Antonella Commatteo set to shine at Graduate Fashion Week

The 49-year-old has a very different life story to the majority of the 20-something fashion graduates hoping to make their name at an event that has proved a springboard to success for the likes of McCartney and Christopher Bailey.

While most of her fellow budding designers were going through their schooling, Antonella was building a career as a PA and raising a family.

She describes her decision three years ago to quit her stable job working for Cardiff brewery Brains, where she was PA to the chairman and chief executive, as a “mad moment”.

Exchanging security and a valued job at a well respected company for the hair-raising uncertainty of plunging herself into the competitive world of fashion, she decided to sign up for university.

“I had this mad moment. I wanted to work hand-embroidery into fashion, like Mark Fast does with knitwear,” said Antonella, whose two children are aged 22 and 26.

“I thought about it for a couple of years and then decided, at 46, to put myself through university.”

Her appearance at this week’s fashion week is the culmination of three years on the Fashion Design BA Honours course at the University of Wales, Newport, which has been difficult for her at times.

“I had some struggles, the financial side especially was very hard,” she said.

“I just need to get a job now to pay it off!”

“When you’re a young student, you have different stresses.

“But there are benefits – essays aren’t a problem for mature students as we have the life skills and we know how to prioritise.

“Although I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the university and my tutors,” she added.

“They knew what I was going through and I would surely have given up had I been without them.”

“Fashion is a cut-throat and very competitive industry and I’ve had to find my own place in it.”

Her graduate collection, which will be unveiled in London today, is entitled Shreds and was inspired by the end of her 22-year marriage during her final year of the course last September.

“I started working on the collection at exactly the same time as the break-up,” said Antonella.

“This was my way of dealing with it – the collection is a deconstruction of what was going on in my life.

“Embroidery has always been very therapeutic for me.

“So I turned the seams upside down and inside out to represent what I was feeling.

“And the black was the darkness I went through, while the bright orange was the light at the other end.”

The six garments were completed in three months, during which time Antonella said she slept for just four hours a day.

“It took my mind off things,” she said.

Exposed seams on soft fabric jackets are highlighted with rustic silk finish threads, on a collection that lead Antonella be chosen by a London newspaper as one of their five to watch at the event.

Graduate Fashion Week, which is celebrating 21 years, showcases and awards the year’s most exciting talent from the UK’s fashion courses.

Entrants are selected by their tutors, and this year involves more than 1,000 students from 39 universities, exhibiting their work to buyers, designers and the general public, with 20 catwalk shows and a pop-up shop where visitors can buy graduate designs off the peg.

On Wednesday, mum-of-two Antonella will be competing for gongs including the £20,000 George Gold Award for the Graduate Collection of the Year.

And the panel is a who’s who of fashion VIPs, like Brit designers Matthew Williamson and Mary Katrantzou, Burberry’s Christopher Bailey who won the very first Graduate Fashion Week award, and Merthyr Tydfil-born Julien Macdonald.

Last autumn, Antonella, bagged a coveted internship at the Welsh designer’s Mayfair atelier.

“Julien’s one of my favourite designers so I felt so lucky,” she said.

“I did a lot of running around and picking up dresses for the Cannes festival, going to the haberdashery, a lot of the usual errands to start.”

But she ended up staying eight weeks, even embroidering sample pieces to be considered for his intricate spring/summer 2012 collection.

“One day they sat me down to embroider in Julien’s office as it needed to be away from where they were spraying clothes, and he came in and sat down and we had a good chat,” she said.

“He was so inspiring.

“I’ve never met anyone so down-to-earth.

“I think what clinched me getting the internship was I had embroidery skills.”

Antonella, who was born to Italian parents, taught herself to embroider after she took needlework classes at school.

She later set up Celtic Embroidery – it ran for six years until 2008 and saw her be asked to present Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles with an embroidery cushion she custom-made for their visit to the Vale of Glamorgan.

“I made everything from waistcoats for weddings to costumes for Irish dancing, in between my full-time job,” she said.

George at Asda sponsors Graduate Fashion Week at Earls Court, London, from today until Wednesday.

For more information and tickets, go to gfw.org.uk.

Source: Claire Rees, Walesonline.co.uk, Sunday 10th June 2012

Britain Warned Of Job Losses Over Skill Levels

Industry leaders have warned that new jobs will go to other countries if there is a lack of skilled workers in Britain with higher education qualifications.

The news comes as the University and College Union (UCU) urged the Government to invest more in higher education to help the country out of recession.

It says there is a danger that unless the UK produces more highly-skilled workers it risks losing jobs abroad and the chance to build a competitive advantage in new, low-carbon industries.

The UCU is concerned that the number of applications to universities has decreased by 7.7% compared with this time last year.

A drain of highly skilled jobs to emerging markets is feared

Nissan employs graduates at its plant in Sunderland and the company's vice-president for Europe, Jerry Hardcastle, said investing in higher education is essential if jobs are to remain in the UK.

"In India, they are churning out hundreds of thousands of graduates and we are churning out a small number and that will restrict our ability to expand," Mr Hardcastle said.

"If they're not available here, the jobs will move to India, Brazil and China."

Manchester University School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineeringundergraduates have found that despite the recession, they are in demand in the work place.

Tabitha Brayshaw, who has just finished the final exams of a four-year masters degree in mechanical engineering, told Sky News: "I was quite worried about jobs and applied early but by March I had already received several interviews.

Countries such as China and India have high graduate outputs for factories

"I was offered two jobs and have accepted a job at Jaguar Landrover. I'm very excited about it."

Meanwhile, second year aerospace engineering undergraduate Benjamin Mohankumar said he has already been offered the chance of an internship at Shell.

A new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)has sought to show the long-term economic benefit to the country of higher education.

The IPPR study found the cost to the Government of someone studying three A levels and a degree is £25,000, but over the course of their life that graduate will pay an average £227,000 to the Exchequer.

However, the UCU said young people have been put off higher education by the increase in student tuition fees and the cut in university places.

UK students have protested against rising tuition fees

It also said the scrapping ofEducation Maintenance Allowance has made it more difficult for young people to go to college.

The UCU points out that the UK currently invests just 1.7% of public expenditure on tertiary education, compared to 2.3% in France, 2.8% in Germany, 3.2% in the USA and the OECD average of 3.0%.

The UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said: "With 80% of new jobs by 2020 likely to be professional or technical, the UK must invest now in the next generation or risk losing out in the race for economic growth.

"This research highlights the folly of reducing public investment in our colleges and universities.

"Instead of cutting places and making it more expensive to study, ministers need a strategy which harnesses further and higher education to provide a window of opportunity for the next generation."

Source: Becky Johnson, News.sky.com, Saturday 9th June 2012

Newcastle University hosts biggest summer graduate jobs fair

Fifty-six companies will be exhibiting and have representatives on hand to chat and discuss immediate vacancies they have on offer at Newcastle Graduate Recruitment Fair, organised by Newcastle University Careers Service.

It is open to students and graduates from any university and all degree disciplines.

Some of the biggest multinational names will be at the event, held at St James’ Park on Monday, including Abercrombie and Fitch, IBM, and Deloitte.

Organisations with further study and professional training opportunities will also be there.

Nick Keeley, director of the careers service said: “This is a great event for all penultimate year students and graduates from across the North East to attend and network with people in business, who are offering a variety of opportunities to kick-start a fulfilling career.

“It’s great to see so many recruiters targeting graduates in this region and choosing to bring their vacancies to us.

“Employers will be promoting hundreds of opportunities in a variety of sectors.”

Source: Chroniclelive.co.uk, Saturday 9th June 2012

Graduate careers: the importance of employability skills

You might have a degree, perhaps a technical qualification and a bit of work experience on your CV but have you promoted your soft skills? Do you even know what they are?

Soft skills – sometimes known in work-speak as "employability skills" – are becoming increasingly important to graduate recruiters sifting through the CVs of a growing pool of similar looking applicants, according to experts.

While hard skills refer to things such as academic qualifications, soft skills include communication ability, teamworking, time management, problem solving and attitude to work.

A recent report by the Work Foundation concluded that the long-term shift from production to a service-driven economy has made soft skills increasingly important for people seeking their first job. Findings fromthe Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) back this up. Of more than 1,000 HR professionals surveyed, the vast majority said that, aside from an increased need for more workers, better employability skills would be more likely to encourage them to hire young people than financial incentives, such as those from the government.

The good news is that, while many soft skills are inherent, others can be learned. "You can train yourself just as you can in hard skills," says Soraya Pugh, head of graduate at recruitment consultancy FreshMinds Talent. "If you are shy, for example, get involved in debating societies and other clubs at school and university. There are also courses on communication skills that can not only teach you some soft skills but help you demonstrate to employers self-awareness and initiative simply by the fact you have signed up."

Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the CIPD, believes the best way of demonstrating such skills is to get some work experience. "It is in every young person's interest to try and gain experience that exposes them to the workplace," he says. "This is not only because of the obvious benefits in terms of hard skills.

"Our research suggests that the main benefit is that it helps them to develop soft skills."

Recruitment experts agree that graduates applying for jobs can start to highlight their soft skills as early as the CV stage.

Soft skills don't need to be listed under a separate heading on a CV – this could look naff – but need to be demonstrated through examples. It's not good enough to say you are a good communicator, you need to say why.

Rebecca Jones, business coach and author of Business in Red Shoes, says she speaks to a lot of graduates who struggle to think of what to put on their CV.

"They then start blagging rather than making the best of what they have got and that lands them in all sorts of trouble," she says. "Soft skills are what make your personal brand but you need to think about them. Instead of thinking, for example, 'I have only worked at McDonald's', think 'What did working at McDonald's teach me?'"

Graduates who are not particularly assertive might worry that desirable soft skills can best be demonstrated by those with more confidence. But Rob Johnson, managing director at Instep, a training and development provider says one of the most important can be the hardest to master.

"This is the ability to listen," he says. "A good candidate will demonstrate that ability from the first phone call they make, right through the interview process. Your ability to articulate clearly and concisely is secondary to your ability to listen to the questions and think carefully about your answers."

Source: Lisa Bachelor, Guardian.co.uk, Friday 8th June 2012